“I don’t think you need to worry about it,” Natalia chirped, bouncing a little in the bus seat across the aisle from Zoe and Emma. “From what I hear, Malcolm and Charlotte are going strong. They were holding hands when they left school.”

Beside her, Caitlin shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think they have a lot in common. Charlotte’s so perky and Malcolm’s all quiet and mysterious.”

Natalia rolled her eyes. “That’s the point,” she told Caitlin. “Didn’t you ever hear that opposites attract?”

“Anyway, Malcolm and Charlotte are not your problem,” Emma said sensibly. “Charlotte chose to go after Malcolm, and either things will work out between them or they won’t. Not every couple lasts forever, especially in middle school.”

Zoe sighed. Charlotte and Malcolm never would have gotten together if it hadn’t been for her. “Giving people advice is a real responsibility,” she said. Natalia and Caitlin glanced at each other, smirking, and Zoe stiffened. “Well, it is.”

“Okay, then,” Natalia said mildly. The bus was coming up to their stop, and she and Caitlin started gathering up their stuff. “Are you guys coming?”

Zoe shook her head. “Tell Mom I’m at Emma’s and I’ll be back for dinner, okay? Caitlin, you’re staying for dinner at our place, right? I’ll see you later.”

“Okay,” Natalia said amiably, and Caitlin waved good-bye.

Zoe watched as her twin and Caitlin climbed off the bus, and then turned to Emma. “So, you think Charlotte and Malcolm are okay?”

Emma sighed. “Like I said, whether they are or not, I don’t think it’s your fault, Zoe. You’re getting kind of obsessive about this.”

“I guess.” The bus rattled to a stop at Emma’s corner, and the girls grabbed their backpacks and climbed off. As they headed for Seaview House, Zoe tried to explain. “I really like giving advice,” she told Emma, who nodded in agreement. “But if the advice I’m giving isn’t good, aren’t I hurting people?”

They walked across the lawn to Seaview House without talking much, frost-covered grass crunching under their feet. Spring was coming, every day a little warmer than the last, but it was still so cold at night. Zoe huddled more deeply into her jacket.

“Well, they don’t have to take our advice,” Emma said at last, as they pushed open the front door of the bed-and-breakfast. “We just have to do the best we can.”

The warmth of the inn felt like a welcoming embrace after the cold outside. The stained glass–shaded lamps by the couches in the front room were lit against the darkening afternoon, and they gave a rosy, peaceful glow to the whole room. The B and B guests were doubtless all out and about in town, but Zoe could hear Emma’s dad chopping something in the kitchen.

Grandma Stephenson was tidying the living room, reshelving books that guests had pulled out of the bookcases. She turned when they came in and smiled. “Two of my favorite granddaughters,” she said, and Zoe and Emma hurried over to hug her.

“I haven’t seen you for almost a week, sweetheart. You were at brunch, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to you,” she said, smoothing Zoe’s hair back from her forehead. She peered into Zoe’s face questioningly, her eyes the same shade of light blue as Emma’s. “You look a little tired. Are you getting enough sleep?”

“Sure,” Zoe said. “Just a long day at school.”

“I see,” Grandma Stephenson said, her gaze sharp. “Well, I’m sure Emma will cheer you up.”

Emma grinned. “Naturally.”

“But first,” Grandma went on, “I suggest we repair to the kitchen. Your father”—she looked at Emma—“has spent the day experimenting with new cookie recipes. He’ll need our help to test them.”

“Well,” Zoe said, considering, “if it’s to help the family business.” She pushed away the worried, tight feeling she’d been carrying around since she saw Charlotte and Malcolm arguing in the cafeteria. She was here, in the house her family had lived in for generations, people she loved all around her, and she could smell the lingering scent of baking cookies now. Those worries might hover at the back of her mind, but what could she do about Charlotte and Malcolm now? She might as well eat cookies.

“Ugh, I’m still so full,” Zoe said an hour later, flopping down on Emma’s bed. The cookies had been terrific: crispy light ginger biscuits, rich shortbreads, and refreshing tiny bites filled with lemon curd. She and Emma had been able to weigh in with total confidence that Uncle Brian should add them all to the afternoon tea hour for guests. But they’d eaten way too many.

