“You must take care of yourself, darling girl. Please, Lucky.”
“I’m okay,” said Lucky. “You take care of yourself.”
Chiti leveled her in her dark, knowing gaze.
“No,” she said. “You’re not.”
—
Lucky stared out the little round cabin window at the black night sky and saw her own face reflected hazily back. Could the Plan B have been Avery’s? But who on earth would she have used it with? Lucky had been so sure that the one person she could rely on to be a stable force in her life was Avery—but, of course, she’d thought the same thing of Nicky. They were two of four, but they were also undeniably a pair, as close as twins despite their age difference.
Nicky was just two when Lucky was born accidentally at home, elbowing out of the birth canal in only fifteen minutes as their mother squatted on the bedroom floor. Nicky could have resented Lucky for ending her tenure as the baby of the family so swiftly, but it was the opposite. Instead, she declared Lucky her baby and carried her everywhere in the following months, dragging a stoic Lucky like a sack of flour around the apartment.
When they were two and four, Lucky followed Nicky everywhere like a duckling, like a dog. Right from the start, it was Nicky she chose above everyone else. As far as she was concerned, the world began and ended with her sister.
Four and six was the two of them in the bath together, slipping over each other like seal cubs, laughing. It was Nicky’s favorite toy, a pink cat with four kittens inside its Velcro belly who were born and returned to their mother again and again. It was an afternoon in Central Park licking Mister Softees, long cream rivulets dripping down their arms. It was Nicky insisting they feed some to the kittens. Oh, they eat so sweetly, she said, sighing.
Six and eight, they had matching bowl haircuts their mother gave them over the kitchen sink. They played hide-and-seek, choreographed dance routines, and spoke a language only the other understood.
Eight and ten, their dad shattered the wedding china. That Christmas, he pulled the Christmas tree down on top of himself while drunk. They stayed in their shared bedroom and played music softly when he was home. Lucky was Baby Spice and Nicky was Posh. They needed no other identities than these.
Ten and twelve, their small age difference was suddenly big. Nicky hit puberty early and hard, while Lucky was still a child. Lucky learned to fear the hot-water bottle, knowing that if Nicky had it pressed to her stomach, she was in no mood to play. For the first time, Nicky traveled to a place Lucky could not follow. It was scary and required Clearasil.
Twelve and fourteen, Nicky grew her hair out, bought a padded bra from Bloomingdale’s, and started painting French tips on her nails. Lucky grew twelve inches, discovered the Ramones, and declared black her favorite color. They never looked alike again.
Fourteen and sixteen, Nicky came home early from school again after fainting on her period. Their mother told her she was being dramatic and, secretly, Lucky agreed. Why did Nicky find it so hard? The rest of them all managed. By the end of that year, the sisters were like four blue irises outgrowing their shared pot. They wanted their own bedrooms, their own taste, their own space. They yearned to crack the pot and escape.
Sixteen and eighteen, they did. Lucky was modeling full-time; Nicky started college and joined a sorority. Lucky smoked a pack a day. Nicky dated a guy called Chad. Lucky fell behind in her GED. Nicky had a 4.0 GPA. Lucky was defiant. Nicky was compliant. They spoke every day.
Eighteen and twenty, Lucky went to Japan and Nicky was diagnosed with endometriosis after collapsing during her psychology final. Lucky felt guilty for ever privately thinking her sister was exaggerating her menstrual pain. While Lucky was in Tokyo, Nicky called her from the hospital, but she didn’t say much. The medications they put her on made her sleepy and short-tempered. Lucky understood that her sister had gone to another place she could not follow. She was sure, however, that she would come back.
Twenty and twenty-two, they had their worst fight ever after Lucky got drunk at Nicky’s graduation party and accidentally set fire to the hair of one of the three girls in attendance named Britney. She loathed Nicky’s sorority sisters with their straightened hair and Tory Burch sandals and secret language they all seemed to share. She was sure they judged her for not graduating from high school. Try spending five years warding off the advances of grabby photographers, jealous attacks from other models, and constant inquiries into your weight and diet from agents, she wanted to tell them. That was an education. In the bathroom, Nicky splashed Lucky’s face with water. When did you get so boring? Lucky slurred over the sink. Nicky grabbed her shoulders and shook her until her skull rattled. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be normal! she shouted. The next night, their parents had plans to take them all out to dinner to celebrate, but Nicky told them she was never speaking to Lucky again. Okay, their mother said. But the reservation is for seven p.m., so can you stop speaking to her after that? They ended up splitting dessert.
Twenty-two and twenty-four, they kept losing each other. Nicky moved back to New York to get her teaching degree and Lucky flitted around Europe before settling in Paris. Nicky tried acupuncture, breathwork, ice baths, and infrared saunas to help manage her pain, all to no avail. Lucky drank every day and smoked a joint each night to fall asleep. Their daily phone calls became weekly, sometimes monthly. But, like their games of hide-and-seek as children, sooner or later one of them was always there on the other end of the phone or at the airport gate, waiting for the other, hoping to be found.
