“Wait till after supper, Kieran,” Morgan answers.

“I’m starving now.” He still holds on to Diesel, who laps at his face frantically, as though he wants to be freed. “When do we eat?”

“In another hour. Let the dog go now.”

Kieran drops his arms.

Morgan whistles and Diesel follows us downstairs to the bedroom she shares with her sister. A brother and a sister, I sigh. She’s lucky. The room spans almost the entire basement, what would be our theatre room. Huge. Like a girl cave. The walls are covered in Wonder Woman posters. The two beds have blue duvets with large silver monograms, M for Morgan and R for Rachael. The R one looks neatly made, the corners even, but the M one looks crumpled, like someone just got out of it. Diesel crawls under that one.

“Hey, Rachael’s gonna be late today because of extra band practice. Let’s do manis and pedis.” She crosses over to the neater side of the room and grabs some nail polish and other equipment. “Look, she has some decals we can use. You think they’ll stay on when we’re swimming?” She frowns at the tiny package.

“Won’t she mind us using her stuff?”

“She’ll never know. We’ll be long gone before she even gets home. Hey, look at these. Little red roses. If you use the white polish, they’ll really pop.”

For sure Rachael will notice twenty missing nail decals. Still, those flowers would go perfectly with my bathing suit. And likely she’ll blow up at Morgan, not me. “Let’s do it,” I agree.

“All right!” Morgan brings a box of tissues over, and we rip and crumple bits to squeeze between our toes. Morgan opens the nail polish.

Diesel pants. Pew! That is stinky!

First Morgan paints my nails. Then she sticks the roses on, slightly off-centre.

“They’re crooked,” I complain. Just like Morgan. She’s always doing stuff that’s just slightly not right, like using her sister’s stuff right now.

She unsticks the one on my big toe and centres it. “Okay, Miss Fussy Pants?”

“Perfect.”

One by one she straightens the flowers and paints over them with clear polish. When she finishes, I paint her toenails orange and stick some sparkly butterflies on them. Morgan paints her fingernails as I lacquer over the butterflies.

“I guess you learned all about makeup and stuff from your sister,” I say.

“Are you kidding? She’s such a witch. She kicks me out of my own room when she’s getting ready to go out.” Morgan places a sparkly butterfly in the bottom corner of one thumb. “Does that look good there?”

“No, place it dead centre.” I stick a rose on my index finger. “Are you putting them on every nail?”

“Of course! It’s a special night.”

I raise an eyebrow as I keep sticking. Maybe we’re pinning too much on this swim party.

For each finger I have a new thought. The thumb: What if those girls only hang around so they can make fun of us? The pointer finger: Supposing Dad doesn’t show for movie night because of my red bikini? The middle finger: Or Mom really does hate The Shape of Water? The ring finger: What if they never get back together? The pinky: What if I die like before and never get to go to high school at all, never mind hang out with these girls?