Finn is good at writing warnings because she is good at anticipating the ridiculously stupid things people will do. This toaster? People will stick knives in it. This popcorn popper? They’ll leave the lid off. This slow cooker? Well, sure, why wouldn’t they put the electric base in the dishwasher? They’ll try to blow-dry their hair in the bathtub, they’ll think it’s totally fine to take the protective grate off the front of that oscillating fan. Finn is good at warnings because, when it comes to basic common sense, she expects the absolute least of people. And she expects the least of people because of growing up with bleeping Nicki.

—

The last time Finn saw anyone in her family was just after Nicki and Hamish’s wedding, which in itself was some kind of strange, unexplained scientific phenomenon, like the Kuiper Cliff or tetraneutrons. For one thing, they had only known each other for six weeks.

Nicki had been driving down Broadway in her beat-up Civic, talking on her cell phone and trying to apply a coat of lip gloss, when she ran a cyclist right off the road. Finn had been in the passenger seat, praying she would die a swift and merciful death.

“Watch where you’re fucking going!” Nicki shouted through the window as she drove away, while Finn watched the cyclist in the rear-view mirror as he scrambled around in his ridiculous neon spandex picking up his belongings, now thoroughly strewn across someone’s front yard.

Later, drunk at Scuttlebutts after a night of tequila shooters with some of her ugly friends from hairdressing school, Nicki made out on the dance floor with a gorgeous twenty-year-old kid with a Scottish accent and a bad case of road rash who she vaguely understood was spending part of his gap year cycling across Canada. Finn, roped into being DD once again, watched the whole thing unfold from their corner table, where she was nursing a rum and Coke and wondering, not for the first time, why all the guys liked Nicki so much. I have a master’s degree, Finn thought. I’ve been to Japan, for fuck’s sake.

“Did you get in a fight or something?” she heard Nicki ask the kid, legs wrapped around his waist, her fingers running along his scuffed-up jaw while the lights flashed and R. Kelly played in the background, some random girl puking on the dance floor behind them.

“Nah, some clatty bint with her head up her arse tried to drive me off the road on me bike.”

Nicki just stared at him. “I have no idea what you just said, but it sounded adorable.”