Free My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters by Sydney Salter

lesson?
    In the café, people wearing business-type clothes sat around little black tables. A couple of guys in suits came over to talk to Tyler and Megan. Law clerks.
    I glanced around the room at the groups of ladies sharing a single piece of cake and sipping coffees. Several people drank cocktails; we had to be the youngest people in there. I sat up straight, attempting to look older, while glancing at Tyler's and Megan's clothes. Tyler wore a silky yellow shirt and jeans. Very mature. Megan looked every bit as good in her sparkly blouse and short black skirt. I looked like a child compared to them, plus I could tell my hair had blown around all crazy in the Jeep. I got up to run to the bathroom while Megan told the lawyers about the community cinema club's best-of-Britain review.
    I tried not to watch myself in the bathroom mirror as I rebraided my hair. Fluorescent lighting = not good. My nose looked giant and red and blotchy; my whole face was splotchy. Why hadn't I noticed all those blackheads on my forehead? Why hadn't I worn more makeup? Why had I worn this stupid shirt? I looked like a backpacking-through-Europe cliché. I turned around to check out the rear view and noticed a smashed M&M on my butt. Finn's idiot friends!
    By the time I got back to the table, our waitress had set chocolate martinis in front of Megan and Tyler. She never drank! And had plenty to say about people who
did.
    "What would you like, sweetie?" The waitress couldn't have been more than five or six years older than me.
    "I'll have the same." I tried to sound confident.
    "How old are you?" She narrowed her eyes. "Do you have valid ID?"
    "On second thought, I'll have an ice water." I shrugged my shoulders. "Dieting."
    "Girls," Tyler said. "My, uh,
little sister
is always on a diet, even though she's cute as a bug." He reached over and pinched my cheek. "Mom's going to send you back to the clinic if you keep this up."
    I stomped my foot under the table, accidentally crushing Tyler's shoe, but his smile didn't waver. "We'll also have an order of chocolate fondue and a slice of your famous peanut butter chocolate cake." He flipped my foot off his and pressed his foot on top of mine, not too hard, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't flirting.
    I turned the little menu cube over in my hands, not reading the words. I didn't look up when Tyler lifted his foot off.
    He glared at me. "What was that about, Stompy?"
    Not answering, I looked down at my beautifully blurred reflection in the shiny black table.
    "Toast." He and Megan clinked their glasses.
    "Sorry, Jory." Megan leaned over to me. "But you don't look old enough, especially the way you're dressed. Plus, the law clerks vouched for us."
    "What happened to making good choices?"
    "Relax, Jory." Megan tipped her glass to her lips. "Nothing wrong with one little après-work drink."
    "Isn't it illegal?" Ignored. Just like Hannah's phone calls and text messages.
    "We're going to owe them some bigtime copy jobs." Tyler leaned back and sipped his chocolatini. "It
is
a nice way to end the workday."
    The waitress clunked my ice water on the table while smiling at Tyler. "So you're a lawyer?" she asked.
    "Guilty." Tyler flashed his alluring smile. Everyone laughed, except me.
    "That must be great, to have a lawyer in the family," she said to me.
    "Oh, yeah. Great."
    Did she
honestly
think I'm his little sister? I had to look a teensy bit like a girlfriend. After all, people don't even think I'm my own brother's real sister, and Tyler's even better looking than Finn—to me at least. I pushed my little square cocktail napkin around the table in a circle while Tyler and Megan gossiped about the different lawyers in their office.
No, he left his wife for a law clerk two summers ago. Major scandal. He was going to run for office, but dropped out of the race. Don't dip your pen in the office ink. Ha. Ha. Ha. So-and-So has a thing for murderers. She supposedly flirts with them before putting them on the witness