Page 14 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

She peeled back one of the flaps and tipped the box toward the camera. Mandy squinted at the screen. The box appeared to be full of ball caps. As far as she could tell, the hats were perfectly white, with no adornment except an index card clipped to each one’s brim.

Imogen dropped the smile from her face. “Plain white hats? This is giving design-free, not carefree.”

“I wouldn’t rush to judgment,” Charlie said. He stepped forward, no longer afraid of the theoretical monster inside the box. “There are names on the notecards. They’re personalized.”

“They’re blank.”

He took out the hats, calling the names one by one. Stefan Eriksen. Imogen Duvray. Dr. Fiona Moon. Devon Sauvage.

Despite the uniformity of the caps, each person stepped forward with proprietary eagerness, as if the fact that their name was attached to a hat meant that it belonged to them and them alone. Some, like Stefan and PK, immediately secured their hats over their sweaty hair. Imogen started snapping selfies, spinning to find the best light. Lucinda and Fiona seemed underwhelmed, claiming theirs without interest, as if they’d just as soon let the hats float down the Colorado as put them on.

Mandy felt a thrill when her name was called. She clutched her hat and examined it, searching for evidence that Babette Sauvage had singled her out for something special. There was a faint medicinal smell to the brim, and something unusual about the texture of the fabric above it, an aberration in the weave of the crown that she could feel but not see.

“Do you feel that?” she whispered to Liv.

“What?”

Mandy traced a finger over the crown, trying to discern the difference.

“Again, I apologize for my sister’s delay.” Charlie’s eyes flicked down at the last remaining hat in the box, presumably Babette’s, and he seemed to lose his train of thought.

Devon deftly stepped forward and took the box from his hand. She turned to Marc, who was linking the mules together in a long rope chain. “When you make contact with our sister, will you give her this?”

The guide nodded and took the box. “I’m heading up to the rim now. I’ll call Big Pete tonight from the office if she checks in.”

“When she checks in,” Charlie corrected him. The confidence in his voice had returned. Mandy was surprised how efficiently he and Devon had recast their sister’s absence from disappearance to delay. The former was cause for concern; the latter, a simple administrative error.

“Most of you only know me as the company’s CFO,” Charlie continued, “the name on corporate tax filings. That’s how Babette works. My sisters are the geniuses. I just push paper around.”

“Geniuses?” Liv mouthed at Mandy.

Mandy nodded and donned her hat. When she pulled it down over her forehead, she felt a slight cooling sensation against her skin.

Imogen raised her hand. “It’s, like, tingling me?”

“Tea tree crystals,” Charlie said. “Woven into the inner band in a frozen state. As they melt, they emit a cooling sensation that harmonizes with your alpha waves.”

“Is this part of the CareFree line?” Imogen asked.

Devon stepped forward. “No. You’ll experience that later.”

“This is just a token of our appreciation,” Charlie said. “If you find the effect wearing off, dunk your hat in the river, and the crystals will freeze again.”

“Don’t dunk it,” PK said to Imogen. “This river’s disgusting. That hat has to stay white for your footage.”

Lucinda scoffed. “Nothing stays white in a place like this.”

When Mandy removed her cap, she could already see where whorls of dust from her fingertips had singed the rim red.

“Please,” Charlie said. “The point of this trip is to celebrate our CareFree line. We want you to enjoy the river. To be your fullest, brightest self. To—”

“What is that?” PK blurted out. He was staring at Liv.

“Um.” Liv’s face was streaked with white goo. “Sunscreen?”

“Let me see it.” PK plucked the cheap orange bottle from her hand and squinted at the back. “Avobenzone. Cinoxate. Octocrylene.”

He dropped the offensive bottle by Charlie’s feet, as if it were radioactive. Charlie, too, was frowning. “My dear. Shall we sign you up for chemotherapy right now? PK, can you get the—”