Heads nod at me. But this time, they also turn. A group of women even stop, and I catch the distinctly round vowels of admiration that float from their mouths. I can’t help preening a bit, tossing back my head and sashaying my hips. Why, this old thing? It’s just something I grabbed on my way out the door.

While I wait for the lift, I angle a pose toward B-47, in case April Hart emerges. One of the lifts opens, and the couple inside stops talking.

“Your dress is remarkable, my dear,” says the woman, a stout madam with a cabbage-rose hat wide enough to take out someone’s eye. “Is it Lucile?”

“No. It is House of July.”

“Oh,” she replies thoughtfully.

I reach E-Deck and button on the vanilla coat. No need to advertise in the third class. Then I proceed to the Collar, glancing around as I remember the skeletal steward with the saddle grin. Seeing a few men but no steward, I take big steps toward the short companionway to Room 14.

The door seems to vibrate with all the noise behind it. I listen.

“Make a fist and line it up with the axis of the Southern Cross, and your thumb will point south,” says Jamie. “No, your right fist. You’ll end up in Timbuktu if you use your left.”

I knock, and the door opens right away. Wink gives me a shy smile.

Jamie is holding a piece of paper to the porthole on which he has drawn five points in the rough shape of a kite. Olly stands next to him with his thumb pointing down. Bo is missing.

“Good morning. Who likes taffy?” I pour the taffies into the lads’ hands, and their faces light up.

Jamie frowns. “Don’t eat them until after lunch. You’ll spoil your appetites.”

“My appetite won’t spoil,” Wink grumbles, but he stops unwrapping the gold foil.

I scowl at my brother, whose hard forehead I can almost knock with my own at my new elevation. “Now you know which one is the fun twin. I also brought slippers.”

I upend the contents of my bag onto the floor. Grabbing the four slippers, I give them a quick juggle, then catch them—the white pair in my right hand, the black pair in my left—and hold them out to the lads.

“Wow, where’d you learn to do that?” Olly takes the white pair.

Wink kicks off his shoes and puts on the black pair.

“Our father taught us.” Ba made sure our hand-eye coordination was so tight, the two parts might as well be connected by a string. Does Jamie even do wake-up drills anymore?

Olly and Wink pace the floor between the beds, trying out their new slippers.

“I don’t juggle anymore,” Jamie proclaims.

“Of course not,” I add smoothly. “What would be the point of juggling coal?”