It is against the rules to show up to brunch with Ozempic-sag face. This, of course, is not because the girls at brunch are cruel and powered by some Insta-clone microchip, but because cameras are everywhere. “We live in a surveillance state,” they say, and as powerful as the girls are, they cannot wipe the internet dry of your candid brunch photos, so you and your weeping cheekbones and fubsy chin and uneven eyelid meat (which will only emphasize how non-sanpaku your eyes are) will haunt the internet forever. So you may be able to understand why the girls could not accept Tia at brunch last Sunday because, as they said, “her jowls are quaggy now,” and “Blokette is not making a comeback as long as we live.”

I didn’t originally plan to disclose this, but I know you’re wondering—plus, I was like you once, unsure of the ethnology and in need of honesty. Yes, I pin the sagged fat around my cheeks behind my ears with four flesh-toned clips, which hide my thirty-four-pound GLP-1 weight loss for about two hours, until the clips come loose and the fat springs back onto my face with a kind of ferrimagnetic force. The girls are okay with me leaving brunch early for this reason, because excusing myself to the bathroom to reapply the clips presents a kind of vacant obviousness, and they would rather forget about me than greet me again, which would only remind them of my offensive midfacial fat compartment. This IRL shadowbanning is really just a temporary thing because I’m next in the girl queue for a dual SOOF and deep media cheek replacement. No, the girls are not cruel, but aesthetic cohesion is extremely important, and living this is as serious as understanding it.

You are not obligated to memorize the names, dietary restrictions, and personal afflictions of the girls for your test brunch, but if they aren’t studied and referenced naturally in conversation by your initiation brunch, you will not make it. There are Bria and Rana, the Top Two Girls, then Freya, Emma, and Lia, the First Tier Girls. Hilda, Anya, Gia, Sara, Flora, Naya, and Mina belong to The Second Tier. The girls can be categorized by their stelliums, genetic length potential of their natural nails and eyelashes, creatinine levels, and what hobbies they pursue. Some include Danish language learning (to understand Acne Studios press releases), cryotherapy, collecting fascist literature, keto mukbang watching, reality television shows set on blue flag beaches, and urban echolocation walks. Don’t freak, you’ll receive a PDF this week going over everything in impressive detail. It will completely change you if you let it.

Today we’re at a vegan-curious brunch place right off Sunset. The girls are performing chest bone taps at the table and taking turns pouring sea moss gel into the cavities of each other’s clavicles, then spooning it out and eating it. They like to do this not because they’re sapphics, but it’s the best way to test out a new lip flip or feel the difference between 0.5 and 2 mL on our top and bottom lips. Hilda is not participating because she has a GI tract issue today.

Naya is crouched by the ledge of a planter and smoking a Gauloise. It’s okay because cigarettes are coming back into fashion, plus she just came back from a UGC creator trip to Paris, so the girls understand she is experiencing culture shock and cannot cope with our country’s vape-love reality. Sara ordered her two ounces of blanched cauliflower with Aji verde, but Naya is not allowed to return to the brunch table until she’s finished her cigarette and sucked on two mints. Gia still has a sensitive windpipe from her three-week bronchitis moment, and because she came closest to death this year, the girls have PO’ed any request concerning her health. Naya’s cauliflower is getting cold. The rest of us can eat.

Rana orders me a large, genetically engineered chestnut, which comes suspended in solar water. I drink the chestnut water with a straw even though the liquid is murky like an insipid milkfake and tastes sour. I order Rana a wakame salad with chia seed croutons and she does not touch it.

Rana and I have not ordered brunch for each other yet and our interactions are limited to my initial interview loop and a half-hearted conversation about the China Doll cocktail from Hotel Juniper during our last bonding trip to Palm Springs. My skin glitters with pain when I see her and her translucency at brunch. Her glassy skin is incomparable to something basic like raw tilapia; instead, the greasy wet spot left on parchment after being rubbed with groundnut. You must understand that she is so pale, she’s practically blue. I dream about her seafaring Carotid triangle and the paper-thin skin around her wrists, or her DNA transferring to me via IV, shrinking my fat Brazil nut buccal nodes into hulled sunflower seeds, becoming baby-like and waifish like Rana’s.

Do not be like me, or you won’t advance to the First Tier. I will remain positive about my buccal nodes and finish my chestnut water for gut biome nostalgia, warding off jealous thoughts, because one of the rules is that the girls cannot be jealous of each other. The girls will feel it if you are; “that’s because we have peak neuroplasticity,” they say about the matter, and, “if you think you can outthink us, you can’t.” You will rely on forechosen terminology to carry you through these kinds of moments, but you should have an interchangeable vocabulary so the girls do not believe you’re reciting something off a script. In my brain, I repeat the words Birch sap, Cica, OMAD, and KorabeauticaIs V2 Pro, in that order.

