After I paid $77,000 for my brother’s wedding, he sent me to the wrong city in Italy “as a joke.” I landed in Naples while they were celebrating in Florence. The next morning, he texted: “LOL, I just didn’t want you there.” My mother added, “This is your fault.” I didn’t argue. I smiled… and sent her a gift—four feet tall, delivered by courier. She called me in tears: “Can I please pay you back?”

Part 1

My name is Alyssa Monroe. I’m twenty-five, and the first time my brother ruined me in public, I was seven years old and wearing a paper crown from Burger King.

He told our cousins I’d wet my pants at school. I hadn’t. I was holding a cardboard cup of orange soda with both hands, the ice clinking against the sides, when everyone at the table looked at me and laughed anyway. My mother laughed too. Not hard, not with her whole chest. Just enough to let me know which side she was on.

At twenty-five, I should’ve known better than to think Italy would be different.

Naples hit me first through smell. Hot oil. Salt. Diesel. Dough frying somewhere nearby. Not the soft, chilled floral air I’d pictured around a wedding hotel in Florence. Not white roses and champagne and candle wax. This air had teeth. It curled into my silk dress and made me feel overdressed, misplaced, ridiculous.