“Well I don’t care about the past, his or anybody else’s. I care about now, about the present. Just butt out, okay? You’re a loner and a weirdo and you want me to be the same way.”

“Charlie, that’s not true.”

“It is true. You’re just jealous because I belong here and you don’t.”

Alice opened her mouth to reveal the truth about Richard, but no words came out. And in that moment, she realized that she wouldn’t be the one telling Charlie. Not out of kindness to Charlie, out of fear for herself. She and Charlie had already moved so far apart since they’d arrived in Serenity Point, and it had only been a few weeks. The bond between them was fragile, and weakening by the day. If Charlie knew how frayed family ties had become, that they weren’t even full sisters, that bond might break completely.

Alice closed her mouth. Wanted to close her ears, too, but she couldn’t, so she closed her eyes instead. When she opened them, Charlie was gone, off the deck, already moving down to the beach and over to the towel shared by Jude and Cybill, her back a smooth blank, the tattoo edited out by a Band-Aid. As Alice watched Charlie drop down beside them, accepting their gestures of comfort, a thought occurred to her: she’d gained a dead sister, but lost a living one.

Then a second thought occurred to her, this one causing her stomach to get that weak, fluttery, altitude-displaced feeling it got when she was flying and the plane hit an air pocket:

It had been Camilla’s intention from the beginning to separate the girls.

Camilla, she understood, wanted Alice to herself. That had been the plan all along and Alice had fallen victim to it. She’d been played by Camilla as thoroughly as any dumb, hormone-addled boy. The monstrousness of this realization overwhelmed her. She suddenly recalled Cybill’s words from that night at the club: Nobody beats Camilla. She’s stronger than anybody, above ground or below it. Alice leaned on the railing of the deck and looked out.