“It was fun,” Naomi says. “Don’t get me wrong. But it was scary sometimes too. There were nights—” She looks at Lulu, shakes her head, and looks away.

“Nights when what?”

“Bad nights.”

Lulu honestly can’t imagine what Naomi would consider a “bad night.” Did she drink three beers and feel the room spin around her? Get ignored by a guy who she wanted to pay attention to her? Have him pay so much attention to her that all she could think about was escape? Has Naomi ever stood in line for the bathroom and listened to someone retching, helplessly, miserably sick, on the other side of a door? What are the odds that she’s ever been that person?

Lulu looks at her sister. Naomi is wearing jeans and sneakers and a worn-in Georgetown sweatshirt. Her long, dark hair is loose around her face; thin gold hoop earrings are threaded through each earlobe, but she doesn’t have on any other jewelry, or any makeup. She has their father’s strong, sharp features, and his seriousness too. For most of their lives, Lulu has felt like Naomi was at least part stranger, someone she’s never really known.

Lulu asks, “What do you mean by bad?”

Naomi shrugs.

“You can’t ask me about mine if you won’t talk about yours.”

Naomi twists her mouth. “I know you’ve probably done it all,” she says. “But it makes me feel like an irresponsible older sister to tell you.”

Lulu snorts. “I will respect you so much more if you tell me you ever broke a rule,” she says.

“Lulu, of course I broke rules.”

Naomi isn’t a stranger at all, and unwillingly, Lulu knows exactly what she means: Lulu breaks dumb rules—about drinking, and kissing boys, and girls too. Naomi broke Lulu’s Rules for How to Get By. She breaks them every day.

She’s not a stranger, but she and Lulu still don’t understand each other at all.

“Whatever your bad nights were, though,” Lulu says, “you survived them.”

“I did. I did. It’s just that—what if survival wasn’t really what mattered?”

“Huh?”

“Like, yeah, I lived through it. I grew up. I’m fine now. I just think it could have been easier.”

“If you’d never been allowed out of the house on your own? To make your own mistakes?”

“If, after I’d made my mistakes, I could have come home and talked to someone about them.”

Naomi looks at Lulu, so level and direct that Lulu can’t bring herself to look away.

“I’m trying to be someone you can talk to,” Naomi says. “That you want to talk to, even.”

“I’m not one of your projects,” Lulu says. “I’m not some kind of self-improvement thing.”

“Of course not. You’re my sister,” Naomi says. She forks a raspberry off of Lulu’s plate.