Olive Torres is helping her identical twin sister Ami prepare for her wedding. Ami has won many contests and is obsessed with hunting down good deals, so that most of her lavish wedding is free or deeply discounted. Ami refuses to let Olive handle her wedding dress, noting that Olive has bad luck, and Olive reflects ruefully that this is caution is warranted. She got trapped in an arcade game full of stuffed animals as a child, and the event made the local news. Olive declares that ever since, and despite their identical appearance, “Ami is an optimist who looks for the silver lining; I tend to assume the sky is falling” (5). Her destiny has seemingly been shaped by her childhood mishap, as she has routinely been surrounded by misfortune.

Olive discovers that her dress (which Ami won in a contest) is bright green and more revealing than she would prefer. Olive’s mother enters, resembling “Joan Crawford if Joan Crawford had been born in Guadalajara” (7). She speaks to her daughters in both Spanish and English, noting that the dress showcases Olive’s voluptuous figure. The twins are surrounded by their many cousins, and the hotel suite is filled with beauty supplies and the scent of hairspray.