It was times like this that Kayla truly loathed her sister. She looked down at the large white box waiting outside the door to her tiny apartment, featureless save for the Revolution Technologies logo on the side and the shipping label on top, and tried to control a rising sense of impotent fury. Why couldn't someone have stolen this? Her family kept telling her that New York City was a non-stop den of villainy full of people ready to steal everything that wasn't nailed down-where were all the package thieves when you really needed them? With a sigh, she unlocked the door and shoved the box inside. Fucking Margo. Why did she have to elevate 'raging passive-aggressive bitch' to an art form?
As soon as she got inside, Kayla went to her computer and went to the Revolution Technologies website, clicking past the 'Personal Devices' page ("Over 1,314,000 sold!") and looking for the return policies. She didn't want to open the box until she found out whether or not she could ship it back, but she had a pretty good idea of what was inside. Kayla's sister could be maddeningly predictable when it came to finding ways to needle her, and Kayla saw as many advertisements as the next person. If a box large enough to squeeze a person inside showed up on Kayla's front door just a few days after her birthday, with Margo's name on the shipping label, it didn't take Sherlock fucking Holmes to figure out that it contained-
Kayla's phone rang just as she was in the middle of navigating through the deep wilderness of the Revolution Technologies site map. She didn't need to look at it to know who was calling; even if Margo wasn't as subtle as a brick about her pettiness, Kayla had a special ringtone set for her. "Why was I cursed with such idiot sisters?" Bette Midler's voice repeated over and over, despite Kayla's best efforts to tune it out in favor of digging through layer after layer of customer obstruction. "Why was I cursed with such idiot sisters? Why was I cursed with such-"
Kayla snatched the phone off her desk and hit the 'Answer' button. "Margo," she said, filing her voice with poisoned sweetness. "Really, you shouldn't have."
Margo's response was so gleeful that Kayla could almost picture her sister's bony cheeks contorting in delight at her own cruelty. "You always say you don't have any time for boys, Kay, what with your busy career," she squeaked, her voice grinding at Kayla like fingernails on a chalkboard. "So I got you one that you could stick in the closet when you were done with him. Have you... y'know, tried him out yet? I hope you like the color."
It was textbook Margo-the refusal to politely respect the fiction that Kayla presented to her family of being straight and willing to wait, the nasty little dig at Kayla's dead-end, pay-the-bills job that barely made up the difference between her scholarship at NYU and her daily living expenses, and of course, no conversation with her sister would be complete without Margo making an oh-so-witty reference to closets. Kayla was just surprised that Margo hadn't worked in a reference to her new house, her promotion, or the latest way that Husband Bob had earned the approval of Mom and Dad.
"Of course, Bob said that it was too expensive, what with the new house and all," Margo continued, "but I told him I'd just gotten a promotion, and nothing was too good for my little sister on her birthday! Don't worry, we won't tell Mom and Dad. I know they're still hoping you're going to find a young man like Bob out there in the wilds of New York." And there went the trifecta. Kayla would have just hung up, but she knew full well that if she did, she'd only get a call from her parents a day or two later.
She could hear the conversation in her head already. 'Now, I know we raised you better than that, Kay, and we would hate to think that New York is turning you into one of those 'mean girls' we've seen in the movies. We know you and Margo have had your difficulties, but she loves you and she was only trying to extend the olive branch to you. We really think you should apologize to her.' They would never actually end that sentence with 'or the next time your rent check is late, we'll just tell you to move back to Omaha and enroll in community college instead of chipping in', but then again, they never had to. Financial dependency was a language all its own.
So Kayla just made a token grunt or two every time a response was called for and continued to click her way through the Revolution site map hoping to find a way to cash her sister's gift in for a decent tablet or something. She didn't rise to any of the obvious baits Margo threw out ("I know that most everyone out in New York has a Girl(tm) these days, but we know you're not interested in those", "I know you'll probably have to do a few extra Hail Mary's after Sunday Mass, but I'm sure your priest knows you well enough to be lenient", "and if you bring home a young man and he complains about it, you just tell him that it's only until you meet the right guy-that's what you always tell Mom and Dad, right?") It was just Margo being Margo now, and Kayla could outlast her until she got bored.
Instead, Kayla stayed focused on the screen until she found the return policies, nestled snugly under 'Customer Support' in the 'Revolution Customer Focus' section of the 'Policies and Practices' page that she found at the very bottom of the screen on the 'Personal Devices' page in seven-point font. Shit like this was why she was saving up for a Girl. (Well, it was one of the reasons.) Revolution was the worst kind of corporate behemoth, one of those awful monolithic companies that had gotten so big that they could simply intimidate a customer base into compliance. Kayla had no intention of enabling them, even by proxy. If she could claw back her sister's money from them-
"Sorry, what was that?" Margo asked, in response to Kayla's audible sigh of frustration. "Did you say something?"
"Oh, I, um... I cut myself opening the box," Kayla ad-libbed. "I better go run some cold water on it. Talk to you later?" Margo mumbled some disappointed-sounding words of sympathy, which Kayla didn't even bother responding to before she hung up. She allowed herself to enjoy the tiny triumph for a moment-she should fake injuries to get out of talking to her family more often.
Then she let out a loud torrent of profanity, glaring daggers at the words on her computer screen and fuming. 'Due to the highly personal nature of the Boy(tm) product, returns and exchanges are not allowed on these units. In the event that a tech certifies a defective unit, a factory replacement will be offered when a repair cannot be performed by our Award Winning Technical Support Team, but a Boy(tm) cannot be exchanged for another product (including another Boy(tm), or for Revolution Technologies store credit. By activating your Boy(tm), you agree to the End User License Agreement, which...'