“Good morning to you, too.”
Valerie stood on my welcome mat, shaking with rage.
“You sued me?” Valerie held up her phone, the confirmation I’d sent her the previous night for my small claims filing on the screen. “Your own sister? Withdraw it. Right now. Family doesn’t do this.”
“No.”
She opened her mouth, shut it, and looked at me properly.
Then something changed in her face, and my skin prickled.
“You know what? Fine,” she said. “Go ahead. I know exactly how this looks. But you don’t know the whole story.”
“Have you lost your mind?!”
“Then tell me.”
“I’ll show you.” She pushed past me into my apartment, plopped on the couch, and pulled up a video. “That dress got ruined because I was doing something heroic.”
“Heroic… you?”
“Watch.”
She held out her phone.
“That dress got ruined because I was doing something heroic.”
The screen showed a pedestrian bridge at night.
A girl in a silver top, her friend Kayla, laughed and climbed halfway onto the railing, arms out like a bird.
Someone screamed. Kayla’s foot slipped.
She tipped backward over empty air.
And Valerie, in my emerald dress, flew. She caught Kayla by the waist and hauled her back.
Someone screamed.
Both of them crashed onto the concrete. The camera shook.
Wine from a dropped cup sprayed across the green fabric.
My breath caught. I’m telling you, my heart actually stopped for a second.
That girl could have died.
