“It means Grandma asks questions that are none of her business,” I say hastily, pushing my chair in. I take my plate to the kitchen and leave it in the sink; I’ll do it later. Right now I need to act as Juniper’s bodyguard, just to make sure she doesn’t get sucked into the Milano vortex.

She’s just stepped inside by the time I get to the front door. She smiles at me before noticing the rest of the family seated at the dining room table.

“Hi,” she says, giving them a little wave. Then she turns to Caroline. “Thanks for letting me stop by.”

“Of course,” Caroline says, waving the thanks away. “This is where I keep some of my old clothes that don’t fit anymore. It was my room growing up. Come on back!”

I follow Juniper and Caroline into Caroline’s old bedroom, watching in bemusement as they chatter like the oldest of friends. When did they get so close? How did that happen?

It makes me a little nervous. Does Caroline know any deep, dark secrets of mine? Do I have any of those? Things I don’t want Juniper to know?

My stomach tightens as I realize I do, in fact, have a secret like that. Crap. I don’t think Caroline knows, though.

I breathe a sigh of relief. We should be good.

Caroline’s childhood bedroom is an ode to the night sky—a deep purplish-blue comforter with faded silver stars, light purple walls, some sort of funky plastic night light in the shape of a crescent moon. She did to her bedroom what I never bothered doing to mine: gave it personality. Only as I got older did I appreciate my room as a space I could cultivate rather than something merely functional.

The closet doors emit a painful-sounding squeak on their tracks as my sister rolls them open, revealing a decently full row of clothes draped over a hodge podge of mismatched hangers.

“Let’s see…” she says, diving right in. She rifles through the shirts and dresses and pants, clearly looking for something specific. Nothing I can see looks like what she wears these days; I was telling Juniper the truth. Caroline really does stick to joggers and yoga pants and other comfort-first outfits.

That wasn’t always the case, though. It’s a weird time capsule, this closet, a reminder of who she used to be.

Juniper must be thinking the same thing. “There’s a lot of really cute stuff in here,” she says as her eyes follow Caroline’s searching hands. “You don’t wear them anymore?”

“Nah,” Caroline says without looking. “These days I just like to be comfortable. I used to be sort of a fashionista”—she nods at the clothes she’s still shuffling through—“and I did a lot of fashion blogging and stuff. I wanted to go to Fashion Week and all that, but…” She shrugs. “Things changed.”

“What changed?” Juniper asks, and it’s a gift she has—the ability to ask a personal question without coming off as intrusive or invasive. She merely seems curious, her head tilted to the side, hair tucked behind her ears, her teeth digging into her lower lip as she watches Caroline work. “Why did you give those dreams up?”

“I didn’t give anything up, really.” My sister smiles over her shoulder at Juniper, maybe to let her know she’s not offended. “But my little bunch of humans is so important to me that something like Fashion Week pales in comparison. I still love clothes and style and all that. It’s just less important than it used to be.” She shrugs. “One day when the girls are older and need less hand-holding, I’ll revisit the things I wanted to do before. I haven’t given them up—they just needed to be set aside at this season of my life. Oh, here it is!”

Juniper shuffles forward, craning her neck to see what Caroline is digging out from the back of the closet.

“It was hiding,” my sister says. She maneuvers a plastic hanger out from behind the row of clothing and passes it to Juniper. “There’s a bathroom,” she says, pointing across the hall. “Go change and see if it fits.”

“I didn’t know that,” I say once Juniper has crossed the hall and closed the bathroom door. “About the Fashion Week thing.”

Caroline gives me a little smile, one that pulls apostrophe-shaped dimples to the corners of her mouth. “You never asked.” It’s not accusatory, the way she says it, but I feel accused nonetheless—because she’s right. I never asked.

We sit in silence until Juniper returns, the quiet broken only by the soft thumps and thuds of Caroline hunting for a pair of heels on the closet floor. She sets them neatly on the bed when she locates a pair she likes, turning just in time to see Juniper re-enter the room.

And I guess I was wrong about nothing of Caroline’s fitting her.

“As I suspected would be the case,” my sister says, her eyes on my pink-haired roommate, “that outfit looks much better on you than it ever did on me.”

I can only assume this is the truth.

I’m feeling pretty irritable toward myself all of a sudden. In the past I’ve sort of appreciated the weird way attraction works for me; I’m literally incapable of being attracted to women I don’t at least findinteresting. That’s why the Betties do nothing for me. Betty One and Betty Two are objectively pretty, I can tell that much, but I have never once felt actual attraction toward them. I think even if either of them hugged me or kissed me, I would feel nothing, despite the direct physical contact. It’s just how my body and my mind work.

And it seems the opposite is also true. Because even though Juniper Bean isnottouching me right now, even though she’s just standing in front of my sister’s mirror, my pulse jumps whenever I look at her. I feel wired, full of adrenaline, and it’s only getting worse.

If I’m honest with myself, I’ve been intrigued by her from day one. It’s probably why the way she looked in that ribbon dress had me loosening my tie, noticing twinges of feelings that were normally absent.

“All right,” she says, turning away from the mirror and toward where Caroline and I are now seated on the bed. Caroline passes her the heels, which she steps into. “How do I look?”

“Weird,” I mutter, rubbing my chest. It’s an incredibly strange, disconcerting feeling, being attracted to someone who’s wearing my sister’s clothes. Not quite as bad as being set up on a blind date with her, but…still not great.

“Ignore him,” Caroline says, shooting me a disapproving glare. “You don’t look weird. You look perfect. Very classy.”