Page 127 of Gilt

“Since when did you knock?” she asks. And there it is: I am home. This is where I belong and who I belong with. She’s fresh-faced with her hair pulled back in a tight knot. It takes a minute for me to remember that it’s Friday night. “Sorry honey, but I’m on my way out. I have to get to the dressing rooms in 30 minutes.”

Such is the life of a Las Vegas showgirl on the weekend. She’ll spend the next couple of days fending off the advances of overly confident businessmen, and the scummy men in town for bachelor parties. They’ll pop in and out of Vegas, leaving nothing but a forgettable trail of debt following their two-night stint.

“I actually came to see Josie,” I tell her.

Her eyebrows quirk together. “She’s sick, and you know how she is when she’s sick.”

“I do know how my best friend acts when she’s sick.”

Hospitals were invented for people like Josie Deckard, who could turn every cough into consumption. Since I’ve known her, she’s had a habit of quarantining herself at the first sign of a sniffle. Back then, I was allowed to leave offerings of Disney Channel movies at her door but never permitted to enter. Even Marion had to talk her way inside. But today is a different story, and her hypochondria will have to take a backseat to me pulling the best friend card.

I hesitate. If I tell Marion my sad story, she’ll offer me the couch, which is already mine. But this isn’t a decision I can leave up to her. Not with things so weird between Josie and me.

“I’ll risk it,” I decide out loud. No matter how good it feels to be here, I’ll need Josie’s blessing if I’m going to reclaim my second home.

Marion kisses me on the cheek, and the familiar token of affection eases some of my anxiety. Her skin brushes mine. It’s soft and warm, like a mother’s cheek is supposed to be. I’ve based that belief entirely on the maternal surrogacy she’s shown me over the years. My own mother favors more of a European air kiss with both strangers and her progeny. The stark contrast between Josie’s mom and mine has never felt more evident than at this moment. “Lock the door behind me.”

I nod as a lump forms in my throat. This is where I should have been this summer, watching Netflix between shifts at Pawnography, my Dad’s shop, planning out every second of my upcoming senior year at Bell-Mère Prep and keeping Josie and her love life in check. Instead, I’d found myself cast without warning into the role of bad girl socialite. It’s time to shed that costume and come back to reality.

Turning the bolt on the front door, I take a deep breath and march down the short hallway to Josie’s room. I don’t bother to be timid with my knock. Dead silence greets me, and after an eternity, a muffled “Go away.”

This is going about as well as I expected.

Trying the knob, I’m not surprised that it’s locked, but since this house was built in the 70s, like so much of Vegas, all that stands between me and my reckoning with my best friend is a bobby pin. Slipping one out of my hair, I poke at the tiny hole next to the knob until I hit pay dirt. Homebuilders must have thought they were doing parents a favor. Give kids the illusion of autonomy by providing a lock on the door that a one-cent piece of metal can open.

“Ready or not,” I mutter to myself and throw open the door. Josie’s buried under her covers, a pillow over her head. Instantly, she sits bolt upright, her cotton fortress crumbling around her as she stares at me.

“I’m not feeling good,” she snaps.

I shrug.

“The world is in a state of economic crisis, a reality star is running for president, and we’re stuck in a town that still believes secondhand smoke is harmless. Nobody’s feeling good,” I retort. My hands find my hips, and I plant them there, ready for whatever she throws at me first, but my defensive posture does nothing to help me when she throws herself backward on the bed.

It takes a second for me to gauge the actual situation in the room. Not much has changed. Neat piles of discarded clothes litter the perimeter. Stacks of notebooks and magazines wait on the desk. She hasn’t redecorated or remodeled, or turned it into a craft room. Everything is as it should be, but by the time I take my second look around, I see a few things that are off. The clothing piles are bigger than they should be. The magazines on her desk are untouched, having been left unread for an entire summer meant to be spent poolside. And most disconcerting, the television isn’t on. Everyone from infancy to the infirm knows that the only modern perk of illness is Netflix.

“You aren’t sick,” I accuse her. “You’re hiding. We might as well get straight to the point. Did you run off when I showed up today?”

It’s not like Josie to turn tail and hide from a situation.

“Someone has a pretty high opinion of herself. I guess that’s naturally what happens when you’re dating a West.” She makes the name sound like a curse word, and I’d be lying if I said my hackles didn’t rise at the provocation. I circle her bed looking for clues.

“Yep, they initiated me into the secret society of the Housers,” I say, imbuing my words with the proper amount of disgust. Neither of us has ever been Housers. That accolade is reserved for Belle Mère’s elite, the children of Las Vegas’s upper, upper crust. They run the show while the rest of us hope for a spot in the audience. “My shit no longer stinks, and I know their special handshake.”

She only glares, so I continue my analysis.

“Oh my God, would you stop,” she finally says. “You’re right. I’m not dying, vulture, so if you’re waiting to consume my dead body, you can fly off somewhere else.”

“Cute, but that’s not why I’m here. I have a favor to ask you.”

“This is how you ask for a favor?”

Okay, so she might have a point. One of the few pieces of good advice my mother ever gave me was that you catch more flies with honey. I’ve never been very good at utilizing that strategy, probably because my mother never bothered to model the behavior herself. Plus, Josie and I are past the candy-coated platitudes of false friendship. She’s right, though. We need to fix this before I can come home again. So naturally, I start by attacking her. “What’s going on with you, Josie? You’ve been acting strangely for weeks. Now you’re hiding in bed pretending to be sick? Not just from me, but from your mom as well.”

There’s a silence that stretches the length of the bible, and then she slowly sits up. Now that she’s not glaring at me, I can see that her eyes are red-rimmed and bloodshot. Her lip trembles a little. Josie Deckard has been crying. The idea of a teenage girl sobbing into her pillow might not seem like an anomaly, but my best friend doesn’t fit that description. She never has.

“Where have you been?” she asks me quietly.

It’s not as simple a question as it appears to be, and it doesn’t deserve a curt response or a cutesy answer. Instead, I lay it all on the line for her. “Under investigation for murder, falling in love, wrecking my entire family, doing incredibly stupid shit, and realizing it’s been for nothing.”