Her words were playful, but I took them as a dare. Okay, fine, I told myself. I accept.

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Franny

Thoughts?

A selfie of Lola in a short black dress and studded, heeled ankle boots popped up immediately after her text. Her bleached-blond hair was slicked back, her lips painted an inviting bright red. A rock star, this one.

Cleo responded with a heart-eyes emoji before I could finish typing my reply, which was a short and pointed YESSSSSS. And I meant it. Lola looked like a sex bomb. But she always looked like a sex bomb, even when she was on my couch in her NYU sweats and streaky day-old mascara, inhaling a Gatorade and an egg-and-cheese on a bagel after a raging night out.

Whenever we teased her—part in awe, part out of jealousy—that she looked sexy no matter what she was doing or wearing, she’d just offer, “I’m a Scorpio,” with a shrug. Cleo had helped her figure out her astrological chart a couple of years ago, and now that was her excuse for everything. Overdramatic? Scorpio. Quick to flip a finger at taxis that run through yellow lights? Scorpio. Fiercest, most loyal friend on the planet, who also holds a grudge like nobody’s business? Scorpio, baby.

So yeah, it was no surprise that she would stun on a first date.

Do I also look .4% French? According to my DNA test results I’m tres chic.

We’d all spit into the little DNA containers at brunch after my NYN appearance, and Lola had sent them off in the mail. It was shockingly easy; a few weeks after getting your sample, the company emails you back with DNA results, health predispositions, and any connections to relatives that may be in their database. Cleo’s results had come in a few days ago, and as expected, she was all Korean. Lola had just gotten an email and was apparently the tiniest bit French and now milking it for all that it was worth.

I still haven’t gotten anything, I wrote back.

Did you tell your mom yet? asked Cleo.

No. I’m operating on a need to know basis with her.

It was only fair, honestly. That was how my mom had always approached the info she gave me, especially when it came to the identity of my birth father. “I met him at a bonfire party, down at the beach,” she’d said when I first pressed her about it, around the age of twelve. “He was visiting family, from out of town. We only knew each other a week.”

She’d raised me on her own until she met my stepdad, Jim, at work when I was four. By the time I was six, he was a permanent fixture in my life, and they were married when I was eight. Jim was quiet and dependable, like a lighthouse, and he completed our little family unit.