Please know that each calendar year, every girl is assigned a topic, which Bria and Rana call Nichemaxxing. You are responsible for deep research and presenting your thesis at the annual New Year's party. This is a very important event that you must spend months preparing for across cognitive, somatic, and physical domains. If there’s a Nichemax presentation on, say, Microtrends, you must ask thoughtful questions that test the girl’s mastery of the subject. Do not be psychologically predictable and ask things like, “What’s trending?” or “Will audio clip farming make me viral?” Instead, ask them to apply a Poisson distribution to estimate the stochastic incidence of nootropic renascences during Silverlake break-up season. Or, ask about heirloom tomatoes in the Bourdieusian sense, or the supply-chain crisis behind butterboards.

Emma pulls out her phone from her new crowdfunded Fendi calf-leather bag, a Saturn return gift. The girls become moths when exposed to iPhone screen brightness, everyone's heads twisting in harmony. A contact photo of Mo, her boyfriend, is large and almost indecent on her screen. He’s cradling her waist like a sexual deviant in the photo—or technically, a mirror selfie, “one of the worst recreational fads to happen to photography,” the girls have always said about it. Emma’s eyes linger on the home screen for a half-second too long before she silences her phone. Have you ever been in love? Would you agree that it inevitably steers you from your established values and ends up wasting your time?

“Emma,” Bria says, an ill omen, before she swallows the final bite of her dish, which is a hard-boiled egg, mandolined and strategically draped on a long bamboo shoot. We can all tell she’s not satisfied with her brunch, which is Emma’s fault, because she had a week to plan Bria’s order.

Each week, we take turns ordering brunch for another, a continuous process which reveals how closely we watch, how seriously we remember, and how much we care for one another over the course of each brunch, and consequently, our entire lives. Because Bria’s father has high cholesterol (which I know because I’ve done thorough research on natural alternatives to Statins as part of my assigned Nichemax, wellness), an egg is an illogical choice, and therefore, Emma has entered the brunch rubicon.

Brunch rubicons are sporadic, but not impossible. You’ll dread Emma’s fate, but something about a Favorite Girl falling down the ranks will secretly delight you. It may increase your consideration for First Tier, then maybe one day, a Top Tier Girl.

The girls are all listening now, the tension at the table exciting and palpable, our wood cellulose thongs arranging themselves in perfect alignment as we straighten our spines, our ears visible and erect, every girl’s hair slicked back in the same low bun to reveal our outer ears. Please remember that not even a baby hair is allowed to drape past your cochlea and interfere with your hearing abilities.

“Your relationship with Mo will need to be terminated by the end of this week,” Bria tells Emma. Emma’s forkful of oyster mushroom lump is suspended in mid-air, her pupils glossing over almost immediately. She’s too in love with Mo, which the girls all know. Bria can be so corporate sometimes. Birch sap, Cica, OMAD, KorabeauticaIs V2 Pro.

Bria and Rana decide when our romantic relationships are to be discontinued, with a relationship average of 1.5 years. That’s unless the boyfriend holds geopolitical soft power or is capable of providing something completely unparalleled for the girls. Approved careers for long-term partners include pharmacists, K-pop idols, Boeing/Airbus board members, or Alo general managers (general managers must maintain a lucrative side business, guaranteeing a $20K minimum monthly income). 

The girls drape their arms around Emma. You will do the same, transferring your positive energy to her by skin-to-skin contact, delivering a cellular-level notification that she’s about to have an insane glow up and just barely avoided an aura-casualty event. “You’re going to ascend to unimaginable places now,” you’ll reassure her. Or, “Let it go, it’s a Machofeudal-capitalist society after all.”

Please note the impressive mechanics of the girls, who are functioning like a Rube Goldberg machine in the wake of Emma’s breakup. Bria pries Emma’s mouth open and slips a Rivotril under her tongue. Rana flags down our waiter and orders her a freshly steeped lemon balm tea. Hilda, who has clinical hyper-empathy, is gyrating restlessly with fat-ass tears on her cheeks. Lia and Anya get phone permission and quickly begin compiling ugly Mo photos from the archive. Has anyone given you link access to that, by the way? It’s a bunch of boyfriend candids, all taken with the drone and uploaded to the Girl cloud. So if a girl goes on a public date, it’ll be monitored via drone by Bria and Rana and other open-source intelligence tools (Bria is Sam Altman’s third cousin, once removed, so all beta access is extremely ethical).

