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Wilmer—
garnered comparisons to Charlie Kaufman and Nora Ephron.
    “Fuck her,” Liv whispered. “
Trust Teddy Wilmer
was based on my life,” she said loudly. “Not Ru’s!” The comparisons to Kaufman and Ephron were partially
Liv’s
comparisons. But did anyone ever point that out? No.
    Liv didn’t read novels on the grounds that they weren’t true. She made no exception for her sister’s novel, even the thievery of Liv’s own teen romance. Teddy Wilmer was an obvious knockoff of Teddy Whistler, Liv’s first love—the rebellious (and possibly crazy) young man who ended up in a juvenile detention center and, later, a private mental institution, and a relationship that led directly to Liv’s own stint in boarding school, a sentence of its own.
    After she’d read the review of the novel in
The New York Times Book Review
three years earlier, Liv had left a message on Ru’s voice mail. “Why don’t you write about your own life, Ru? Or is that you’ve never really lived one? You’ve never grown up, Ru. You never will.”
    Ru never responded. They never spoke of it.
    Liv had watched
Trust Teddy Wilmer
while drunk, on the grounds that she didn’t want to see something indecently private about herself while vulnerably sober.
    She once confided to Esme that it was an awful thing to have a writer for a sister.
    Esme said, “Oh, no. I wish she were a memoirist! Rip away the bullshit of fiction and really tell it. Memoirists are the only writers with any real guts.” Liv was relieved. At least Ru wasn’t a
memoirist
! That was something to be happy about.
    Liv quickly scanned Ru’s fiancé’s short biography. She sifted through her mental list. Check, check, check…She looked Clifford Wells in the eyes, and for a split second she thought,
He’s ripe for the picking.
    She stiffened. She was a monster. She’d actually considered stealing her sister’s fiancé.
    And then, worse, she rationalized it. Again, the processing was so fast she had no control over it.
If the marriage is going to work, he won’t be so easily lured away. If he is, I’m doing Ru a favor. Some marriages are defunct on the molecular level.
    And then she rationalized it personally
. Ru stole from me to turn a profit. I can steal from her.
    “I don’t know,” Liv said, in response to no specific question.
    “You’re worrying me, Ex Mrs. P.”
    “I just don’t know,” Liv said again.
    She stood up and walked to the bank of windows. It was pouring outside. She thought for a second of the windows in her childhood home on Asbury Avenue, the third floor. Esme and Ru probably ignored what their mother had taught them during that one weird summer storm, but not Liv. In moments when she was completely alone, she’d spent hours at those windows, classical music in the background, conducting spinning seagulls, cars trolling for parking spaces, dogs bouncing on leashes, quick clouds against blue sky.
    And when she got the chance to run her own life? She could make choices, set goals, and attain them. And now? What about now?
    She opened one of the windows and stuck her upper body into the wind and rain. She then lifted one hand, as if holding one of the conductor’s batons her mother had given them.
    “Don’t do this!” Mrs. Kwok shouted.
    “What’s the name of a Chinese monster?” she shouted over the storm, waving her imaginary baton. “Tell me the Chinese monster that scared the crap out of you as a child!” Liv was screaming. She could hear the shrill noise of her own voice in her ears but it seemed disconnected. It belonged to someone else who was screaming the things that Liv wanted her to scream.
    Mrs. Kwok pulled on her arm. “Come back in!”
    “A Chinese monster!” Liv shouted again, still trying to conduct. “Which one really scared you, Mrs. Kwok?”
    Lightning streaked across the sky. Liv froze, and then her body shuddered.
    “Don’t jump!” Mrs. Kwok shouted.
    Liv hadn’t been planning on jumping, but then