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listening.”
    â€œI think we need to pray about our attitudes first.” Morgan bows her head and recites a prayer for me and my attitude.
    She’d have an attitude, too, if she was living on a twin-sized futon with a hand-me-down silkscreen partition defining her bedroom. She’d have an attitude if she wanted to keep doing a job so badly that she was willing to work for the Wicked Witch of the West to do it, to abandon all pride and decent pay. These silent surrenders cause attitude to build up like a water balloon hooked up to a spigot.
    â€œDo you have anything to add?” Poppy asks at the end of prayer.
    â€œDo I ever!” I say, but quickly shut up as I see them both with their hands clasped in prayer. It wasn’t the kind of thing I could add during prayer time. Apparently, the attitude request hasn’t kicked in with God yet.
    Poppy clears her throat. “Good, we should get started with our facials and come back with some solutions for you, Lilly. The natural oils will allow our brains to focus on solutions.”
    â€œSolutions? My life has solutions? Other than the kind with the acrid smell that calm my hair, you mean? A solution where I don’t look like Howard Stern?”
    â€œQuit your whining. You’re burdening me.” Poppy breathes in deeply through her nose. Now I know she sounds like a complete Californian, but Poppy really just likes to bug us with her energy talk. She knows we’re only so open to the idea of light as energy, God’s first building particle, being the healing life source of it all. So she loves to bring it up. Constantly. Just to challenge our grounded and conservative ways. She’s also always bringing us some new elixir that has the consistency of yogurt and is the sickly green color of Shrek.
    â€œI’m entitled to a bit of whining. Tell me something in my life that’s actually on target.” They both stay silent. “See? You got nothing. Oh yeah, I deserve to whine. Bring out the pickles.”
    â€œPickles? Lilly, you didn’t bring the pickles!” Morgan says.
    I clutch my Sara Lang bag close to my heart.
    â€œYou’ll get a yeast imbalance,” Poppy says, reaching out for the bag, which I yank closer. “The human body is made up of a careful balance of good yeast and bad—”
    â€œStop it,” I say calmly, not relinquishing my grip. “Vinegar is a preservative. How do you know that my body won’t have a half-life of forty billion years from my pickle fetish? Maybe I’ll outlast you both. Preserved like well-oiled wood.”
    â€œGross,” Morgan says.
    Poppy grabs the handles and darn if that Pilates isn’t making her tough. She wrestles it free. “You’re not eating this poison.” She gasps as she looks inside the bag. “And diet soda? You’ve got to be kidding me. Toxic, Lilly! It’s important for your future children. So important, in fact—” She rushes through the bathroom door with my coveted bag and locks it with a loud click.
    I bang on it. “Open this door. Right now, Poppy! I mean it!” I pound again, and I can hear her in there fiddling. Then my ears pick up a sudden swoosh of liquid. “I want my pickles! You better not have done anything to—”
    In another moment, she calmly opens the door and exhales with yoga intensity.
    â€œWhat did you do?” I ask. “Ugh!” We’re overcome with the sour vinegar smell emanating from the bathroom. “You did not ruin my pickles!”
    â€œI’m going to prove to you what you’re doing to the lining of your stomach. Just a little science experiment worthy of my Stanford biology undergrad work.”
    I gasp as I see the sink filled with my pickles. Covered in a hazy brown sauce of diet soda. I have to admit, it is a revolting sight. “What did you do?”
    â€œBy the end of the weekend, those pickles will be a ghastly color,