Free Sister Mischief by Laura Goode Page A

that up in the headphones’ style.”
     
    “Got it. Tessie, you got a melody?”
     
    “You know it.” She grins, splashing an arpeggio into a circular hook.
     
    “And then you come in with ‘Sisterhood!’” Rowie instructs me. “Then we all say ‘Lemme get / a hit of it,’ and then maybe I say ‘Equality!’ and everyone responds, then maybe the TC, rollin’ with my homegirls, Roe v. Wade, you know, some other sweet shit.”
     
    Rowie’s door flies open and thirteen-year-old Lakshmi appears.
     
    “What the hell? Get out of my room!” Rowie hurls her pen like a javelin at Lakshmi, which strikes me as somewhat vicious, but what do I know about siblings?
     
    “Can you cover for me?” Lakshmi asks.
     
    “While you do what, exactly?” Rowie snorts.
     
    “There’s a party,
obvs,
” Lakshmi says, rolling her eyes.
     
    “Will there be boys at the party?” asks Tess, bemused.
     
    Lakshmi looks at us like we’re all shit-for-brains. “Why would I be going if there weren’t going to be boys there?”
     
    “Excuse
me,
” Rowie says. “I will not cover for you so you can go do whatever you do with those skanky little Holy Hellions. Go to bed.”
     
    “Come
on,
” Lakshmi whines. “It’s only three streets over. You know how Dad gets as soon as he hears
party.
I’ll be back by eleven. It’s not even a
bad
party.”
     
    “No.” Rowie holds firm.
     
    “Damn, Ro.” Marcy whistles through her teeth. “You’re kind of a tightass.” Rowie looks at her wide-eyed, then relents.
     
    “Fine. Eleven. Don’t get hit by a car or anything. Bye.”
     
    Lakshmi leaps with delight, blows us all a kiss, and dashes out. We exchange looks.
     
    “That one’s gonna be
trouble,
” Tess says.
     
    “Don’t remind me.” Rowie shakes her head. “She’s on the Holyette Express. Let’s just talk about the song.”
     
    “I was digging what you had going on,” Marcy says as she pulls her computer out of her backpack and starts isolating more samples. “Carry on as I work on technical support.”
     
    “What if,” I start, thinking out loud, “at the last call and response before we get into the first verse, I say something funny like ‘Yo, Ro, you got some deodorant in that purse?’ and you say, ‘Yeah, Ferocious,’ and I just say, ‘Lemme get a hit of it’ by myself?”
     
    Tess giggles and her dimples indent her cheeks. “Your face is crazy, crazy-face.”
     
    “That should be a lyric in the chorus.” Rowie lights up, trying it.
“Your face is crazy, crazy-face.”
     
    We die laughing. “Lemme get a hit of it,” I choke.
     
    “Got it!” Marcy proclaims seconds later. “Listen to this.” She plays another sick polyrhythm for us.
     
    “Sick,” Rowie says.
     
    “Word.” Marcy is pleased with herself.
     
    I agree. “That shit is heavy.”
     
    Tess checks her watch. “Buttfudge, I gotta run.” She begins to get her purse together.
     
    “Sometimes I think your non-swears are nastier than actual swears,” I comment.
     
    “Where you going?” Marcy asks.
     
    “I gotta go to choir to make sure Mary Ashley hasn’t put out a hit on me-slash-us after our little showdown in the commons,” she says.
     
    “She did show up at my house pushing poinsettias,” I say. “With a mini-MashBaum.”
     
    “That girl is a Percocet dependency waiting to happen,” Marcy says.
     
    “Yeah, uh,” I stutter. “I meant to say earlier, sorry she, like, thinks you’re gay. I sort of feel like it’s my fault.”
     
    “Eff that,” Marcy says. “What comes out of that girl’s mouth is not what thinking sounds like.”
     
    “Why are you afraid of Mary Ashley?” I say to Tess. “I mean, why do you care what she thinks of you or your friends?”
     
    Tess sighs. “It’s all politics, girlfriend.”
     
    “Plus you feel guilty for breaking up with her,” Marcy says.
     
    “I always felt like she blamed
me
for that. Once I moved into the neighborhood, it’s like she