After they’d eaten as many cookies as they could possibly hold, Zoe had painted a last few details on Hatshepsut’s cardboard sarcophagus, which was due the next day—the oral report was all prepared—and they’d gone through some advice questions. It looked like Caitlin had gone back over Natalia’s constructions, neatening the corners of the sarcophagus and brushing gold paint around the edges of the tomb itself. It was exactly like Caitlin, Zoe thought, to go back and adjust other people’s work to fit her standards, but Zoe had to admit it looked good. Now she had the comfortable feeling of having met all her responsibilities and having the rest of the afternoon and night guiltlessly free.

“I still think maybe we should pick the question about the parents getting divorced,” Emma said, sitting next to Zoe’s feet and leaning back against the wall. “It’s a really important thing to deal with.”

“Yeah,” Zoe agreed. “But I’m not sure how much advice we can give. Like, talk to your friends, talk to your parents, remember it’s not your fault. Parents getting divorced isn’t something kids can do much about; they just kind of have to deal with it.”

“I guess.” Emma twisted her fingers together. “Still, it’s our last show next week. I want to do something really worthwhile.”

“We will,” Zoe said. She didn’t like to think about the show ending and somebody new taking their place. Eager to change the subject, she rolled over on the bed to gaze out of Emma’s windows.

Emma’s parents had made a cozy apartment out of part of the attic when they’d been renovating Seaview House so that they and Emma would have a space a little separate from the rest of the B and B. One whole side of Emma’s sloping-ceilinged bedroom was windows, looking out over Seaview House’s rose gardens and down to the Chesapeake Bay. In the summer, it was beautiful, full of the sweet fragrance rising up from the garden and with a view of the bay all blue and white and alive with boats. But now the roses were dormant, their bushes looking like just bundles of gray-and-brown sticks, while the bay was nearly empty of boats and reflected the heavy gray of the sky.

“It’s kind of bleak-looking out there,” Zoe observed.

Emma wrinkled her nose. “I know,” she said. “My room was really nice before it got all cold and dismal out, but now it’s pretty depressing. I can’t wait for summer to get here.”

Zoe looked around. She and Natalia had helped Emma decorate her room when their cousin and her family had first moved into Seaview House. It was all done in shades of blue and white, vaguely nautical looking. A hammock swung in one corner, piled high with cushions. When the sun had been shining and the bay had been blue, Emma’s room had felt like an extension of the outdoors, like summer. Now the cool, watery colors made everything feel chilly.

But Zoe could imagine the refreshing early spring version of this room. “All you need is some new colors,” she told Emma. “Maybe a light green. Or yellow or pink.” In her mind’s eye, she could see soft spring colors covering every surface, giving the high-up little room the feeling of a spring garden.

Emma looked doubtful. “Pink and yellow together?” she asked. “Won’t it look kind of like a baby shower or something?”

“Wait and see,” Zoe said, scrambling off the bed and onto her feet. “I bet we can find stuff in the rest of the attic.” The top floor of Seaview House was mostly a sprawling storage space full of boxes and chests and old furniture, ranging from the boxes of Christmas ornaments tucked away two months ago to trunks that had belonged to their ancestors more than a hundred years before. Stephensons apparently never threw anything away.

“Look at this,” Zoe said exultantly, a couple hours later. They’d found a lot of treasure in the attic: fluffy sunshine-yellow curtains and pillow covers covered in a pattern of twining vines and flowers, which Emma’s mom had been happy to let them have. They’d run the material through the washing machine to get rid of dust. The real find, though, had been a great carved trunk full to the brim with different fabrics. Grandma had said that it had probably belonged to her own aunt, who had made all of her own clothes and been “a bit dramatic.”

The fabrics were pretty dramatic, that was for sure. Zoe and Emma had tacked up swaths of shimmering silk in different shades of green, and Zoe had managed to fasten a huge piece of pink silk across the ceiling, where it billowed like a cloud.

“It looks amazing,” Emma agreed. She and Zoe grinned proudly at each other. The room wasn’t cold and bleak anymore at all—it reminded her of a bird’s nest, perched high in a flowering country garden. Or an Impressionist painting, romantic and beautiful. Magical.

