Flip's Drip (Everyonre)

In Royal Woods, there are three things you can count on: Luan’s puns getting worse before they get better, Dad’s cooking setting off the smoke alarm, and Flip ripping somebody off.

So when a banner went up on the empty lot next to Flip’s Food & Fuel that said FLIP’S DRIP — GRAND OPENING! FASHION FOR THE DISCERNING CHEAPSKATE!, nobody was surprised. Okay, everybody was surprised. Just not about the ripping-people-off part.

“It says ‘drip,’ Lincoln!” Leni said, shaking my shoulders like I was a vending machine that owed her quarters. “That’s fashion slang! It means cool clothes! Flip is opening a boutique!”

“Leni,” I said, “Flip once tried to sell me a hot dog that had clearly been on that roller grill since the Clinton administration.”

“Vintage!” Leni gasped. “See? He already understands fashion!”

There was no talking her out of it. So that Saturday, Leni dragged me and Luan down to the grand opening of Flip’s Drip, which turned out to be a tent. A tent with a hand-painted sign. A tent that smelled like motor oil and old cheese.

Flip stood out front in a tracksuit that had “JUICY” bedazzled across the back in what I really hoped were rhinestones.

“Ladies! Linc!” Flip spread his arms wide. “Welcome to Flip’s Drip! Royal Woods’ hottest new fashion destination! Everything’s designer! Everything’s exclusive! Everything’s final sale!”

“What’s the drip part mean, Mr. Flip?” Luan asked.

“It means you pay through the nose and you like it!” Flip said, which I don’t think is what it means.

Inside the tent, clothes hung on racks made of PVC pipe and optimism. And that’s when we saw the prices.

A denim jacket — and I recognized this jacket, it was the one Flip wore when he changed the fryer oil — had a tag that said $400. VINTAGE. PRE-WORN BY A VISIONARY.

A pair of socks sat in a glass case like they were the crown jewels. $250. ARTISANAL. PRE-STINKED FOR AUTHENTICITY.

Luan picked up the sock case, read the tag twice, and said, “Now that’s what I call double the trouble!”

“Double the what?” Flip said.

“Double the trouble — ’cause these prices are two much!” Luan grinned and waited. Nobody laughed. “Get it? Two? Too? I’ll be here all week, folks!”

“Luan, please,” I whispered. “We’re in a tent.”

Flip, completely undeterred, had already moved on to his next pitch.

“This,” Flip announced, draping a stained bowling shirt over his arm like it was a mink stole, “is from my Celebrity Collection. Worn by a beloved local businessman.”

“That’s you,” I said.

“Beloved!” Flip said.

Leni, meanwhile, had found a rack labeled HAUTE COUTURE (DO NOT TOUCH) and was touching everything.

“Lincoln, look!” She held up a poncho that appeared to be made from a repurposed car cover. “This is so in right now! It’s giving... mysterious drifter!”

“It’s giving tetanus,” I said.

“That’s the spirit of fashion!” Flip said, appearing behind us like a coupon-clipping ninja. “That poncho is a steal at $600.”

“Six hundred dollars?!” I said. “Flip, that has a license plate number Sharpied on it!”

“Provenance!” Flip said. “It adds value!”

Luan held up a T-shirt that said I SURVIVED FLIP’S DRIP AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS $180 T-SHIRT.

“Hey,” Luan said, “at least this one’s honest.”

“That’s the irony line,” Flip said. “Very popular with the youths.”

“Mr. Flip,” Luan said sweetly, “can I ask where you source your inventory?”

“Top fashion houses of Europe!” Flip said.

“Flip,” I said, “that rack is full of your old Food & Fuel uniforms.”

“European inspired!” Flip said without missing a beat.

Here’s the thing about my sister Leni: she is the kindest person I know, she once cried because a mannequin looked cold, and she has absolutely no ability to tell when she’s being scammed. Which is why what happened next was so surprising.

Leni went quiet. She walked slowly down the PVC-pipe racks, past the $400 visionary jacket and the $250 artisanal socks, and she started pulling things out. Not the “designer” stuff. The actual junk — a plain white tee from the bottom of a bin, a denim skirt with a ketchup stain shaped a little bit like Michigan, a scarf that was definitely once a mop head.

“Lincoln,” she said, eyes shining, “give me twenty minutes and the accessory wall.”

“Leni, no —”

“Twenty minutes!”

I don’t know what happened in that tent. I think Leni entered some kind of fashion fugue state. She borrowed Luan’s sewing kit (Luan carries one for “emergency whoopee-cushion repairs”), she cut, she tied, she knotted, she layered. When she emerged, she was wearing an outfit that genuinely, actually looked amazing — an asymmetrical top, a distressed skirt, the ex-mop scarf tied like something from a magazine.

Flip stared. “That’s... that’s my inventory.”

“Was,” Leni said. “Now it’s a look.”

A crowd had gathered — word travels fast in Royal Woods when someone’s getting scammed, because everyone wants to watch. Mrs. Johnson from down the street took one look at Leni and said, “How much for that?”

Flip’s eyes turned into dollar signs so fast I heard a cash register sound that wasn’t there. “For you? A thousand dollars!”

“I’ll give you forty,” Mrs. Johnson said.

“Sold!” Flip said, snatching the bills.

“Flip!” I said. “You just sold Leni’s outfit for forty bucks after trying to charge six hundred for a car-cover poncho!”

“Forty dollars is forty dollars!” Flip said. Then he looked at the crowd, looked at Leni, and did some quick math on his fingers. “New business model!” he announced. “Flip’s Drip now offers... uh... the Leni Experience! You bring the junk, the blonde makes it fashion! Ninety-nine ninety-nine!”

“Flip, that’s my sister, not a service.”

“Family discount!” Flip said. “Eighty-nine ninety-nine!”

By five o’clock, the tent was empty, the racks were bare, and Flip was sitting on an overturned milk crate counting his money and crying a little.

“Best day of my life,” he sniffled. “And the worst. I’m rich in spirit and poor in inventory.”

“Flip,” Luan said, patting his shoulder, “don’t cry over spilled milk. Or in your case, spilled nacho cheese.”

“Did you learn anything today, Mr. Flip?” Leni asked.

“Yeah,” Flip said. “Fashion is a scam, and I’m the best at scams.”

“That’s... not the lesson,” I said.

“Then what’s the lesson, Linc?”

I thought about it. “That my sister can make anything look good, your prices were criminal, and Luan’s puns remain undefeated.”

“Now that’s what I call a wrap!” Luan said. “Get it? Like a wrap skirt? And we’re wrapping up?”

“We got it,” everyone said.

As we walked home, Leni was sketching in her notebook, already designing her own line. “I’m calling it Leni Loud Originals,” she said. “No scams. Just fashion.”

“That’s my girl,” I said. “Hey — what did you do with the forty dollars?”

Leni smiled. “Donated it to the animal shelter. Flip doesn’t know.”

“Doesn’t know what?” Flip called from behind us. He’d followed us halfway home trying to sell Luan a “gently haunted” fedora.

“Nothing!” we all said at once.

And that was the grand opening — and grand closing, since the tent collapsed that night under the weight of its own sign — of Flip’s Drip. Royal Woods’ hottest fashion destination. Open one day. A legend forever.

Or at least until Flip’s next idea, which he told us is a combination escape room and DMV.

We’re doomed.