Real Life & Liars by Kristina Riggle

through the door leading to the back porch. They see their mother, upside down on her yoga mat, in her underwear.
    “What’s his problem?” grunts Mira, looking back at them from between her legs. She folds herself down to the floor, legs flat, arms straight and upper body curled up toward the ceiling. “You’d think he’d never seen ‘downward-facing dog’ before.”

CHAPTER 17
Katya
    KATYA’S CELL PHONE BLASTS HIP-HOP IN HER EAR, AND SHE WOULD like to ignore it, like she’s ignoring the bright morning sun and a bladder so full she feels like a cow in need of milking. It stops and the silence is like a balm on her aching head, but it starts up again right away. It’s getting hot in here, so take off—
    She snatches it up. The clock on it reads “7:58” and the Caller ID says CHARLES . Katya wants to reprogram it to say THE BASTARD .
    “What.”
    “I can’t find the kids’ toothbrushes.”
    “Why is that my problem?”
    “Where are the toothbrushes, Katya?”
    “Don’t take that tone with me, I’m not a child. The kids were responsible for their own packing.”
    “Well, none of them have toothbrushes.” The reproach in his voice is unmistakable.
    “Well then, you’ll have to go out to the toothbrush fields andharvest some new ones!” She snaps her phone closed, then slaps it down on the bed. Cell phones, you just can’t satisfactorily slam them, she thinks.
    “It’s getting hot in here…” Katya decides to ask Irina to fix her phone.
    “What.”
    “What’s the matter with you today?” Still Charles. Who else?
    “It’s early, and the first thing I hear from you isn’t: Good morning, sweetheart, how did you sleep? Or even a hello, simply a demand to find some toothbrushes that are not my responsibility.”
    He sighs roughly into the phone, and says in a voice both acidic and sickeningly sweet: “Good morning, sweetheart. How did you sleep? Now, the kids seem to have misplaced their toothbrushes. Do you have a suggestion for me?”
    “Oh, I have a suggestion all right…”
    When she hangs up a few seconds later, she imagines Charles gaping at the phone, surrounded by whining kids. And despite the hangover, and her desperate need to pee, Katya smiles.
    She descends the stairs, her body feeling so heavy she leans against one wall the whole way down.
     
    A shower does little to ease Katya’s headache, and nothing at all to ease her own sense of embarrassment at being hungover on such an important day. She thought she had only had three glasses of wine, which is not so bad over several hours and dinner, but she must have miscounted. The coffee Irina made looked like used motor oil, so she just dumped it in the sink.
    What was up with Darius and getting on her about caffeine? Odd for her to hook up with someone so bossy, but then, he is almost twice her age.
    For the getting-ready portion of the day, Katya selects a pair of cropped pants and a silk sleeveless blouse. She blow-dries her hairin front of the oval standing mirror in the corner.
    With each pull of the brush, more hair comes away on the bristles, until the whole thing looks like a rodent with a purple handle. Katya tips her head forward toward the mirror and pulls along the side part in her hair, trying to detect thinness. It would be just her luck to inherit Max’s baldness gene instead of Mira’s lush, thick hair that’s gone a gorgeous shade of silver.
    Mine will probably go all gray and snarly, thinks Katya, scowling at her face. She dots on her makeup with practiced precision, picking up different compacts for different areas of her face: lightening for her dark circles, bronzer for her cheeks, cover-up for a blemish or two.
    Someone knocks, and Katya says “Come in,” because that’s what one is supposed to say.
    Mira comes in, wearing one of Max’s old shirts and apparently nothing else. Katya looks away from her back into the mirror. Just like her mother to run around half-dressed with company in the house, like