Miss Fortune by Lauren Weedman

knows I am.
    â€œI’m tired of lying to people,” she tells me. “Tired of saying things I don’t mean. I’ve let so many people down in my life. My parents must be so exhausted. Been married three times. I’ve brought so many different lovers home with me over the years. White men, black men, old guys, young black women. I’ve made so many promises, started so many different lives, that I don’t know who I am anymore. If I flew home tomorrow and showed up on their porch with my arm around a can of beans I was planning to marry and announced I was becoming an astronaut, they wouldn’t bat an eye. Lord have mercy on my sad little soul stuck in this big old body, how I wish I was kidding.”
    Nico never talked about her past. All we usually talked about was how special I was going to be or how special she was going to be.
    It’s incredible and she’s not done. She tells me secrets. Upsetting stories about her past that if I had heard from anyone else but her I would have judged as bat-shit crazy, but the truth from the source is a completely different truth.
    Weird to think, but in my twenty-three years, I’ve never heard an adult, someone I look up to, admit to making a mistake. It’s so comforting to know that all the intensely overwhelming emotions I feel all the time aren’t reserved for me.
    In the middle of me telling her about dating Sam, I stop myself. It’s bad enough one person went through it—I suggest we eat some rice cakes and call it a night. Nico tells me to keep going and don’t leave anything out. “Why not? I got at least two hours before this enchilada lets me get to sleep.”
    Friends my age didn’t admit to the awful things from our past. Never. Who wanted to think about all that? I spent most of my time trying not to be found out. Being able to get out what I’d been carrying around for so long was, to put it mildly, so nice.
    From that night on we refer to ourselves as BFFs.
    Nico’s parents fly her back to live with them in Houston. It’s tough to be away from the one person on the earth who knows me. We’re making little mini-cassette recordings for each other, just like
Felicity.
We call them “the BFF tapes.” The best friends forever tapes. The recorder is plastered to my lips all the time. The tape that came in the mail today had an hour of an
Oprah
episode about “unsung heroes.” Nico forgot she was recording and accidentally recorded the entire show. I’m glad she still sent it. It was like we were watching TV together.
    The other side of the tape is the sounds of her driving around Houston in her VW bug, drinking Diet Coke and looking for an office job. “BFF, if you moved back to America you could be a movie star. I’m telling you.”
    Dreaming of being a movie star is so fifth grade. I was going to be Annie in the movie version of the Broadway hit musical
Annie.
“Will have braces removed if cast” was written at the top of my résumé. The part was my mine to lose. I was adopted. I’d perfected the screaming song technique that all good Annie wannabes had. The auditions required you to submit a headshot before you showed up in Chicago for the audition. My father took pictures of me in our backyard exuding more confidence and chutzpah than Judy Garland in her prime. “Sure it’s a hard knock life, but look at me now!” with hand on the hip, jaunty head tilt, and big smile, screamed at the camera. I even went so far as to get out my special
Annie
purse I’d bought at the merchandise table when the Broadway touring company of
Annie
came to town, and stuck our white Persian cat,Phantom (or maybe it was Diablo or Demon or Goblin; there were so many family cats with demonic creepy names, it’s tough to be sure), in it for a few photos (and this was before carrying small animals in your purse was high fashion). I flung the purse and