Sam and Ilsa's Last Hurrah. Rachel Cohn

in Boston. A whole new city, new adventure and a prestigious music school too! But no. My brother opted to go to Hunter College next year, to stay close to home, to play it safe.

      Even though I think he should have opted for Berklee, Sam really, truly wants Juilliard, so I want it for him too. Next year, he’ll reapply. Sam should have gotten in. The solution: Sam needs to drop out of his safety zone and go wild for the wrong guy. He needs a recess from the humdrum stream of predictable boys he dates. My brother’s heart needs the distraction of infatuation with someone out of his league. To be clear, Freddie’s not in a better league than Sam (no one’s in a better league than my brother). It’s just a different one. I’ll call it the League of Ridiculously Beautiful Guys Who Aren’t That Bright and Who Will Give My Brother Exactly the Fun Distraction He Needs Before Dumping My Brother When They Realize My Brother Is Too Smart and Good for Them. My brother needs a pointless, pleasurable fling with someone gorgeous and easy.

      When Freddie inevitably dumps Sam, the pain will be sharp, but quick. Pain is what makes all the greats great. Known fact. So if pain is what it takes to bring Sam to that pantheon, then I have just the dinner party to give him that necessary shock to the system. It will be a welcome pain compared to the kind Sam inflicts on himself from over-thinking and overstressing. And Sam will have loads of fun along the way. You’re welcome, brother.

      Like Sam, I also experienced the pain of not getting into my first-choice school, or any of my top-tier choices! I applied to the Sorbonne, the University of Tokyo, and that fancy one in Scotland where Prince William met Princess Kate. But I had no real shot at them. No matter; I don’t speak French or Japanese, and let’s be real, who even understands Scottish people when they speak? I also didn’t get into my second-tier schools – NYU, Skidmore, Fordham. And that’s awesome. Because now I can hoard all that money I saved babysitting the many little critters who live in the Stanwyck, and not waste it at Quinnipiac University, which is somewhere in Connecticut, I’m told. (I visited but have since tried to forget the experience, because I was basically forced by my parents to go.) It’s the only school I got into, and my parents were so relieved, they enrolled me for the fall. I can’t even pronounce the school’s name. Please.

      “Are you sure Czarina hasn’t taken a lover?” Sam says. I’ve got to set him free from attachment to her apron strings too. When she finds out I broke the leaf on her dining-room table when I was setting it, she’ll lose it at him. At me too of course. But I’m used to it. Sam the Saint is not. It will be healthy. For both of them. Maybe in my future travels I will check out old Freud or Jung’s universities in Austria or wherever, because I obviously have huge potential as a psychoanalytic genius.

      “Of course I’m not sure!” I say. “She could be bonking every Frenchman with a croissant for all I know!”

      “Because every Frenchman has a croissant, right?”

      “Oui! Don’t you know that’s what the French Revolution was all about? Life, liberty, le perfect flaky croissant.”

      “Tongs,” says Sam.

      “Frenchman torture method?”

      “No. Hand me the tongs so I can pull out the strips of lasagna from the boiling water.”

      I hand him the tongs. “That’s a whisk, Ilsa.” He reaches over me to grab the contraption known as tongs. “And I’m telling you, Czarina has taken a lover in Paris.”

      “You just want to say ‘taken a lover’.”

      “Guilty. You know me too well.”

      Maybe Czarina has taken a lover in Paris, but that’s not the reason for her trip. She thinks we don’t know, but I know. Czarina likes to be secretive, but she has no idea what a browser history is, and that she should clear it regularly. Our grandmother is in Paris because she bought a small apartment and plans to retire there, in a little studio with no bedrooms for me or Sam. (Unfortunately, this knowledge came at the cost of also learning that Czarina really likes browsing photos of Sean Connery as James Bond wearing barely there swimmer briefs. And she loves porny fan fiction devoted to that most hirsute of the Bond men.) (I’m going to throw up just thinking about what I’ve seen in her browser history.)

      Sam will survive the Paris news. What better place to visit a grandmother? What’s really going to finally push Sam out of his comfort zone is when he finds out I am moving into his bedroom at Czarina’s, with the new owners, who have invited me to be their family’s nanny after Czarina moves out. Sam has too much talent and potential to be stuck in the same old place; I’m fine there.

      Tonight is our chance to celebrate our last twin dinner party here. Lasagna, booze, chocolates, with our friends and some strangers. Tonight we can swing from the chandeliers like we’re Liberace.

      Tomorrow we can deal with the heartbreak and the humdrum.

2

       SAM

      Dinner parties always seem like a good idea until you have an hour until the guests arrive and you realize you have about four hours’ worth of things left to do. Life becomes a whirl of counter-space choreography, stovetop stress and table-setting trauma. I want everything to be perfect, and I also know this is an impossible and even cruel thing to want. Still, there’s something deep inside me that won’t let go. If things are imperfect, it won’t – can’t – be my fault.

      Ilsa, bless her, is trying to aid me. Unfortunately, her aid is coming in the form of sartorial suggestion.

      “Why aren’t you wearing your black velvet? They’ll be here any moment. You’re still in jeans.”

      I am not wearing my black velvet because the lemon tart requires a dusting of confectioner’s sugar in about two minutes. It will take about two minutes to explain this to Ilsa, so I try to shoo her from the kitchen instead, telling her that she should make sure the dinner-party playlist is to her liking. My mood is all Glass, and if she wants to add swing to the thing, it’s better for her to do it now than to make a scratch mid-song.

      My stress gets more level when I am alone in the kitchen. I like being alone in the kitchen. My thoughts fit well into the sound of bubbling, boiling and refrigeration. I can be the conductor of this minor orchestra.

      It’s only when other people get involved that the conducting becomes unwieldy, and arrangements get messy.

      I don’t know who Ilsa’s invited, although I suspect that, despite her denial, KK will soon besmirk our doorway with her usual gusts of privilege. Ilsa can’t resist KK – she’s the fashion plate my sister eats off of, her droll model. I personally can’t fathom how a girl so rich can also be so rich with complaint. But she’s never wanted me or anyone else to like her. I guess there’s some power that comes from that. Only I’m not really sure what you can use that power for.

      My guest list is, I hope, a little more amenable to amiability.

      First, there’s my best friend, Parker, since even though Ilsa placed him on the Banished Guest List, I am not having this last dinner party without him. Ilsa claims he broke her heart, but she needs to get over it. Mostly because the breakup was totally her fault, and nearly ended my friendship with him, which wasn’t fair.

      Next up is Jason. I figured if I was inviting one of Ilsa’s exes, I should balance it out with one of mine. Although it’s not really the same, since Jason and I managed to stay friends. He had this whole I’m-going-to-Tufts-and-you’re-going-to-Berklee! plan, and when I decided to stay in Manhattan, it was like I’d slapped his future, which in turn said oh-no-you-didn’t and stormed out the door. This left the present standing in the middle of the room, slight and awkward. Jason withdrew his application for soul mate, and we went from there. Still looking for true love, but not with each other.

      Which maybe leads me to my wild card: Subway Boy. I’ve been seeing him on the 1 train for the past few months. And