Boring is okay with me. Boring is safe. Boring is your sister coming home from school like you expect her to.

“What’s this?” Grams says. She’s been idling on the porch, whereas Dad and I have already made it halfway down the driveway to where Dad’s car is parked. She picks up a cardboard box. There’s a thick piece of duct tape running diagonally across it to keep it shut. “Sweet pea, it has your name on it. Must be a birthday present.”

I give her a confused look. There’s no one besides Grams or Dad who would get me a birthday present. Maybe Owen. My stomach flips a little at that thought and then I feel guilty. Now, of all times, it’s not right for my body to be doing the new fizzy thing it does when I think of him.

Grams studies the box, holding it out toward me. I know exactly who the box is from the moment I see the chunky handwriting that slopes to the left. A sticky knot forms in my throat.

Grams must recognize the handwriting too because she says, “Oh, it’s from Quinn. Did you invite her to come with us to Pete’s?” Grams asks. She casts a quick glance toward Quinn’s house, which is right next door, like it has always been, even though I’ve spent the last ten months trying to pretend like it doesn’t exist.

I shake my head. I can’t bring myself to say words. Grams should know I didn’t invite Quinn. I haven’t talked to her since that day.

The day Mabel died. November 11.

Dad clears his throat. “You could’ve invited her.”

I know I’m about to get another big lecture from Dad and Grams about how I should still be friends with Quinn McCauley. The conversation always goes the same way: they tell me that I shouldn’t hold what Quinn’s brother did against her, that Mabel wouldn’t want me to punish Quinn.

The thing is, though, deep down, I think Mabel would hold a grudge against Quinn, and she’d expect me to, too.

It’s not that my sister was mean or anything, but she was what grown-ups call “a force.” When she got mad, she stayed mad. Even about silly, stupid things. She never forgave David Wilkes for breaking the ceramic bird she made in second grade, and she never forgave Addison Taylor for wearing the exact same red glittery dress as her to the eighth-grade end-of-the-year dance.

Mabel wasn’t always nice. She got mad a lot. Those two things are facts. You simply can’t argue with them.

That’s one of the things I hate the most about Mabel being gone. People want to remember her differently, perfectly. She was Mabel, my sister, my favorite person in the whole world, but she wasn’t perfect. I want to remember her as she was. My memory of my sister is a triangle, made up of bold lines but also sharp angles, and everyone else wants to remember her as a boring and simple circle.