Twenty-four and twenty-six, Lucky came back to visit Nicky in New York. She was early to pick her up from the high school she was teaching at, so Lucky wandered the quiet halls until she found the right room, then peeked through the glass to see Nicky standing in front of her class, relaxed and smiling in a bright summer dress, making twenty teenagers laugh. Her sister, Lucky thought, was a magician. In the playground, some students had installed an art piece called a wishing tree, which asked passersby to write out a wish on one of the thin strips of paper and tie it to the tree, filling its branches with blossoms of hopes. Lucky kept trying to peek at Nicky’s paper as they scribbled, but she laughed and clutched it to her chest. If you look, it won’t come true! Afterward, when Nicky ran back inside to grab some papers, Lucky found the branch she’d tied hers to and unfolded it. She already knew what Nicky would wish for, a husband and a baby, the same things she’d wished for over her birthday candles every year since she graduated from college, but she felt a strange compulsion to check. She opened the paper and there, written in Nicky’s feminine cursive were three words: no more pills. Afterward, when Lucky had asked her about it, she denied the wish was hers.
For Lucky’s twenty-fifth birthday, Nicky sent her a pair of framed blue butterflies. For Nicky’s twenty-seventh, Lucky forgot and called her hungover the next day. Shortly after, she offered to fly Nicky to Paris as a belated birthday present; it was the summer after all, Nicky’s time off, and Lucky could book the flights for as soon as the next day on air miles. But Nicky made an excuse.
I’m not feeling so good, Lucky Lou, she said. Maybe another time.
Lucky sighed down the phone.
Please don’t be mad at me forever, she said. Please let me make it up to you.
Nicky paused.
You know what I really want for my birthday?Find out what makes you happy, then go fucking do it.
Lucky looked down at her hands. Who would she be if she knew how to do that?
I’ve got to go, she said finally. I love you.
Nicky sounded like she was going to say something else, then paused and said what she always said.
I love you too.Without the too.
They hung up and Lucky went to get ready for some party or other and that was the last time she spoke to her sister.
As the plane flew steadily through the night to New York, Lucky drank vodka straight, ignoring the minicans of soda placed alongside her plastic glass. She did not sleep. In that suspended haze, she kept returning to the same thought. She was alive. It sounded obvious, but Lucky had spent the last year denying that simple fact, existing in a drug- or alcohol-induced state that was neither living nor dead. She was alive and Nicky was not. It wasn’t right, it simply was. And since she was the one who was still alive, she was going to have to find a way to live.
When she stumbled off the plane, weaving unsteadily between passengers and baggage carts, she found Bonnie waiting for her in the JFK arrivals hall. Lucky saw Bonnie before her sister saw her, hopefully scanning the crowd under the harsh fluorescent lights. She was clutching a sign that said Lucky’s name. She had drawn two dots over the “U” to make it a smiley face. Lucky crashed through it into her arms.
Chapter Eight Bonnie
Bonnie had not yet been back in the gym for a week, but it was clear her old life was gone for good. Pavel had greeted her with cold formality after she showed up unannounced. If she was expecting an apology, she wasn’t going to get one. If he was expecting one from her, he wasn’t getting one either. Any plan she’d had to explain the details of why she left after the funeral and what had happened in the year since evaporated on her tongue as soon as she found herself standing before him. She could train at Golden Ring, he made that clear, but he would not train her. She was going to have to find someone else. She realized now that she had never before cared about the gym’s covert hierarchy and system of favoritism because she had always been at the top of it, the gym’s undisputed rising star and Pavel’s primary fighter. Now, she was learning how cold it was outside the spotlight of his attention.
She positioned herself in his sight line while warming up, waiting to see if he would notice. He was sitting gingerly across from a young Bulgarian fighter, Danya, who had recently won his first two professional fights, the last by knockout. Bonnie glanced over at them as Pavel turned the young fighter’s hand between his own and felt the twin threads of jealousy and longing twist inside of her. It was one of a thousand tender gestures common between a boxer and a trainer. For years, Pavel had wiped her brow, removed her mouthguard, wrapped her hands, laced her gloves, buckled her headgear, poured water into her waiting mouth, smeared her brow with Vaseline, and performed a litany of other daily devotions. This brusque, unselfconscious intimacy was not that of any lover. It was parental, but not exactly paternal. The closest thing to it, Bonnie supposed, was a mother’s touch. Bonnie watched Pavel murmur something to Danya and wondered what precious lesson he was learning that she was excluded from.
She remembered Pavel teaching her a step jab while Nicky watched from her perch on the wooden bench by the ring. Bonnie was learning how to close the gap between her and her opponent by throwing the jab as she moved forward with her front foot, then quickly sliding her back foot up as she recovered the hand. It was a simple and essential move that, once mastered, would allow her to start building her combinations.
Plant feet, Bonnie, implored Pavel.
But every time she moved forward with the jab, she did a little leap like a deer skipping forward on ice. Pavel shook his head. He turned to Nicky.
Nicky? I want that you listen too.
Nicky nodded seriously. He turned back to Bonnie, who was panting in frustration.
