Before her mind had time to go down that particular rabbit hole, Zadie heard a faint ding in the other room. Someone had texted her. Either it was a message from Dustin reminding her to remove “that slimy seed goo” (i.e., chia seed pudding) from his fridge, or it was her little sister, Finn. Her high school graduation party was tomorrow, and Zadie was dreading it. She would have to drive an hour each way from her apartment in Austin to the exurbs of San Antonio just to make awkward small talk with Finn’s foster family, the Andersons. They were nice enough, but Zadie got the distinct impression that they didn’t like her. She couldn’t blame them, really. For the entire first year Finn was living with them, Zadie, who was eighteen at the time, did whatever she could to get her sister back.

With Clarence long out of the picture—he’d left when Finn was three and was rumored to be living in South Africa with his new wife and baby—Zadie was Finn’s next of kin. The case officer at Child Protective Services told Zadie that she needed to provide proof of stable full-time employment before they would even consider granting her legal guardianship. “But she’s my sister!” Zadie had protested.

“I know,” the woman said patiently—or patronizingly, as Zadie remembered it—“but we have to think about what’s best for Finn.”

If Zadie had been a year younger when their mom left, someone would have helped her decide what was best for her, too, but because she was technically an adult, she had to figure that out on her own. Five years later, she was still working on it.

Zadie was on her way to the bedroom to get her phone when a wave of severe nausea overtook her. She sprinted to the bathroom and surrendered the contents of her stomach into the toilet bowl. This was just one of the many perks of her first trimester that Zadie wished she could predict on command. If only she could have premonitions that would allow her to slip away discreetly and arrive at the bathroom with time to spare, not crash into a stall like a college student on a bar crawl. Sadly, the premonitions that managed to sneak by the wall she’d put up were rarely that accommodating.

Her phone dinged again. Zadie gargled some mouthwash, then went to the living room and picked it up. She was surprised to find that both texts were from Finn (she usually forgot to text Zadie back). The first one read:

SWIMSUIT SHOPPING NOW. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON SUN HATS?

LIKE, DO PEOPLE REALLY WEAR THEM OR ONLY IN MOVIES?

Then, three minutes later:

TOO LATE. I BOUGHT THE BIGGEST ONE IN THE STORE AND I LOVE IT.