Maybe I should be an interior decorator, she thought: A cool one who’s very artistic.

She could picture it:

Grown-up city Zoe listened patiently as a client asked for help. Her living room was bland and dismal: Coming home didn’t make her happy. But Zoe knew just what to do. Soon she had a paintbrush in her hand and was climbing a ladder, painting murals on the walls of the unlivable living room. High white birch trees stretched up the walls, their branches reaching across a ceiling painted with a twilight sky.

“This is perfect,” her client gasped. “Now my house is finally a home. And thank you for your advice on my family’s problems as well. You’ve fixed my life and my living room.”

It was all part of the same thing, wasn’t it? Zoe thought. She could help people by giving them good advice on their problems, or by making their spaces beautiful. Emma was happier now because of Zoe, and so were a lot of the people she’d given advice to. Maybe I’ll be a therapist or an interior decorator or have my own show when I grow up, Zoe thought, as well as being an artist.

Walking home through the dusk, Zoe felt buoyant with pride at how great Emma’s room had looked. She was still worried, though, about the kid who had written in about their parents’ divorce. They hadn’t been able to help with that question, but Zoe thought what she’d told Emma had been right: With some problems, there just wasn’t anything they could do to make a situation better.

Nevertheless, though, this had been a good afternoon. The warm, light sensation in her chest now was the same as the feeling she got when she came up with a really good solution to someone’s problem. She’d used her creativity to help Emma, and Emma had loved it.

It was even colder out now than it had been when they went to Seaview House, and Zoe balled her gloved hands up in her coat pockets to keep her fingers warm. She walked faster as she came in sight of her own house. The windows were glowing from the lights inside, golden and welcoming, and her stomach growled as she wondered what they’d be having for dinner. She was coming home later than she’d planned, and dinner must be almost ready.

Just as Zoe reached the steps up to the front door, the door opened and then slammed behind a hurrying figure.

“Caitlin?” Zoe asked, as the other girl rushed down the steps. “Aren’t you staying for dinner?”

Close up, she saw that Caitlin’s eyes were shiny with suppressed tears and her mouth was in a thin, angry line. “Are you okay?” Zoe asked.

“No,” Caitlin said bitterly. “I never should have taken your advice, Zoe.”

“Huh?” Zoe asked, puzzled. “What do you mean?” She took hold of Caitlin’s arm to make the other girl look at her, but Caitlin pulled away as a car came slowly down the street toward them.

“That’s my dad,” she said. “I’ve got to go.” Her shoulders were stiff and defensive-looking, even from behind, as she hurried to her dad’s car and got in, shutting the door behind her.

What was that about? Zoe suddenly felt anxious and apprehensive: When had Caitlin taken her advice? Was she almost crying because of Natalia? What had happened? Her stomach hollow with dread, she ran up the front steps and into the house, then straight upstairs to the bedroom she and Natalia shared.

Natalia was curled up on the bed. When she looked up at Zoe, tears were running down her face.

“Oh no,” Zoe said, rushing over to her sister and sitting on the bed beside her. “What’s wrong?”

Natalia sniffed and sat up, wiping her face on her arm. “Caitlin was being really mean to me,” she muttered. “She’s so harsh sometimes.”

“What happened?” Zoe asked. Caitlin could be insensitive sometimes, sure—she had been pretty unfriendly to Emma when Emma first moved to Waverly, for instance—but she and Natalia were solid best friends. Zoe couldn’t imagine Caitlin being mean to Natalia on purpose.

Natalia huffed a sigh. “I guess I might as well tell you,” she said. “I’ve been working on an entry for the school T-shirt contest.”

“Okay,” Zoe said, remembering how Natalia had hurriedly hidden papers when Zoe came into the room. “Great. But why were you keeping that a secret?” She tried not to sound hurt; Natalia was upset enough.

