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“Not with latkes,” Shira said, though she hoped nobody would ask her to explain why.

“Whatever,” said Talia. “Make sure you have kimchi and goat cheese. That’s the real GOAT. Anyway, did you hear back from Leo yet?”

“I did,” said Shira. She took a deep breath. “He’s coming.”

“Of course he is,” said Talia, which was extremely irritating. “How are you feeling about it?”

“Good, I guess,” Shira said. She picked up a dreidel garland and considered it. It was cute, but she already had about fifteen dreidel garlands at home. Still, this one was shiny. “Can we not talk about it?”

“Why not?” asked Talia.

Shira ground her teeth together in frustration and threw the dreidel garland into her cart. Now she’d have sixteen dreidel garlands. That was eight times two, which was good Hanukkah luck, right? “Because I’m stressed-out about it and I want to think about it as little as possible. What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing too much,” said Talia. “Oh, Anjali and I got engaged. That’s why I was calling, actually.”

Shira shrieked out loud in the aisle of the dollar store, but it was fine because nobody could probably even hear her over the row of plastic singing Santas some kid had just set off. “What? You’re engaged? Oh my god, mazel tov!”

“Thanks,” Talia said casually. “Anyway, be my maid of honor? I wanted to go to city hall and elope, but Anjali wants to do a big Jewish-slash-Indian wedding, so turns out I need one of those.”

“I’ll try to ignore that you didn’t ask me the proper way with a box and a bottle of wine with a handwritten note,” Shira said. “Ideally with calligraphy.”

“You don’t even like wine.”

“So?”

“So why would I give you wine?”

Shira sighed. Her sister was really the worst. “I would be honored to be your maid of honor. Unless…” The latter part of the wedding detail hit her. “I’ve seen videos of all the bridesmaids doing Bollywood dances at Indian weddings. I’m not going to have to do that, am I?”

“Oh man, Anjali just got home with the groceries,” Talia said brightly. “I gotta go. Bye!”

Shira sighed again as her sister hung up. The worst.

The shock began to wear off as Shira wandered through the aisles of the store, turning into a mixture of delight for her sister and also, a little embarrassingly, surprise for herself. She’d never imagined her younger sister getting engaged and even married while Shira herself was still single. It wasn’t like it was a bad thing—it was…well, it just felt weird. Thank goodness they weren’t back in the day of Leah and Rachel.

It was great, though, because officially being Talia’s maid of honor gave Shira one more thing to obsess over that wasn’t what Leo would think of her art. So she spent the next week creating list after list not only for the Hanukkah party but for Talia’s bridal shower, bachelorette party, and wedding prep. She didn’t share any of them with Talia yet because Talia would think she was insane for preparing a list of games for the bridal shower when Talia probably didn’t even want to have a bridal shower (Shira would convince her). But it kept her busy, so the day of the Hanukkah party rolled around to only a few frazzled nerves.

She gathered her parents in the kitchen that morning to give them their instructions. “Mom, you’re on drinks duty,” she said. “I have a list of suggestions here, but if you see something’s on sale and you think it’s an equivalent option, I hereby give you permission to wield your coupons.”

Her mom rubbed her hands together gleefully as she took the list. “Just wait till you see how much money I save.”

“Dad, you’re on deli duty, and it would also help if you could swing by the—”

“I can hit up the bakery.”

Shira almost jumped out of her skin at the sound of her sister’s voice. She turned to see Talia sitting on the counter like a kid, legs swinging at the knees. Talia grinned, probably at Shira’s expression of shock. “Talia, when did you get here?”

“I’ve been here the whole time,” Talia said. “And by the whole time, I mean the twist is that I’m actually a ghost.”

“If you were a ghost, we wouldn’t be able to hear you,” said her dad.

Talia shuddered. “God, what a punishment for all of you.” She leaped off the counter, landing neatly on her feet. “Anyway, I’ll go to the bakery and pick up the doughnuts. I owe you after not doing it that one year and turning you into a common thief.”

“What?” said her mom and dad in unison, turning to pin Shira with their eyes.

“Nothing,” Shira said hastily. “Thanks, Talia. Go, everybody! Off with you!” She made shooing motions with her hands, pausing only to let her mom run off to pee, until her family had gone. Then it was time to decorate: She hung garlands; dragged tables up from the basement and cloaked them in paper tablecloths; arranged chairs in a maze that would allow the maximum number of people to sit down while also making space for them to move.

And then, because she’d left it long enough: the gallery. She removed all the framed photos from the hallway, where school pictures and graduation photos of her and Talia usually hung in chronological order—anybody who used the hall bath could see their college and high school graduation photos beaming, but only those invited down the hall to the bedrooms could see their gap-toothed preschool photos—and hammered some stronger nails in the spaces where the pictures usually hung so that her parents wouldn’t see the new holes for years, by which time it would be too late to yell at her about them.