I wonder if she’s still getting death threats on her old phone. I check mine regularly to see if Shola or Levi has reached out, which, no surprise, they haven’t. Instead, I’m still assaulted by hate texts: die cheating bitch. The number of messages has decreased; their nastiness has not. I read every last one of them. Sometimes I read them twice. In the shower, I repeat the words out loud under the rush of the faucet: lying scum of the earth, lying scum of the earth, lying scum of the earth.

“You should pack a bag and get as far away from this family as you can. You deserve better than us,” I say.

“Aww, did you just say something nice to me? That’s a first,” Isla says.

“Don’t get too excited. We set a low bar. I assume you haven’t committed a felony lately.” I sit up and examine my sister, who is wearing ripped jeans and an old T-shirt, and looks as underslept as I feel. I mentally bump her higher on my worry list, which is long and overcrowded, and bleats like rolling credits in my brain.

“How’s school?” I hold her gaze so she has to tell me the truth. Unlike my mother, who is after all, a professional, Isla is a terrible liar. She looks away, pretends to be fascinated by the window. My curtains are drawn, and in a burst of paranoia last week, I duct-taped their edges to the wall. No way am I going to fall victim to a telephoto lens.

“Tell me,” I demand.

“Better than being here, I guess. Some jerk vandalized my locker, though.” Isla pretends this is no big deal.

“Who? I’ll kill him.”

“That’s what you need. A murder charge on top of everything else.” She says this with a half-smile, and I surprise myself by smiling back. I hold up the sheet and pat the bed, which is not something I’d normally do, not now that we are grown, and Isla hesitates for a minute. I think she’s going to say she has to do her homework or study or research legal precedent. Instead, she surprises me by crawling in beside me. She feels warm and small and I’m gripped with a sudden fear that this will be the last time we ever get to do this. We used to snuggle all the time when we were kids, and chat late into the night in our matching footie pajamas. But somewhere along the way, like how we stopped playing with dolls or baking together or racing to avoid being a rotten egg, we stopped this too. Without fanfare or a decision.

I imagine it was my fault. I met Shola and banished my precocious little sister to her room across the hall.