Other People We Married by Emma Straub Page A

Jackie’s father handed the keys to a kid their age wearing a Sergeant Pepper jacket. The boy was tan and blond, and Franny looked at him like he was made of ice cream. Jackie thumped her in the arm.
    “Hey,” she said. “You coming?”
    Franny grinned. That’s what Jackie liked about her: Fran wanted to be from Newport as much as Jackie wanted to be from Brooklyn. If Franny could have pushed a button and swapped lives with her, like in
The Parent Trap
, she would have done it in a heartbeat. They both scrambled out of the backseat and picked up their purses, letting the bellboys take the rest of the luggage on a golden cart the size of their dorm room.
    The hotel room had two twin beds but the girls swiftly decided that it would be better to sleep in one and use the other as the depository for all of their belongings. Franny forced Jackie to hang up her fancy clothes and then complained that she didn’t have anything that would suffer fromstaying folded. They lay on their stomachs and waggled their bent legs back and forth. The Atlantic Ocean lapped and crashed outside the window, which was open.
    “I can’t believe how warm it is here,” Franny said. They’d stripped off their airplane clothes and were wearing only their underwear. Jackie wore white briefs she’d stolen from her father and a flimsy camisole. Franny wore a bra the size of Cleveland, with latches and hitches that would have held up a lesser mountain range. Jackie was impressed. A breeze snaked in and slipped around their waving calves.
    “Want to go to the beach?” Jackie was a great swimmer and had been the captain of her high school team. Franny shook her head. “Or Worth Avenue? Or get some lunch?” It was only noon, and Jackie’d only eaten a banana for breakfast. Franny met the Johnsons at the airport with both of her parents, and the look on her face told Jackie that she would have rather committed ritual suicide. Jackie couldn’t imagine she’d eaten much, either.
    “Lunch,” Franny said. “Immediately.”
    There was a good place nearby. It had the best shrimp cocktails and was close enough to walk. Franny changed into one dress after another—she needed something that said
Florida
, she said. Jackie sat on the edge of the bed and sang songs to try to hurry her along, but could only remember the chorus to “Both Sides Now,” and so was singing it in an endless loop, her deep voice occasionally muffled by a pillow. “I’m going to eat this,” she said. But then Franny trotted out of the bathroom in a pink dress and bright, shiny lipstick, and Jackie was happy enough to let it go.
    Every street they passed started with
sea
: Seabreeze,Seaspray, Seaview. “God,” Franny said. “They really got creative.”
    Jackie held her hands up to shield the sun from her eyes. “Tell me about it.” After every block, the ocean appeared, a little window of blue. She could tell that Franny wanted to look and walked slower. In her hand-me-down madras shorts and plain white T-shirt, Jackie felt like Franny’s older brother. She still had a swimmer’s body; her shoulders were as wide as a man’s, if not wider, and stretched and moved as she walked, like giant wings. Jackie’s whole body was taut and boring, a straight line, and Franny’s was wiggly. Everyone they passed on the street turned to look at her, and Jackie couldn’t blame them. Franny moved her bottom from side to side with every step, like she was Fred Astaire dancing with an invisible Ginger Rogers, always pushing her backward in those heels.
    “You will come in the ocean, won’t you?” Jackie asked.
    “Will you save me if I drown?” Franny replied.
    Jackie nodded. “Sure,” she said. “Why not?”
    The restaurant had white tablecloths and painted murals and a long bar filled with girls their age and their fathers or husbands. Jackie looked at Franny, ready to bolt, but she just sailed through the crowd, as if she were walking into their bathroom at school with her