Body Check by Deirdre Martin Page B

that what her mother had said was true—all she had to offer was drive with no talent to back it up. So what if she’d studied at the Wharton School? She was an impostor, always had been. She’d tricked her professors into believing she had a solid head for business, just like she continued tricking everyone into believing she knew how to do PR. Like Lou, for instance, who thought she was MENSA material. Well, her mother knew better.
    A blast of rock music coming from an open window on the second floor caught Janna’s attention.
    â€œI see the birthday boy is home,” she said to her father.
    He glanced up at the screened window, a look of unmistakable displeasure crossing his face. “He calls that music.”
    â€œCareful,” she teased, patting his arm. “Your age is showing.” Her father sighed, shaking his head, and returned happily to digging in the dirt.
    Janna headed inside to wish her baby brother, Wills, a happy birthday. The last of the MacNeil children, he was twelve today, the age gap between him and his sisters sizable. Janna’s mother claimed he’d been “an accident,” but Janna and her sisters all concurred that having Wills had been their parents’ last-ditch attempt at trying to save their marriage—an attempt that had failed, leaving poor Wills to grow up alone in the big Georgian house with two warring parents. His solo status filled Janna with guilt. At least she, Petra and Skyler all had each other when things got rough. Wills had no one, which was why Janna made an extra effort to call and see him whenever she could. It was her way of letting him know that she was there for him, even if they didn’t live under the same roof.
    Inside the house, her mother sat in the huge country kitchen chatting away on the portable phone. She gave a distracted wave as Janna popped the cake she’d baked for Wills in the fridge. Before heading upstairs to see her brother, she detoured to the back patio to say hello to her sisters, both of whom she knew were there thanks to the twin Mercedeses parked in the drive. Petra sat poolside in shorts and a T-shirt, engrossed in a book. Pet and her books, Janna thought affectionately. Why did she become a lawyer when what she really should have been was a writer? Skyler was poolside, too, her tanned, perfect body barely covered in a hot pink, crocheted bikini. Predictably, Skyler was a model. A very successful model, too. Janna loved her big sister Petra, but Skyler was another story. Shallow, vain, judgmental, she reminded Janna of their mother. Janna’s fervent hope was that Skyler would wake up the morning of her 30th birthday to find herself the size of Pavarotti. She knew it wasn’t nice, but Skyler was so damn gorgeous that Janna had no choice but to occasionally hate her for it, certain that every other normal looking woman in America occasionally felt the same way, too.
    She chatted with them for a few minutes before leaving to check up on Wills. Her parents’ house reminded her of a museum: everything in its place, the climate carefully controlled, all hints of the combative, turbulent lives being lived there artfully concealed. Except for Wills. Though the music blasting from his room was earsplittingly loud, at least it signaled some sense of vitality the rest of the house lacked. Janna literally pounded on his bedroom door, knowing there was no way he’d hear her if she knocked politely.
    The door flew open, and there he stood, his face breaking into a wide smile revealing two tidy, gleaming rows of braces, his head bopping up and down to the music. Like Janna, he was small, but he had his father’s sturdy build and dark coloring. “Hey,” he said, playfully punching her arm.
    â€œHey, yourself,” she half shouted at him. “Can I come in?”
    He stood aside to let her enter. Janna didn’t want to appear uncool in his eyes, but the music was so loud the