“Oh, and I figure after the landmine moment when they’re all like, WHOA—you’re not my usual daughter, why are you here, we tell Mother and Father respectively that the two of us have plans to switch back to living with our normal parent after two weeks, so they don’t suspect the whole tricking them into meeting up in the same place after five days thing.”

I come to a stop, and close my eyes, trying to process all this. When I open them again, Jamie’s standing directly in front of me. “What do you think?” She beams.

I think … I’d get to avoid going back to New Jersey. “What’s a landmine moment?” I ask.

She grins and bounces on her heels. “A mind-blowing moment! With great tea comes great revelatory-spillage responsibility!”

“What exactly do you mean by play dress-up?”

“Well, we don’t want to give them any big easy tells, so we switch all our possessions and clothes, that’s easy. But appearance-wise, I take out my nose ring, draw on your nifty posh beauty mark, dye my hair black, and we cut yours to match my length.”

I throw a protective hand over my braid. I can’t cut my hair that short. I need to be able to get it into a bun for da … nnnce.

No, I don’t.

Jamie is literally quaking with enthusiasm.

“Before you ask,” she continues, “I already secured scissors and hair dye from Terry. Sier, our faces are already so similar, hair tweaks are going to make us much more difficult to tell apart at a glance. Nobody’s going to be expecting their estranged daughter of fourteen years to come crawling back home pretending to be their current, present live-in daughter!”

An unexpected bead of excitement begins to pulse in my gut. I tromp farther up the trail.

Jamie catches me again, walking at my side. “Doesn’t it sound like a great way to bond? Take a few days, freak out the guardians, see how the other sister lives, confront some emotional trauma, come back together for hangs?”

It does.

It would be nice to meet Dad by myself rather than alongside the daughter he already knows.

“Really, what do we have to lose?” Jamie nudges.

The answer hits harder than I’d like.

Nothing. I literally have nothing to lose.

“I wrote up a whole detailed outline for you!”

My eyes snap to Jamie’s. She smiles triumphantly. “I knew you’d love an outline. Gimme a sec, lemme add something.”

My heart balloons a bit. How did she know I’d love an outline?

PARENT CONFRONTATION TRAP

BREAKDOWN

Objectives: Meet estranged parent, exact mild comedic revenge through gotcha switcheroo mischief, & confront/work through their parental failures & persuade them to make up for their misdeeds with sister-bonding road trip funds/blessing!