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“Hmong was my first language,” Gwen said. “It was so hard in school.”

“I did okay,” Briana said, shrugging. “I think it was harder for my mom. She didn’t have any family here or anything.” Briana turned to Walter and nodded at his shirt. “Do you work with that rescue?”

“I own it.”

Briana beamed. “That’s awesome.”

“Yeah, we got almost thirty dogs right now. Springtime’s the worst.”

“I’ll make a donation. What’s your Venmo?” Briana asked, pulling out her phone.

Walter was directing her to the rescue’s website when Jafar started weaving through our feet under the table. He was talking to himself, reciting every bad word he knew, interlaced with the word Bieber. This was particularly horrifying, since, according to my sisters, that was my parents’ safe word. I prayed to God Briana didn’t ask about it.

You could feel him climbing over your toes. I knew exactly when he got to Briana’s because she made a little surprised squeak noise next to me.

“So do you have any baby pictures of Jacob?” Briana asked, trying visibly not to react to the parrot on her foot.

“Oh, lots,” Mom said, serving Grandpa. “I’ll show you after dinner. Wait until you see his third-grade Halloween costume. So cute.”

I internally groaned.

Briana was trying to seem interested in me, which I was certain she wasn’t. I felt bad she had to sit through this. I was not a good-looking kid. I was awkward and had acne. I didn’t hit puberty until I was fifteen.

I bet Briana was one of the cool kids in school. I couldn’t picture her ever having an awkward phase. She probably ruled her high school the same way she ruled the ER. Popular and well liked. Girls like that never talked to me—or maybe I was too afraid to talk to them.

Not much had changed.

“So what was Jacob like when he was young?” Briana asked Mom, twisting her pasta around her fork.

“Oh, he was such a good little boy,” Mom said, putting salad on her plate. “So self-contained, even at a young age. He could play by himself for hours. He loved to be held—a very sensitive child. Couldn’t stand tags on his clothes or wet hair. Do you remember that, Greg? He couldn’t wear anything scratchy.”

Dad nodded. “Yeah. I had to buy the underwear that didn’t have a label in it, or he’d take them off and run around naked.”

Jewel laughed. “I just remember him pooping his pants at school.”

“Jewel!” Jill snapped.

I shot Jewel a look.

She rolled her eyes. “What? It was like twenty-five years ago. Get over it.”

“It only happened like eight or nine times,” Jill said. “You make it sound like he did it every day.”

“You guys…” Jane said, looking embarrassed for me.

I flushed and Briana took an extra-long swallow of wine next to me.

“He had a nervous stomach,” Mom explained. “He was always in the nurse’s office, poor thing. It made him a little hard to potty train. But such a sweet boy, truly.”

Jafar shrieked “BIEBER!!!” from under the table at the top of his lungs, and everyone started tittering.

Between this, tagless underwear, and the grade-school diarrhea story, I wanted to curl up and vanish. It was like my family had a competition going for who could embarrass me the most, and even the parrot was in on it.

Lieutenant Dan got up from where he was lying next to me and put his head in my lap. But when I went to pet him, Briana’s hand came down on top of mine and gave me a reassuring squeeze. My heart jumped the way it had in Dad’s taxidermy room.

I glanced at her, and she smiled gently at me.

“You know,” she said, turning back to the table. “I read this study that said highly intelligent children are harder to potty train.”