For a second, I thought I’d gotten off easy. Her shirt was just an old Waukegan County High T-shirt. It had a hole in it, for cripes’ sake. It wasn’t like it was made of gold. If she wanted to be mad about me stealing a T-shirt, that was fine, as long as she hadn’t heard us talking about—

“And you’re digging up the time capsule,” she said.

I stared at her.

“It’s a long story . . . ,” I said.

“To get the Star-Gazer Twelve,” she said.

“. . . one that apparently you already know,” I finished meekly.

“Abby. Geez.” She shook her head.

I pushed past her and ran home, hearing Jade run after me. I flung open our front door and sprinted up the stairs, wishing I had my own room, but of course, I didn’t. Jade followed me in and sat next to me on my bed, just staring, out of breath, waiting for an explanation I didn’t even have. I opened my mouth and shut it again. He’s giving me a chance. I can get Planet Pirates published, for real. I can give Blair something to be happy about. I can save her.

Unfortunately, none of those things were true, and I knew it.

Blair and I weren’t going to become famous comic book authors. You went to the store and you saw rows and rows of comics, most of them way better than ours. Blair was not going to go to New York City, either, to dance at the Joffrey. Blair was going to move home, where she’d measure her food and yell at my mom and cry in her bedroom. Dr. Leo Lacamoire would take the Star-Gazer Twelve and never speak to me again. It was going to be like last year, but worse. That’s what was really going to happen.

When Mom was trying to get Blair to eat, she baked a lot. She made all of Blair’s favorite things—apple pie with a homemade crust, blueberry muffins, lemon bars so tangy they made you wince. The best were these small powdered doughnuts in perfect balls she’d fry on the stove, filled with chocolate cream. They took forever to make and Blair wouldn’t taste them; she wouldn’t even take a single bite. I ate so many my stomach hurt.

But when you have a sister, that’s what your life is like. On the inside of that sweet powdered doughnut, there is something hiding. Just like in the center of Blair’s story—her story of sickness and Coppélia and destiny—was another story. The story of me, and Jade, and Mom and Dad, and even Obi. Hiding, tucked within the story that everyone else saw, was the story about how we were supposed to go on living when someone in our family was dying. Everyone saw Blair struggling but nobody thought for five seconds about what it was like to be sitting at that dinner table with her.

How was I supposed to be Abby McCourt, really? With no friends, no Blair, and a terrible, terrible lie in the pit of my stomach? Harriet was going to be furious. She’d know it was me, and I had lied to her: she would never speak to me again. Not that it would matter, because the library, the only place I ever loved in this stupid town, in this stupid state, on this stupid planet, was probably closing.