study with a guy. What are the chances they’d accept me with an actual boyfriend?”
I look at them pleadingly, begging them to back me up. To assure me that I was right for sending Mat away.
They exchange another look, but this one is too nuanced for me to decipher.
“A year ago, I would’ve said you had a better chance of getting a hole in your head,” Bunny says slowly. “But the situation’s changed. Our parents have college-age daughters now, ones who are not only allowed but also encouraged—no, demanded—to date. Maybe they’ve adjusted their thinking with regards to you, as well.”
“What do you have to lose, Winnie?” Ari puts a hand on my leg to stop my bouncing knee. “It’s not a slam dunk, but why not at least have the conversation?”
The bed is suddenly too crowded. I crawl off the mattress, onto the carpet, away from my sisters. My thoughts are too big for my head, my emotions too full for my body.
That’s the million-baht question, as Mama likes to say. The one Mat couldn’t understand, the one I refused to answer. What do you have to lose, Winnie? What? What? What?
“They might not love me anymore,” I blurt.
Two sets of eyebrows raise. I might as well be holding a mirror between them. I watch as their eyes turn toward each other in slow motion and then face me once again.
“Why wouldn’t they love you?” Bunny asks carefully.
My mind bangs up against a solid wall. Beyond that barrier are the essential truths of my identity. The ones that I’ve always known but have never said out loud.
“It’s embarrassing,” I mutter.
“Winnie, this is us!” Ari cries. “If you can’t admit the reasons to your sisters, then whom can you tell?”
“Nobody,” I shout. “That’s the point. Nobody needs to know, ever.”
“And then what?” Bunny rises to her knees, as though preparing for battle. “You continue to lie here, shooting foam bullets against your ceiling, forever?”
I pace in the tiny space between my desk and dresser. It’s six feet, at the most. I’d kill for double digits. Think I’d died and been reincarnated for twenty feet. “You wouldn’t understand, either of you. You’ve always been so perfect.”
They both start to protest, and I hold up my hand, stopping them.
“For as long as I can remember, you two were…well, everything,” I say. “Smart, outgoing, talented, pretty, poised, accomplished. That list could go on for paragraphs, if not pages. Our parents had ridiculously high standards for you because they knew you could meet them. I have so many reasons to love and admire you both. In addition to the above, Ari, you’re so giving and selfless and kind. Bunny, you’re bold and daring and original.” I stop walking. My shoulders slump. “There aren’t any adjectives left for me.”
“It’s not a zero-sum game.” Bunny scoots to the edge of the bed. She lifts a hand, as though to touch me, but doesn’t, in case I crumple. “A quality’s not taken off the market just because we happen to have it.”
“Try to see it from my perspective. At best, I would be a carbon copy of one of you. A flimsy facsimile. One that’s similar to but not as good as the original. What would be the point?”
I don’t wait for an answer, because there is no good answer. “I had one thing going for me. One thing that you two weren’t amazing at. Listening. Being the good Thai girl. You’re loud and smart and opinionated. You spoke up when you disagreed. You rebelled.”
I take a breath. My sisters’ eyes are as wide as lotus buds, but they don’t contradict me.
“And so I figured out a long time ago that the only way for me to earn our parents’ love is to be the girl who never rebelled. The one who obeyed. At all costs.” I look down. I don’t want to say the next part. Don’t want to admit, even to my sisters, how pathetic I am.
But I’m already most of the way there. So I close my eyes, and I push out those final words. “If I give that up, what do I have left?”
Soft hands touch my elbows. I’m steered onto the bed so that I’m sitting between my sisters. Ari picks up one hand, intertwines it with her own, and Bunny picks up the other.
“Can I say something?” Ari asks.
I laugh without much amusement. “You can say whatever you want, whenever you want. You always do.” I’m not bitter at the way