Looking across the room, I watched my sister tear into the calendar she’d recently received as a Christmas present from her boyfriend. The bikini-clad woman stared back at me from her position of supplication, draped across the hood of a shiny, red convertible.

I cringed when she shoved her fingernail into the plastic covering, wondering if she was giving herself a paper cut. “How can you do that without scissors?”

“It’s cause they’re so long, that’s why.” Tearing away the plastic, she removed the invisible barrier and tossed it in the direction of the garbage can, too busy hanging up the calendar to throw out the trash properly.

As she hunted around for a pushpin I picked up the plastic and put it in the can, then rubbed my hands across my jean-clad thighs. “Don’t you cut yourself?”

Her gum crackled as the pin slid into the drywall with a soft hush. “Nah.”

Rolling my eyes, I watched her hang up the calendar, the face of a brunette January model looking out into the apartment as she pressed her scantily-clad breasts to the handlebars of a black motorcycle. “I can’t believe you’re hanging that stupid thing up, Em. You should’ve thrown it out, or at him. Or taken it back to the store for a refund.”

“It’s tacky when you return a Christmas present, Eva.”

“It’s a calendar with half-naked girls draped over convertibles and motorcycles! It’s such a guy calendar! He probably bought the damn thing for himself, and then the day before Christmas he was all ‘Damn, I forgot to get something for the girlfriend I walk all over and treat like garbage. I’ll just give her this so I can stare at it when I’m over at her place.’”

Emily turned and gave me a dirty look, the blue of her eyes overwhelmed by her black eyeliner and purple eye shadow. “Blow it out your ass, Eva. At least I’ve got a boyfriend.”

“Hey, I’m the one who took care of Mom while she was sick. What did you do? Sit around your apartment all day? Drink until you passed out? Sleep with your stupid boyfriend in an attempt to make him give a damn about you?”