The List

Asking permission makes her feel like a little girl, though she had always felt like an adult with her mother.

Because both her parents needed home offices for their work, Fern and Abby have to share a bedroom. It is set up to be a mirror image, the same furniture and accessories pinned to each wall. A bed, a desk, a dresser, a night table. But beyond the skeleton, that simple architecture and layout, each side is vastly different from the other.
The walls that cuddle Abby’s bed are taped over with photos, glossy magazine shots of models and boy actors, and fun trinkets from different adventures she’s had with her friends, like a strip of red paper tickets from the Skee-Ball machine at the pier arcade when she’d gone to visit Lisa at her family’s beach house. The floor is covered with her dirty clothes.
Fern’s side is the after shot of a cleaning demonstration. Everything is neat and arranged by right angles. Her clothes are hung up and put away. A tangle of academic ribbons hangs from the left bedpost. An inspirational poster of a beach at sunrise is taped to her ceiling. THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR HARD WORK, it says. There are only white pushpins stuck in her cork-board, pinning up a monthly calendar where assignments, tests, and debate competitions have been marked in perfect penmanship.

“Hey, Lisa.” Abby presses her back up against the wall, and the frames of family photos dig into her spine.