This is paramount for safety purposes, they say, but also because candids of “your ugly-as-fuck boyfriends are always useful in the event of a breakup.” Lia and Anya find shots where Mo’s mouth is ajar, mid-sentence, sea tangle smeared on his lower gum (on their third Nobu date when he used Klarna), or ones where his bald spot is unmistakable, like sugar babies at The Polo Lounge.

A woman holding a kaninchen dachshund drifts to the patio, then sits within snorting distance of our table. She’s secreting tonka bean and has distracting lab-grown breasts and perfect lips shaped like candy conversation hearts. You may begin to compare the shape of her lips to your own, but don’t waste your time; Lia is exceptionally talented in dermal grafting and ePTFE implants and can remodel anything on (or in) your body. You may begin thinking about which area of your body you’d like Lia to suck out with the magic fat straw.

You may also wonder when the last time you ate a conversation heart was. That’s only natural, just don’t poke around in the past for too long.

“I've just mastered a brilliant low-fat mapo tofu Livornese recipe at home,” the woman announces into her receiver. The girls are all listening to this obviously fake phone conversation now because there’s no structure to brunch anymore. Emma is maybe unconscious, or she’s being a waif girl, Bria and Rana are both on the phone, talking about a “respective growth arc,” and something deranged is spinning in the basement of Hilda’s mind. Birch sap, Cica, OMAD, KorabeauticaIs V2 Pro. “Did you know that the literal meaning of mapo tofu is ‘pockmarked old woman beancurd?’”

You must take notes when you hear things like this. Rana gives me a quick glance and it is slating. That’s definitely because I haven’t presented any skinny mapo tofu recipes this year, despite being assigned to wellness, and now this random woman at brunch is dwarfing me. She has the nasolabial folds of a ten-year-old. I want her to die. Do you think that woman looks more estrogenic than me? Does she look like she belongs at our table?

Emma is slumped over from the benzo lemon balm tea while Bria and Rana quietly discuss something. Mina is tracing lotus flowers on Emma’s back and Naya has returned to the planter to chain smoke. “I feel weird,” Hilda says, so Mina begins rubbing her back too. Try not to appear unfazed because even though you’re a brand-new Girl, you must also be visibly stirred by today’s chain of events. That’s because the prospect of losing your identity as a Girl is terrifying.

“I feel really froggy,” Hilda burbles, and she’s practically face-down in her chagaccino. I hope she isn’t going to die, but if we lose her, I wonder if the service will be an open casket. That’s because I think she’d want to be buried in her favorite Kelly-green bikini.

The tonka bean woman leaves her kaninchen at the table and approaches Hilda. I don’t know exactly what she’s saying because our brunch table is too long and the speaker is like, thrumming with brown noise, but it sounds like she’s saying “Are you okay?” then “Oh my God,” and maybe “Help this woman.” Are you reading her lips? Can you understand what she’s saying? Don’t her lips remind you of a 1991 Sherilyn Fenn?

I have 16% battery right now so I probably wouldn’t be the best person to call 911. It looks like the woman is doing it anyway. What is epiglottitis? I have crazy strong intuition that this brunch is going to be rescheduled, so I’m unsure if the next one will be a redo of today’s test brunch or if it’ll be your initiation brunch. I’d check in with Bria or Rana, but probably not now, since their thyroids are practically ballooning outward from stress and about to swallow up the patrons here.

Something snaps. I think those were my clips, unless a nuke has hit my face. Can you please check if the flesh-colored thing by your foot—insane Dianouchette lug booties, by the way—is a face clip? I look to Bria and Rana because there’s this sort of high-frequency ringing now, but I get distracted by all the vague goo splattered across the table—are those frozen ghee globs or shredded gymnastic pit foam, or my cheek fat?

The kanichen is hovering over its cornflower-blue dog bowl and nibbling on something enthusiastically. The woman is helping load Hilda onto the stretcher (such peak performative activism), and I want to tell her to stop her impolite dog from all that loud-ass slurping. I look closer and the food bowl is filled with butter-yellow candle goo, or whatever the dog special is today, maybe short-grain rice pressed together? Disgusting.

Thank you for collecting my face clips off the floor (such a grounded gesture). I think I’ll be heading out now because I can’t feel my face. I hope today’s brunch was somewhat helpful and I’m sorry if it wasn’t. Do update me if you end up signing the final offer letter—though you’d have half a cortex not to—and I’ll see you next Sunday!