Resting in his oversized bed, her ancient and lovable bloodhound turned his drooping, baleful eyes on her. He made a soft woof, which obviously meant girl, don’t do it.

“You know, it costs you nothing to humor me,” she said, beginning to pace again. “How can you expect me to let this amazing opportunity slip through my fingers? I owe it to myself to try, right? Even if they say no, which in all likelihood they will, I’ll regret not giving it my all.”

To that, Asriel had nothing to say.

“I’m going to Golden Weekend X,” Stella said with finality and purpose. “There, I’ve said it. I’ve put it out there. So be it. See to it. Let’s do this.”

Downstairs, her parents were in the middle of making dinner. They always made dinner together, every night, as if it were a date. Soft jazz music floated from the kitchen, and Stella smelled the tomato sauce simmering on the stove before she even got to the door.

“Parental units,” she said, waltzing into the kitchen with her tablet, content to ruin their moment. She stopped in front of them on the other side of the island.

“What did I say about calling us that?” Lloyd said. Stella had inherited her beady eye shape and poor vision from him. He wore rounded, thin metal-framed glasses that always slipped down the bridge of his nose. He also had an exceptionally loud face—the only thing on the planet that could make her shut up in midsentence.

“Starting today, I promise to banish it from my lexicon,” she said. “I have an announcement to make.”

“Aht, aht, before you do anything, have you finished your schoolwork?” Diane asked. Stella favored her—same height, same shining brown skin, same shoulder-length microlocs that they’d gotten installed at the same time—and no one would have any doubts about their genetic lineage.

She held back her grumbling complaint. “Yes.”

“And you finished unpacking your room?” Lloyd asked.

“Also, yes,” she lied with a brilliant smile.

They had moved into their shiny new house that resembled every other house on their shiny new suburban block a week ago. Lloyd worked remotely 90 percent of the time, allowing Diane to follow her nonfiction author dreams across the country, dragging Stella along for the nightmarish ride. Always moving and always being the weird new girl on the block who never goes outside, never having roots, never being allowed to do anything, never having a life that felt like her own.

Until today.

“Want to try that again?” Lloyd had begun to use the rolling pin on the dough.

“I’m working on it. Unpacking is a very delicate process. It can’t be rushed,” Stella said. “But I promise I will finish soon.”

“Two promises back-to-back?” Diane asked with an amused, knowing smile. “You only do that when you want something.”

Lloyd asked, “All right, what is it, kiddo?”