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She squeezes my hand. “Will you say a few words at the reception? Not like, a whole big, long speech or anything but …”

Her voice trails off, and I feel like the bottom has dropped out of my stomach. All the blood drains from my face, and my heart rate accelerates as the Worry Wheel goes into overdrive.

After years of therapy, I’ve learned to visualize my anxiety as a wheel, like on Wheel of Fortune, except instead of $500 or Mystery Vacation, the little wheel slices say things like This Interaction Will Haunt You Forever or Unbearable Shame or They’re Probably Mad at You. It’s always the same pattern: something happens, my heart rate spikes, the sweat starts to form, and the Wheel click-click-clicks away, spinning faster and faster until it lands on a slice. Then the signals shoot to my brain, and the thoughts come, too fast—horrible thoughts popping up like whack-a-moles, making it hard to breathe.

When I can picture it as a wheel, I can try to slow it down. I’ve tried to put good slices on the Worry Wheel, to counteract the bad ones. Dogs, for example. Rachel, for another.

But this request sets the Worry Wheel flying and of course it lands on I Will Be Bad at This and Ruin Everything. Because I will be so bad at this. And ruin everything.

She wants me to speak in front of people? At the wedding?

With everyone looking at me? There will be like five hundred people there.

What if I say the wrong thing? What if I don’t say anything at all, and my brain stops working, and there’s an endless excruciating silence before I melt into a puddle of shame?

What if I ruin Rachel’s wedding?

My throat has closed up so that only a thin wisp of air can reach my lungs. My scalp pulses. I’m fully sweating under my arms now. My fuzzy pink cardigan feels too constricting.

“Eloise,” Rachel says calmly, squeezing my hand, and suddenly I can breathe again. I look into my best friend’s warm face, feel her hand in mine, and bring myself back into my body. “Please. I need you. George and Mina will be there, but it’s not the same. They’re not you.” George and Mina were Rachel’s foster parents when she was in high school. “You’re my ride or die. You’re my rock.”

And I know that I have to say yes. Of course I will say yes. Because this is Rachel. She’s my rock, too.

“Yes,” I squeak.

“Ahhhhhh!” Rachel cries and throws her arms around me. She’s the only person who can hug me like this, and I feel her laughter against my chest, and then I’m laughing too, because Rachel’s happiness is infectious.

“Oh my god, thank you, El, thank you,” she says, releasing me. She bounces up and down on the couch gleefully.

“Is it really that exciting?” I ask, bemused.

“Oh, the fact that you just agreed to stand up in front of hundreds of people to support me? Yes, that’s exciting. And before you freak out, literally two sentences is fine. You do not need to make a long speech.”

My stomach twists. The wedding is already taking me away from the Pack for a week—the longest I’ve ever been away from home in my life. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about dog sitting. With the Colonel’s shots and Charleston’s diaper and Hazel’s attitude, they’re quite the special needs bunch. Rachel keeps saying I’ll love Mexico City, but I’m not so sure. I don’t believe there’s a place on earth better than New York.

“But,” she says, “you still need a date.”

My muscles freeze. “No,” I say. “Rachel, come on. A date? With who? I don’t know any men. I don’t date!”

“That’s a whole other conversation you know I would love to get into,” she says, standing. “Let me get out of this dress, I feel like I’m a sausage in a casing.” Her high pony swings back and forth as she scurries behind the curtain and closes it. “Listen,” she calls out as I down the rest of my flute of champagne. “This isn’t me being pushy for no reason, I swear. This is an Alvarez family thing.”

I don’t know much about Diego’s family except that they’re very wealthy, run a media company in Mexico, and Diego works at their offices here.

“What do you mean, a family thing?” I ask warily.

“So, there’s this whole story Diego told me. About a curse.”

I raise an eyebrow. “A curse.”

“Yes, and I can picture that face you’re making, and I know it sounds insane BUT.” Rachel pokes her head through one side of the curtain. “I think it might be real.”

I slip out of my cardigan, my body temperature still too high from my almost-panic attack, and fold my arms over my chest. “Okay …”

She grins and disappears back behind the curtain. “So,” she continues, “his family is, like, crazy superstitious. And most of the superstitions are whatever, like don’t walk under a ladder or broken mirrors causing bad luck. But, this one time, like forty years ago, Diego’s Tío Abuelo Alberto—”

“What’s a tío abuelo?” I ask.

“It’s his great uncle,” Rachel explains. Rachel is Latina, but she doesn’t speak Spanish. Well, she’s been learning since she started dating Diego. But she was raised by a white foster family, then a Black foster family. “Anyway, Tío Abuelo Alberto didn’t bring a date to this one family wedding. And as a result, he never married, and he had bad luck in love for the rest of his life.” That feels less like a curse and more like a very judgmental family getting up in Tío Abuelo Alberto’s business. “And,” Rachel adds, “the couple whose wedding it was ended up divorcing only two years later!”