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Part I

A No Good, Very Bad Day

1

Annie

A brisk hipped aroundthe skirt ofit upward, Marilyn Monroe–style I shrieked, batting at theit back down to an acceptable length The wind didn’t see of curses because it just bit into hts

“Oh my God,” I snapped as I clutched the material in my hands

The histled in response A cackle if I’d ever heard one

I glared up at the stupid Lubbock wind It wasn’t enough that the temperatures were in the low thirties already at five thirty on this Friday afternoon right before my last semester of medical school started; the wind had to rub it in

“Annie, why are you standing out here?” Cézanne asked She wore a black juhted her dark brown skin with her box braids pulled up into a high ponytail She soel “It’s below freezing”

I prayed to the Lord for patience and grinned at my closest friend in my cohort “The wind attacked me”

She eyed me skeptically We’d known each other pre–med school, and she still so a second head

I waved her off “Whatever I’ood day”

Which was an understateht flooded My roo all of h snakeskin heels that I’d scrounged out of a pile of donations I hadn’t gotten rid of yet My room was essentially awash untilon the couch for the foreseeable future

If that hadn’t been bad enough, I’d been nearly run off the road on the way here Soht, and I’d had to swerve to avoid getting T-boned

Today was officially over

I stepped inside the rustic building the medical school had rented for the event, and Cézanne closed the door

“Well, if you’ve been having a bad day, I hate to ask, but where’s the wine?” Cézanne asked warily

“What wine?”

“The…wine You know, the case of coers and the rest for the retire, and…there’s no wine”

“What the hell? Who was in charge of that?”

Cézanne looked at me blankly

“No,” I told her