Lupe’s wasn’t far from the Hopewell, just a few blocks uptown, in the hustle of the Upper East Side. For the whole walk, Marlene swung her arms playfully like a little girl and chatted to Lola about camp. She even turned a few times to try to include Scarlett in the conversation. But Scarlett could now see something cold and steady in her eye. Some terrible plot was afoot. Everyone conspired against her. Her friends. Her boss. Her eleven-year-old sister. It sounded paranoid, but it was true. Hamlet was gone and Eric was gone and she was doomed.

Spencer called and met them halfway, skidding up on his unsteady bicycle. He pulled it up on the sidewalk and rolled it along.

“Audition go well?” Scarlett asked. She tried to make her voice sound normal and pleasant, but it cracked a bit. Luckily, someone hit a car horn and this was lost.

“It was good,” he said, taking a deep breath after his ride and wiping some sweat from his hands onto his pants. “They kept me for a few hours. They laughed at the tie thing. They laughed even more at the oxygen mask thing. They had me read eight times. I’ll find out tonight whether or not I got it.”

The bike snaked and banged into his side, and he had to keep lifting the front wheel to make it go straight again.

“That doesn’t look good,” Lola said, noticing the bike. “I’m glad you always wear your helmet.”

Marlene rushed ahead of them, which was a common behavior. But this time, she did it to get the door of the restaurant and hold it open for them. Spencer stayed behind a moment to lock his bike. Lola went through, and Scarlett fully expected Marlene to move aside and let the door shut in her face, but she stood there, waiting for both her and Spencer. No one else in the world could hold a door open with the bitter determination of Marlene.

Once she had herded her three older siblings inside, she stepped in front of them and backed them into a very loud corner of the festive, red-tiled lobby filled with piñatas and a decorative old-timey red gas pump.

“Stay here,” she said to the three of them. “I want to show you guys something.”

“Did you see that?” Scarlett whispered to Spencer. “She held the door. And when she got home? She hugged me. She showed me her canoeing trophy. She said I looked pretty. She said she missed me.”

“That’s a little disturbing,” he admitted. “Maybe she just really liked camp?”

“Camp does not do that,” Scarlett said. “Unless she went to camp at Lake Prozac.”

“She could be on new pills.”

“There’s nothing wrong with her,” Lola said, obviously having overheard. “She’s so proud of that canoeing trophy…”