Nah starts to hoist herself up, and Nate reaches for her arms, but she pushes him away. “I don’t need a fucking audience.”

“Then maybe stop giving such heart-stopping performances,” he says gently.

“The glass,” I say. “You could get hurt, Nah.”

“Well, at least I’m not dead at the bottom of the ocean.”

I let out a breath. Ben’s hand moves softly between my shoulder blades, up and down.

My sister’s eyes fill, her face falling like an autumn leaf, beautiful—done. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” I glance at the floor, sticky and littered with glass. “I’ll clean up.”

“I’m sorry,” she says again.

I nod. “I know.”

We watch her go. She floats away like space debris into the darkness of the hallway, up the stairs. Gone.

Nate grabs a mop from a closet by the pantry and starts filling a bucket with water. “It’s a good thing my parents are still out. Mom would have blamed herself for this, I bet.”

Aunt Nora has been at a loss, I think, when it comes to Nah. Annie died before she ever got close to being a teenager, and Nate’s always been easygoing. For a minute, I almost tell Nate the truth about Nah, the pills and rehab last spring and all of it, but I can’t. Mom and Dad were always clear: It’s Nah’s story to tell. But what if it’s all starting again? I want her to be okay, and I don’t want my aunt and uncle to regret taking us in.

“Your parents have been amazing. Nah’s just having a hard time. I’ll make sure this never happens again. I don’t want us to be a burden—”

Nate glares at me. “Hush. Burden. You’re ours. We don’t want you anywhere but here.” He glances at Ben, raises his eyebrows. “Do we?”

I knew he was purposefully staying out of the living room all that time.

“No,” Ben says. “Who would make sure you don’t fail out of MIT?”

He squeezes my shoulder as Nate cackles, then steps into the center of the kitchen and leans down to begin picking up glass.

I move to join Ben, but he holds up a hand. “I got it.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Mae, let the guy earn his keep,” Nate says. “By the way, I figured out what’s wrong with my plane’s design.”

“What’s that?” I grab a broom and the dustpan.

“We don’t have enough lift,” he says. “You can have all the thrust you want, but that forward momentum won’t get your plane off the runway or your rocket off the launchpad without proper lift.”

“How do you get lift?” I cross to the puddle in the center of the kitchen and lean down to pick up the largest shards of glass.