GoodGod. She’s already opening a candy shop too?
“I could, like, open an organic vegetable shop on the other half of whatever building she rents,” I offer.
“Oh, honey, being vegan issoyesterday,” Lola says. “You’d getsomany more endorsement deals if you’d back the newall food can be good foodmovement.”
“Yes, but if we don’t have our principles with our platforms, what do we have?”
I have zero principles. Possibly negative principles. Secrets, though? Those I have in spades.
I turn to Gigi before she can expose any that she happens to be aware of, which is probably all of them, given what I already know she knows. Although, considering some of the things I’ve gotten away with since moving here, maybe shedoesn’tknow all. “So if we’re expanding the save-your-souls project, will Uncle George and his family be joining us next?”
It’s like painting a giant red bull’s-eye on myself.
And I don’t care.
I’m so tired of this. No amount of Gigi pretending that she’s pleased with our progress or that she’s not inviting Lola here to make memoremiserable or that she’s kinder than she was two months ago will convince me that she’s not the devil.
“Legit question,” Carter pipes up, and I find myself in the increasingly more common but still rare position of wanting to hug my brother. “He’s been to prison. Best we know, Lola hasn’t.”
Uncle George is, in fact, stillinprison. Gigi hasn’t talked to or about her other son since he was convicted of tax fraud.
“I did thisso fascinatingtour of a prison one time, and I accidentally got locked inthe coldestjail cell, and, like, everyone forgot about me except my cameraman for, like,days,” Lola offers, which is remarkably kind of her, considering there are probably beings in other solar systems who can tell Gigi’s about to blow.
“Wasn’t how that episode went,” my father mutters.
“Octavia, God is watching you as well,” Gigi says, for once not taking the bait about Uncle George, which is just as terrifying as anything else since we got here. “And I’m sure God’s disappointed that you’ve wasted all of the gifts and resources you’ve been given and continuously snipe at your family instead of trying to fit in.”
Shut up, Tavi. Shut up, shut up, shut up.“But being a family is, like, so hard when you’ve never had a good example.”
That self-talk is clearly working well for me.
It’s like Iwantto ruin all my dreams.
Or possibly I’m just extra frustrated because Gigi keeps changing the rules.
Your job is to sweep and mop and paint and clean this school, Octavia. That’s how you’ll improve your soul.
No, Octavia, your job is to get involved with community activities and help the snowshoe baseball team win.
Octavia, didn’t you hear me? I said your job is to get along better with your parents.
And now, two months in, when she’s changed my “job” seven bazillion times, it’syour job is to train the people of Tickled Pink to promote the town themselves, but since you didn’t decide to do it on your own, I’ve brought Lola Minelli in for added torture.
She put so much effort into making Phoebe’s life a living hell the first month or so that we were here that she forgot about the rest of us. And now that Phoebe told her off and moved out of the school to live with Teague, and then my mother left, too, my grandmother has more time to focus on her next victim.
Gigi is finally losing her cool. You can tell because it’s starting to smell like sulfur and vengeance. “If you don’t want to be here, Octavia, you know where the door is. And you know the consequences.”
Not for the first time this summer, my gut tightens.
But unlike every other threat Gigi has made, this one comes with a look shifted to Lola. “God likes good work to be rewarded.”
I knew it.
I need a new business plan for the farm and our chocolates, and I need it yesterday.
“God doesn’t like bullies,” Dad says, louder. “Mother, none of us will ever meet your criteria for ‘being better people’ if you expect it to mean that we kowtow to your ridiculousness for months on end for no reason other than to make yourself think you’re right.”
Gigi’s death glare switches to my father. “Excuse you?”
