I should talk to Laurel. I know that’s the sensible thing to do. We have to fix this, if not for our sake, then for Mom and Dad’s. The two of us have to find a way to live together, even though she’s exactly the opposite of the kind of person I want to live with.

With Thomas, it’s easy. I can cut him out of my life like a malignant tumor. Of course I’ll still see him at school, but I can tune him out, pretend his existence means nothing to me until it means nothing to me. Martha will be on my side—no question about that. Soon he will be nothing more than one of the “Others,” as Martha used to call everyone at school who wasn’t us. Thomas will cease to be Us and will become Them.

Laurel is family, though, and family’s different. Blood is thicker than water. Even though we’re not actually related by blood. I can’t cut her out; all I can do is learn to live with her, try to minimize the damage she does.

I text her: We should talk.

I keep reading Jeanette Hayes’s book while I wait for a reply. This time I read some of the stories about the other kids. Each one represents a family destroyed. A family like mine, but different. We are the lucky ones. Our missing jigsaw piece was found and returned to us. Who knows what these families are still going through?

Half an hour later, there’s still no reply from Laurel, but I’m not giving up that easily. Perhaps she’s scared to talk to me, worried I’ll tell Mom and Dad. She has no way of knowing that’s the last thing I’d do—that it would be excruciatingly embarrassing to admit that my sister stole my boyfriend. (Has she, though? Has she stolen him? Is he gone for good? There’s no way of knowing unless I talk to him.)

I send another text: We’ll be OK, you know.

I nearly didn’t hit send on that one, because I doubt it’s the truth. And if I’m doubting it, then Laurel probably is too.

I read more stories, more families torn apart, more parents bitter that their little boy or girl was considered less important than my sister. I wonder what it was like for Hayes, actually sitting down with these people, witnessing their grief firsthand.

My phone buzzes with a text. Finally. But it’s not from Laurel. It’s from Kirsty Fairlie: Hey. Am in town. Feel like a coffee? Flying out tomorrow.

We’ve been texting a bit since we all had lunch together. The Fairlies have been doing the rounds, looking at universities and staying with various relatives. I type a reply: Can’t today, I’m sick. Sorry!

I’m about to send the message when I change my mind. I can’t just stay here all day, can I? Plus I’m starving. And Kirsty is nice, if a little loud. It might take my mind off things. So I text her back and we arrange to meet in a coffee shop that’s about twenty minutes away from the library. I put the Hayes book back on the shelf, ignoring the temptation to shove it in my bag. Then I rearrange the shelf so that the book is standing in front of the others, with the cover facing out. Other people should read this book; it’s important.

—

Kirsty’s already there, devouring a slice of chocolate cake. I order the same and ask for a slice of carrot cake, too. Kirsty gives me a look as if to say Greedy bitch! and I mutter something about having forgotten to have lunch. Then she orders some carrot cake, too, and says, “Well, I had my lunch, but it was revolting.”

We talk about our plans for college, a subject that we didn’t get around to at lunch, because that was all Laurel this and Laurel that. It turns out that there are a couple of the same universities on our lists. She asks which one is my top choice, and I say, “Whichever is farthest away.” It doesn’t come out quite right, though; I’d meant it to sound like a joke, like something anyone might say when they’re talking about escaping from their family. But from the way Kirsty is looking at me, I can tell she caught the bitterness in my voice. I try to make light of it and say something about not wanting Mom to turn up on my doorstep every weekend, but Kirsty leans toward me, looking concerned. Her hair brushes over the top of her cake, but I don’t say anything. “Are you okay? You seem a little…I don’t know.”

A sip of my drink buys time. A second sip buys more. “I’m fine. Just tired. Late night.” Two-word sentences, stripped bare of emotion.

“Are you sure?” God, she’s as bad as Michel. I hate people being nice to me when I’m trying not to cry. Hate it.

This time, the “I’m fine” dies on my lips and is swiftly replaced by “Not really.” And the desire to talk is just too overwhelming. It’s like when I talked to Kay, but better because I know nothing is being recorded.

I don’t tell Kirsty everything, of course. Just the high(low)lights. I don’t tell her about Laurel walking in on me and Thomas having sex, because nobody needs to hear that. I do tell her about the book deal and how I’m only doing it for Laurel’s sake and how does she repay me? By kissing my boyfriend.

“Holy shit!” Kirsty says, sitting back in her chair. “That is fucked up.” And I swear I could kiss her right now. It’s such a relief to be talking to someone who isn’t Laurel or Thomas or even Martha, and to have her say exactly what I’ve been thinking: it is fucked up. “What did you do to them?” Her eyes are wide, and her expression is sort of gleeful, but I don’t really mind.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I can tell you something for nothing…if it had been my sister and my boyfriend, I’d have given her a good slap and kicked him in the nads. At the very least, there would have been a drink chucked in someone’s face.”

“Um…I didn’t really do anything. Just…you know…said some stuff.”

Kirsty’s disappointed. “Like what?”

I’m too embarrassed to say. “Just…stuff.”

“Aw, girl, you didn’t cry, did you?”

I nod.

She shakes her head sadly. “Ah well, can’t be helped. No use crying over spilled tears. You dumped him on the spot, though, right? Tell me you did that, at least?”

I nod again. Someone seems to have pressed my mute button.

“Thank fuck for that. Bastard.”

I clear my throat. “I’m more angry with her than him.” It feels shameful to admit this, as if it’s a betrayal of my sex.

“I don’t blame you. He’s just some guy, right? Like, I’m sure you love—loved, past tense, thank you very much—him and everything, but he’s just a guy. She’s your sister. Nothing should come between you two. Blood is—”

“Don’t say it. Please, don’t say it.”

