She fell back on her bed, feeling the heat crushing on her lungs. Why couldn’t they live in a suburb where you just got in your car and went to the mall when nothing else was going on…like normal human beings? Not that Scarlett felt like she could have lasted very long in the suburbs. She’d spent two weeks with her grandparents in Florida once, and once the initial shock of all the sun and the proximity to Disney World and manatees wore off, the fact that there was nowhere to walk to except some fast-food seafood place and a pet supply store about a quarter of mile away got a little old.

Really, nowhere was good. Except with Eric. He had both perfumed and poisoned her entire world.

She picked up the box and lugged it down a few more doors to the Jazz Suite, the one room on the fifth floor that was decently air conditioned. She switched on the TV and tried to get lost in a Crime and Punishment marathon.

Crime and Punishment was very soothing—the most wonderfully predictable show on television. Murder in the first ten minutes. Police investigation in the next ten. Wrong suspect cleared by half past. By quarter of, the correct suspect was on trial, and after a surprise twist about eight minutes from the end, all was resolved in the last moment. This is what she needed. Something that did what she expected it to do, that didn’t let her down. Slimy suspects and cops with good quips. It was all balm to her frayed nerves. That is, until Marlene came stomping in just after the real murderer had been fingered.

“I have the TV now,” she said. “I called it.”

“What do you mean, called it?” Scarlett said. “Called it to who? Is there a TV committee that I don’t know about?”

Marlene ignored this. She took the remote control and changed the channel.

“I was watching that!” Scarlett said.

Marlene dropped Scarlett a devastating look over her shoulder.

“Why are you home?” she said. “Where’s your guy? Did he dump you or something?”

There is a limit to everything, and Scarlett had reached it.

“You know what?” she said. “It isn’t always going to work. Not everyone, for the rest of your life, is going to care that you used to be sick. You’ll have to act normal, like the rest of us. Because if you don’t, everyone will just think you’re evil and miserable. I’m not even sure they’d be wrong.”

Even as she was saying them, Scarlett was regretting the words. They were true, but they landed like a hammer. Marlene’s face, which usually looked slightly contemptuous, begin to sag. At first, Scarlett felt a kind of relief that she’d finally made a point with Marlene. Then Marlene began to cry. Scarlett held her stance for a moment or two. She went over and tried to sit down and put an arm around her sister.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Look, Marlene…”