“Fine,” Wallis said, throwing the letter on her bed. “Although they were zero help last time. I’ll call, but after I get some damn coffee.” I reached for her arm, but she tugged it away. “Let me go, Daisy! I need to get out. Do you hear me?” We sure did. She was all but shouting. “I have to get out of here because I’m starting to believe all the things people are saying about us. I’m starting to believe that we are slime.”

“It’s not safe,” Cricket pleaded.

Wallis pointed to her open laptop. “It’s not safe in there, either.” Determined, she left the room.

“Grab that letter, please,” I said to Cricket, “and put it somewhere safe. Worst case the police might be able to fingerprint it.” I hurried downstairs and tried to remember where I put my coat. There—over the back of the couch. I shrugged it on, set to chase after my sister.

“Let me get my shoes.” Cricket had followed me. “Hold on! Just let me find my shoes. I’ll come with you.”

I prepared to go out the back, but suspected Wallis had not exercised such caution. “I’ll meet you outside,” I told Cricket.

My assumption proved correct when I pushed open the front door and saw her on the sidewalk below, along with a man in an oversize jacket and yellow T-shirt stretched tight across his belly. He was indignant, accusing, standing in Wallis’s way and slapping the back of one hand into the palm of his other.

“You’re all liars,” he insisted. His face was bloated like a tick. “Where’s the money?”

“Leave us alone.” I rushed down the stairs and stepped between my sister and this stranger. “Get back.”

He talked over me like I wasn’t there. “Shame,” he continued. “Shame on you.” Slap. “Shame...” Slap. “...on you.”

“Go away,” I pleaded, voice shaking.

“I’ve called the cops!” Cricket, now, behind us too. She held her cell phone up and waved it as though it were a flag on the Fourth of July. “Aren’t you men going to help?” Two paparazzi had appeared and were filming us with their shoulder-mounted cameras from farther down the sidewalk. There was no indication they heard her or cared; the one wearing a flat-brimmed baseball hat darted around the shouting man, looking for close-ups, good angles.

“Take a picture of him, Cricket!” Wallis ordered. “I want to compare it to his future mug shot.”

He sneered. “You all should be the ones in prison.”

The three of us had formed a wall, one right next to the other. “Get gone,” Cricket said. “Sad, sorry worm of a man.”

He spat at the ground, then with some crude hand gestures and mutterings about bitches and losers, shuffled away, down the sidewalk and around the corner.