“You’re on the list for the par-tay. I’m psyched you’re going. It’s gonna be high-key lit. Set list should be dope AF. Hey, should I get a white stretch limo so we can roll up straight pimpin’?”

This was why Anna loved her brother; he knew how to have a good time and always had. “Fo-shizzle you should!” she replied and Steven shot her a smirk. “Isn’t that an old hip-hop expression? Did I use it correctly?”

“I know you’re not a dumb white girl, but you’ve never sounded more like one.”

“Hey, take that back! You’re not allowed to be mean to me yet. You owe me, remember?” Anna was holding a throw pillow and ready to smack him in the face.

He put his arms up in the air in surrender. “I take it back! You’re right. On my honor, I’ll be nice to you for…” He paused dramatically. “At least for another few days. Like maybe three.”

“Oh please, like you have any honor.” Anna smacked her brother in the face with the pillow and got up from the bed laughing. “Get the limo. Why not?” She had always told herself she needed to try to be more like her brother, less careful and down for whatever. She decided right then to text Magda not to send her dogs in from Greenwich after all. She was going to a party tomorrow night and was going to stay out late, which meant the dogs would be left alone in the apartment.

Feeling good about her decisiveness, she now turned her attention to the next important matter. What was she going to wear? Her closet in the city had plenty of dresses in it, but she knew she wanted something extra special since clubbing wasn’t something she normally did.

Perhaps she deserved a fun new outfit as a treat for being such a good sister. It wasn’t like she didn’t have the afternoon to go shopping. She smiled brightly, opened the Uber app, tapped “Where to?” and typed “Bergdorf Goodman.”

XIX

Dustin was spending his snow day catching up on his movie watching. He split his time between his parents’ apartments: his father was a doctor at NYU Langone and lived in the West Village with his second wife, while his mother lived modestly on the Upper East Side in a two-bedroom apartment. His parents had divorced when he was four years old and it had always been a pain to travel back and forth. But when he hit high school, he traded off weeks, which was easier.