Kirsty sits back, shoves some more cake in her mouth. I’m grateful for the pause in her ferocity, however brief it might be. It turns out to be very brief, because she starts talking again before she’s swallowed her second bite of her second slice of cake. “I can’t believe it. I mean, you’d have thought…”

“Thought what?”

She looks down, carving off a mountainous slice of cake with her fork. “Nothing…It’s just…I dunno. You’d have thought getting with a guy would be the last thing on her mind, after all that…y’know.”

I nod again. Kirsty might be a little over the top, but she definitely talks sense. She narrows her eyes, thinking hard. “Unless she just wanted to…I don’t know, experiment or something? Like to see if it was okay, kissing a guy who wasn’t going to torture her and rape her or whatever?” She winces, reaches out to touch my hand. “Sorry, that was…Sorry.”

I turn that thought over in my mind. An experiment. I suppose if you were going to conduct such an experiment, Thomas would be a good option. And for Laurel, the only option. She doesn’t know any other boys our age. Boys my age, actually. Thomas is nineteen months younger than Laurel.

It’s an interesting theory; the more I think about it, the more I like it. If Laurel just wanted to kiss a boy to see whether she could do it without freaking out or having flashbacks or something, it would still be wrong. I mean, you can’t just go around kissing other people’s boyfriends like that. But at least it wouldn’t be as wrong. I realize I’m desperate to find a way for this to be okay. I don’t want to hate my sister. I would love to have a decent reason to not hate her.

“Maybe that’s it….” I take another bite of cake, and for the first time, it doesn’t feel like it wants to lodge itself in my esophagus.

“Of course, she could just be a massive slut,” she says with a sly grin.

“Kirsty!” I have to act shocked—I can’t not.

“Sorry! I forgot you’re not supposed to say anything bad about people like her. Victims. It must be pretty cool, actually. She gets a free pass to be a total dick for the rest of her life, doesn’t she?”

I know I should say something to defend my sister. Kirsty is practically a stranger to me; there should be no question about where my loyalty lies. But it’s so nice to talk to someone who doesn’t think Laurel is a fucking saint for a change. It’s a breath of fresh air in the fetid stink that my life has become.

“Anyway, at least your sister has half a brain—even if she was schooled by a psycho rapist. Bryony is as dumb as a brick. You should hear some of the stuff she comes out with sometimes. You know she used to think baked beans were made of pasta? And for a whole year when we were kids, I managed to convince her that unicorns were real—not that it took a lot of convincing.”

I laugh, but admit that I used to get confused between dragons and dinosaurs when I was little. “Do you think we’d have been friends if your family hadn’t moved?” As soon as the question is out of my mouth, I regret it. It’s an odd, needy sort of question. A pointless one, too. What-ifs are the worst.

Kirsty looks at the wall above my head. She takes her time, really thinking about it. “Yes. I think we would…and then I could have kicked your boyfriend in the nads for you last night.” Her smile is rapidly replaced by a frown. “But it would have been weird for Bryony, I think. We’d have had to let her hang out with us because her friend would be…gone. God, it’s freaky even thinking about it.”

“Did Bryony say anything about that lunch? I thought things between them were a little…weird.”

Kirsty shrugs. “It’s not exactly a normal situation, is it? I think Bry was just freaked out. I suppose she was a bit quiet for a couple of days afterward—withdrawn, you know? I just enjoyed the peace—made a nice change. Oh man, you’re gonna love this…it’s priceless! You know, she actually asked me if I thought Laurel might have been brainwashed! As if that’s a thing that actually happens in real life and not just in shitty movies.” She laughs. “Honestly I find it hard to believe we’re related sometimes. I think she must have been dropped on her head right after she was born. Slipped right out of the nurse’s hands like a greased eel.”

“Brainwashed? Why would she say that?”

Kirsty’s eyes bug out, and she makes a Scooby-Doo noise. “I dunno….Well, she said something about Laurel not seeming to remember stuff. Like, things they did together when they were little, you know? Playing with dolls and stuff. Apparently they had this secret language? That must have been Laurel’s doing, because English is more than enough for Bry to cope with. So anyway, Bry started talking to your sister in this bullshit made-up language, and your sister just looked at her like she was a fucking nutcase. So of course that must mean she was brainwashed.”

Something niggles at the back of my brain, like a raised hand at the back of the classroom trying to attract attention. But Kirsty is so full-on that the hand has to be ignored. “I didn’t know anything about a secret language.”

Kirsty laughs. “Um…why would you? It was secret. That’s kind of the whole point! Poor Bry was so disappointed, though, you know? It was almost like Laurel didn’t remember her at all. And Bry prides herself on being memorable. I mean, she is, I guess, but for all the wrong reasons. I set her straight, though. Laurel’s been through a lot of shit, you know? Shit we can’t even begin to imagine. So it kind of makes sense that there’s stuff she doesn’t remember…from before. There’s only so much a person’s brain can deal with, right?”

The hand at the back of the classroom appears again, but I can’t think straight. “I think I have to go now.”

Kirsty looks taken aback. “Er…okay. Is it something I said?”

“No, not at all. I just…there’s somewhere I have to be. I forgot.”

I can tell she’s pissed off even though she tries to hide it. “Listen, thanks so much for meeting up with me. I feel a lot better about everything.”

She looks at me like Really?

We agree to stay in touch. I say that it would be cool if we ended up at the same university, and I actually mean it. I thank her again, then rush out the door, leaving a half-drank cup of coffee, a whole slice of carrot cake, and a slightly baffled Australian girl.