“Delete that,” said Lucky.
“Why?”
“Just delete it.”
“What will you give me for it?” teased Troll Doll, holding her phone above her head.
Lucky leapt up and hooked her arms around Troll Doll’s waist, toppling her to the mattress. Troll Doll’s peals of laughter quickly turned to shrieks of alarm as Lucky shoved her down, pinching her wrists together. As her sisters had learned when they were younger, Lucky was wiry but surprisingly strong when provoked. She pinned the writhing Troll Doll beneath her with her knees and clawed the phone from her hands.
“That’s mine,” Troll Doll yelled.
With the phone in hand, Lucky jumped off the bed so Troll Doll could not grasp it back. She found the photo of herself, her pale face and bare chest eerily exposed in the harsh light of the flash, then pressed the delete icon. She went to the folder of erased photos and permanently deleted it there too. Troll Doll raised a hand to her flushed cheek, watching her sulkily.
“You scratched me,” she said.
Lucky threw the phone onto the duvet next to her and began pulling on her jeans. Troll Doll’s face hardened as she grabbed for the device, clutching it to her chest.
“You hurt me,” she said.
Lucky cast around for her T-shirt and pulled it on.
“You’re a fucking psycho, you know that?” Troll Doll said.
Lucky began lacing up her boots.
“Did you hear me?” she shouted. “Answer me!”
Lucky patted down her pockets. She couldn’t find her cigarettes. No matter.
“You’re, like, deranged,” said Troll Doll. “It was just a photo. You have your picture taken for a living, for fuck’s sake!”
“Not anymore,” muttered Lucky.
She grabbed the remainder of her stuff and walked out of the flat, slamming the door behind her. Lucky marched to the tube station, which was shuttered for the night. She’d forgotten that in London, the sleepiest of all capitals, the trains stopped running at midnight. She hailed a black cab on the King’s Road and opened the door, but a memory of the taxi driver from Friday night hit her with a nauseating wave and she immediately waved it off again, backing away down the street. She checked the maps on her phone and zoomed out. It would take an hour and forty minutes to walk home. She stared at the blue circle on her screen, adrift in that unfamiliar patchwork of green and gray, and began walking.
—
It was past two a.m. when Lucky let herself into the dark house in Hampstead. Through the living room, she saw Avery sitting at the dining table in a pool of yellow light, surrounded by piles of papers and several coffee mugs. She looked up as Lucky came in. She was wearing her tortoiseshell glasses, looking intelligent and exhausted.
“You’re up late,” said Lucky.
“Look who’s talking,” said Avery. “Where’ve you been?”
Lucky shrugged.
“Friend’s.”
“You seem to have friends wherever you go,” said Avery.
Lucky frowned.
“It’s a good thing,” added Avery.
“What are you working on?”
“Prelitigation.” She pushed her chair back in a gesture of defeat. “Very boring.”
Lucky walked toward her and dropped to her knees. Without a word, she wrapped her arms around her sister’s waist and laid her head in her lap. Avery’s hands landed gently on her crown. They stroked her short hair, the velvety lobes of her ears, the nape of her neck.
“What’s up, Lucky Lou?” she murmured.
Lucky lifted her head and looked up at her eldest sister. There were so many things she wanted to ask. Why am I like this? Why are you? What is wrong with our family?
“Remember our vacation upstate?” she asked instead.
Avery smiled at the memory.
“I got the worst sunburn,” she said.
“You did?”
“Yeah, and Dad drove all over looking for fresh aloe vera for me.”
Lucky frowned.
“I don’t remember that.”
“Mm-hmm. He brought that big leaf home and we made ice cubes out of it I’d melt on my shoulders.”