Natalia dropped her head onto her knees. “It’s just that you’re better at art than I am,” she said, her voice muffled. “I was kind of embarrassed to show you, because I know my art isn’t that good, but I was excited about my idea. So, I kept asking Caitlin what she thought of it, and she was always like, ‘Why do you want to know what I think? It’s what you think that matters.’” She raised her head and looked at Zoe through a curtain of hair. “But I just wanted her opinion. So, today, when I asked again, she told me exactly what she thought of my entry for the T-shirt contest, and she was mean about it. She was like, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s any good. I think you might be embarrassed if you enter it.’”

“Wow,” Zoe said. “That is pretty harsh.” An uneasy tendril of guilt was creeping through her. Caitlin had said she never should have taken Zoe’s advice. It must have been Caitlin who had written in to the show, and Zoe had told her to be honest and bold, to tell the truth instead of worrying about her friend’s feelings.

Zoe twisted her hands in her lap. “I’m sure Caitlin was just trying to be honest and it came out wrong.”

“There’s a difference between honest and mean,” she said. Dropping her head back, she stared up at the ceiling. “So, then I told her she was totally insensitive, and she got all upset and said I shouldn’t have nagged her for her opinion if I didn’t want to hear it, and we were both furious. Now I’m just really embarrassed. I don’t even want to see Caitlin for a while.”

Caitlin’s a pretty blunt person. She probably didn’t mean to hurt Natalia’s feelings. Zoe still wasn’t convinced that the trouble between Natalia and Caitlin wasn’t mostly her own fault but decided to focus on the immediate problem. “Will you show me the T-shirt design now? Maybe I can help you.”

“I might be too embarrassed to even be able to show you. You’re really arty, and Caitlin made it clear just how bad it was,” Natalia said reluctantly, turning her face away.

“Oh, come on.” Zoe nudged her sister. “I’m your twin. We dressed as peanut butter and jelly for a joint Halloween costume when we were eight. You read the poetry I wrote to the boy I was in love with in fourth grade. If you can’t show me embarrassing stuff, who can you show it to?”

“I guess.” Natalia’s cheeks were faintly pink, but she got up and pulled a paper out of her desk drawer. “See?” she said. “I thought the pearl thing would be nice, because we’re the Waverly Oysters.”

Zoe looked at the paper her sister had handed her. Drawn on it in black marker was a pair of ovals that she guessed were supposed to be an open oyster. Inside stood a couple of smiling stick figures, a large circle between them. Above, it read: Waverly Middle School: A Pearl of a School.

“Caitlin’s right, isn’t she?” Natalia said miserably. “It’s awful.”

“I don’t think it’s awful,” Zoe said. It really wasn’t. There was definitely potential in her sister’s idea—maybe it was because they were twins, but Zoe felt like she could see past the roughness of the drawing to the way Natalia had seen the design in her head, and that design was pretty cool looking. “Okay, your drawing isn’t great, but I think the pearl slogan is really cute for the Oysters. And the composition is nice and clean. You didn’t put too much stuff in the picture, and the eye is drawn right to the pearl. Does it have to be in black and white?”

Natalia nodded. “The rules said the T-shirts were going to be black print on white shirts.”

“Okay.” Zoe could picture the shirts in shades of ocean blue and sunset pink, which would look much cooler than black and white, but the rules were the rules. She looked at Natalia’s drawing again. If it was a little clearer that the ovals were an oyster shell … If the two stick figures were a little more elaborate and it was clear that one was a girl and one a boy … A little shading might make it more obvious that the circle was a pearl.

“I really like your idea,” she said hesitantly, unsure how Natalia would take her suggestion. “But the art is kind of messy. What if I helped with the art, just adapting the images and using the slogan you came up with? We could enter together.”

Natalia bit her lip. “I knew my art wasn’t good enough,” she said.

“But your ideas are good,” Zoe said. “And if you actually want to get better at drawing, you can take a class. Drawing’s just like anything else: You get better with practice.”

Natalia wrinkled her nose, then suddenly grinned. “I don’t actually want to put any work into being a good artist,” she admitted. “It’s not that important to me. You can be the family artist. But I really like my idea for the T-shirt and I want it to turn out the way I pictured it.”

Zoe smiled back and picked up a pencil from Natalia’s desk. “So,” she said, twirling the pencil between her fingers, “we’re sisters. Let me help.”