Page 17 of Penelope in Retrograde

“Silvia!” my father shouts from the patio. My god we do a lot of shouting in this family. “Silvia, where is she?”

My mother and I lock eyes. The lines around her blue eyes soften, along with her painted-on brows, and for a moment, I almost think she feels bad for me. She knows as well as I do that I’m not cut out for Princeton. She’s the one who signed me up for creative writing classes when I was in middle school instead of forcing me to do math tutoring. She’s the one who always let me stop at the bookstore on the way home from school so I could check out the new release section. She knows how much I want to go to Berkeley, and yet here she is trying to force me into a stupid mock interview for a school I don’t want to go to on a freaking holiday. Something inside me hardens, and I shoot her my best drunken death glare.

“I’m right here, Dad.” I belch and don’t even bother trying to hide it. “Is your friend ready to meet me?”

I brush past my mother, doing my best to put one foot in front of the other in a straight line, until I reach my father.

“What on earth?” My father eyes me warily, like I’m a feral cat. “Are you drunk, Penelope?”

“I’m not not drunk.”

“Do you think this is funny?” He shakes his head the way he always does when I’ve disappointed him. Two shakes, followed by running one hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “Do you know how many strings I had to pull to get Reginald Yates to join us for Thanksgiving? I flew him out from New Jersey. The man is incredibly influential at Princeton. He likely has hundreds of parents begging for him to practice their kids’ college interviews with him, and yet here you are three sheets to the wind!”

“What exactly does that phrase mean?” I hiccup. “Does it mean bedsheets? Who has three bedsheets hanging out in the wind?”

“Silvia.” My father motions for my mother, completely ignoring me. “Silvia, I need you to go inside and tell Reginald that Penelope is sick. We’ll go ahead and have dinner. He’ll be disappointed to miss out on the mock interview, but at least his dinner won’t be spoiled.”

“Hey, what if we pull a Freaky Friday and have Phoebe pretend to be me?” I ask. “Then your old pal Reginald won’t be disappointed.”

“He’s already met your sister,” my mother snips. “She had the decency to wear the dress she picked out and not get drunk with her boyfriend.”

“Smith’s here? I’ll kill him,” my father growls. “The only thing worse than that boy is his damn hippie-dippie parents.”

“He’s puked all over the tree house,” my mother says. “We’ll have to have the place condemned before we bulldoze it to the ground.” She grabs my hood and pulls me toward the back door. “When we get inside, I want you to go directly to your bedroom. Do you understand? The last thing we need is for Reginald to see you like this and ruin any chance you have to make it into Princeton.”

The ground starts to spin beneath my legs. I can’t tell if I’m walking or floating. My girl Vermouth is taking turns between beating on my head like a bongo and whacking my belly like a piñata. “But I don’t want to go to Princeton, Mom.”

“You don’t know what you want, Penelope.”

She opens the door. A rush of Thanksgiving scents torpedoes my sense of smell, and a wave of nausea hits me like a brick to the face. My mouth turns on the waterworks, which means it’s only a matter of seconds before my girl Vermouth makes her comeback.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I grumble. “Mom.”

“Oh, Reginald.” My mother jerks my hood like a puppeteer trying to stand a dummy to attention. “Reginald, I’m so sorry for the delay.”

“Ah, this must be the famous Penelope.” The man my mother called Reginald has one of those big, booming voices that would make a sports announcer jealous. “It’s great to meet you. How are you?”

“Drunk.” I turn my head just in time to miss covering Reginald Yates’s shoes with vomit. My mother’s caftan is less fortunate.

The last thing I remember before falling asleep is Phoebe gently keeping my hair out of my face while I dry heaved over the toilet. God, it would be so easy to hate Phoebe if she wasn’t such a damn good sister. It’s not her fault that she’s naturally perfect. It’s even less her fault that she got saddled with a twin who somehow ended up with all the worst traits in the family gene pool.

We don’t have that twin thing where we can read each other’s thoughts or anything, but Phoebe does know how to comfort me when nobody else in our family can.

“Everything will work out, Pen,” Phoebe whispers as I drift to sleep. “Dad’s friends with Mr.Yates. This will all get swept under the rug and forgotten in a few days. It always does.”

She’s right. If there’s one thing my family does consistently well, it’s pretending that everything is OK. Give it a few days, and things will be back to business as usual. Because Bankses are always business first and family second.

Chapter 6

The van is finally silent, minus the white noise of the rain drizzling on top of the van and Aidan’s snoring. Harriet and Ozzie have migrated to the back seat and are curled up next to him, which is kind of adorable if you don’t think about the fact that a semibuzzed complete stranger is spooning our dogs.

“I’m working on my review for Barkie’s,” I say. “Do you think I should take a picture of Aidan to include in it?”

“Not unless you want to be personally banned from their store.”

“Good point.” I slip my phone into my purse.

Smith drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “Now what do we do?”

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