She’s got one piece of toast and two Advil in her stomach. She throws the whole bottle in her purse and takes one of Olivia’s post-soccer Gatorades out of the fridge for good measure. When she gets to the front door, the rest of her family is assembled, waiting for her. Lulu feels the familiar sensation of being the one puzzle piece that’s out of place.

“Lu!” Olivia says. “You’re coming!”

Lulu returns her little sister’s hug gingerly. She loves Olivia’s enthusiasm—she does—she just wishes it were coming from a slightly gentler place right now.

“I told you it wouldn’t be boring,” Deirdre says to Olivia. “Lulu will sit with you, won’t you, Lu.”

Where will you be? Lulu doesn’t ask. Deirdre really isn’t that bad of a mother, or a stepmother, as these things go. She just doesn’t seem to understand that Lulu isn’t always as wild to hang out with Olivia as Olivia is to hang out with her. You girls, Deirdre’s always saying, like they’re both her babies. Olivia is nine; Lulu is seventeen; Deirdre just turned thirty-five. The math, Lulu wants to tell her, doesn’t work out quite the way you think it does.

“Come on,” her dad says. “We should have been in the car ten minutes ago.”

“If you’d told me last night that I was supposed to be ready—” Lulu starts. She can’t resist needling him, even though she knows it doesn’t help.

“If you’d been home last night, I would have,” he says. His back is to her. The same way that Deirdre assumes Lulu always wants to do what Deirdre wants her to, her dad always assumes that she’s scampering behind him, listening intently.

“Don’t be nervous, honey,” Deirdre says to Lulu’s dad. “If he invited you, clearly he thinks you’re—”

“He invited the whole firm,” her dad says. “I’m the only one he’s going to be expecting to know the prayers.”

Lulu follows them into the car and slumps gratefully into her seat. Of course this is some business thing of her dad’s; some other partner’s son turned thirteen and now Lulu’s being dragged out of her house on a Saturday morning to illustrate how thoroughly, totally picture-perfect his life is. So what he’s on his third marriage? His daughters are growing up beautifully, and his wives are staying young the same way.

Lulu snaps a video of her reflection in the car’s window, just the line of her collarbone and the sleeve of her sweater, sound off. She captions it Will I ever sleep again.