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chapter one

In the calm before the storm—in this case, the blessed quiet before the bridal suite is overrun by the wedding party—my twin sister stares critically down at a freshly painted shell-pink fingernail and says, “I bet you’re relieved I’lances across the rooenerously “I bet you expected me to be impossible”

It is a statement so perfectly dropped in the mo look with our cousin Julieta, who is repainting Ami’s toes (“It should be esture to the bodice of Aer and on which I a that every sequin is lying flat “Define ‘bridezilla’?”

Alare She’s in her fancy wedding-bra contraption and ski nausea—her dudebro fiancé, Dane, will positively destroy later Her makeup is tastefully done and her fluffy veil is pinned in her upswept dark hair It’s jarring Iwe’re wholly different people inside, but this is so entirely unfamiliar: Ami is the portrait of a bride Her life suddenly bears no resemblance to mine whatsoever

“I’ues “I’m a perfectionist”

I findit to catch her attention It’s a piece of heavy, scalloped-edged pink stationery that has Olive’s To-Do List—Wedding Day Edition written in raphy at the top, and which includes seventy-four (seventy-four) ite froown to Reements

Each brides as my maid-of-honor one but equally fancy and handwritten Ami even drew checkboxes so that we can record when each task is completed

“Soht call these lists a little overboard,” I say

“Those are the sa for a wedding that is half as nice”

“Right They hire a wedding planner to—” I refer to my list “?‘Wipe condensation off the chairs a half hour before the ceremony’?”

Aernails to dry theh “Fools”

You knohat they say about self-fulfilling prophecies, I’ makes you feel like a winner, and then so It has to be true, because A She tossed a ticket into a raffle bowl at a street fair and walked home with a set of community theater tickets She slid her business card into a cup at The Happy Gnome and won free happy hour beers for a year She’s won makeovers, books, movie premiere tickets, a laer, endless T-shirts, and even a car Of course, she also won the stationery and calligraphy set she used to write the to-do lists

All this to say, as soon as Dane Thoe to spare our parents the cost of the wedding As it happens, Mom and Dad could afford to contribute—they are messy in etting out of paying for anything is the best kind of gaht of contests as a coed Ami viewed them as the Olympics

No one in our enormous family was surprised, then, when she successfully planned a posh wedding with two hundred guests, a seafood buffet, a chocolate fountain, and oblet—and has shelled out, at most, a thousand dollars My sister works her ass off to find the best proiveaway she can find, and even has an email address that is aptly named AmeliaT

[email protected]

Finally convinced there are no er from where it’s suspended froown to her

But as soon as I touch it, my sister and cousin scream in unison, and Ami holds up her hands, her matte pink lips in a horrified O

“Leave it there, Ollie,” she says “I’ll come over With your luck, you’ll trip and fall into the candle and it’ll go up in a ball of sequin-scented flames”

I don’t argue: she isn’t wrong

• • •

WHEREAS AMI IS A FOUR-LEAF clover, I have always been unlucky I don’t say that to be theatrical or because I only seele Olive Torres, Minnesota, and you’ll find dozens of articles and comment threads dedicated to the tiot stuck I was six, and when the stuffed animal I’d captured didn’t drop directly into the chute, I decided to go in and get it

I spent two hours inside the machine, surrounded by a lot of hard, coarse-furred, cheh the handprint-s an array of frantic faces shouting muffled orders to each other Apparently, when the owners of the arcade explained to aet inside, the Edina fire department was called, followed quickly by a local news creho diligently documented my extraction