I tried not to get anxious. But the morning after my grim fortune reading, I woke up to an ominous daily horoscope email. The cosmic warning was loud and clear. Duly noted, universe. Duly noted.

Quaking in my Doc Martens boots, I decided to beg off the party. That didn’t go so well, seeing as this party is my twin sister’s doing and my twin is hard to say no to. And by “hard” I mean impossible.

So even though the universe has all but warned me to buckle up, buttercup, and the air crackles like ozone before a storm, here I am. I reported for duty at the family home—wore a dress, donned my crab mask, made a cheese-and-cracker plate. And now, like any self-respecting scaredy-cat, I’m hiding in the butler’s pantry.

That is, until my sister sweeps in and blows my cover. The swinging door flies open, and I’m caught in a beam of light like a crook cornered by the cops. I stash the peppermint schnapps behind my back and slide it onto the shelf just in time to prove my innocence.

“There you are,” Jules says brightly.

I hiss, throwing my arms across my face. “The light. It hurts my eyes!”

“No vampires in this costumed animal kingdom. That crab mask you’re wearing is scary enough. Come on.” Taking me by the arm, she tugs me toward the foyer, into the jungle menagerie of masquerading guests. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“JuJu, please,” I groan, dragging my feet. We pass an elephant whose trunk clips my shoulder, a tiger whose eyes hungrily trail my body, then a pair of hyenas whose laugh is spot-on. “I don’t want to meet people.”

“Of course you don’t. You want to drink in the butler’s pantry and eat half the cheese-and-cracker plate before anyone else can. But that’s what you want, not what you need.”

“It’s a solid system,” I grumble.

Jules rolls her eyes. “For eccentric spinsterhood.”

“And long may those days last, but I’m talking about my anxiety.”

“Having been your twin our entire lives,” she says, “I’m familiar with your anxiety and its bandwidth for socializing, so trust me when I say this guy’s worth it.”

The peppermint-schnapps-and-hide trick is my social anxiety lifesaver. I’m neurodivergent; for my autistic brain, engaging strangers isn’t easy or relaxing. But with the trick of a couple of covert swigs of schnapps—buzzed, calmer—I find the experience less overwhelming, and my company finds me not only passably sociable but minty fresh. At least, that’s how it typically goes. Not tonight. Tonight I have grim cosmic warnings hanging over my head. And I have a bad feeling about whatever she’s dragging me into.