THE FACEBOOK MARKETPLACE DIARIES

Weird Hand-Painted Mid-Century Dish: $100

“I’m sorry, I know I suck at wrapping.” Marcella shook her head, the feathered locks of her honey-blonde curtain bangs shaking with it. You looked down at the pink-and-purple-polka-dot-wrapped present on the table, the corners perfectly smoothed and tucked—not a wrinkle, not a rip in sight.

Perfect—as usual, you thought to yourself. You’d grown accustomed to these performances of manufactured embarrassment over the years—her signature play-pretend modesty. Most people bought it hook, line, and sinker, but not you. No—for you, the sound of her white lies felt like a fly landing on the fleshy surface of your brain and rubbing its dirty little legs together. Like an irritating, unreachable itch.

“Oh yeah, Mar? Do you suck at wrapping? Are you so sick of not being able to gain weight with your unusually fast metabolism? Is it so annoying that people can’t believe you’ve never had any cosmetic surgery? Are you just so fucking tired of being so fucking perfect all the time?” That’s what you wanted to say, but of course, you didn’t—you couldn’t. Like it or not, she was your sister—and the Cheesecake Factory was no place for a family brawl.

You shoved the feeling aside, tucking a lock of your own noticeably thinner, duller blonde hair behind your ear with a smile—after all, you had an audience. Your best friends, Aimee, Ainsleigh, Ashleigh R., and Ashleigh J., were all watching, iPhones poised and ready to capture every mundane moment of your twenty-eighth birthday.