The first time I met my new sister, she threw a hardcover book at my head. 

Chapter 1

I ducked. The book slammed into the bedroom door behind me hard enough to make my new mother gasp, but I barely flinched. At the children’s home, you learned certain useful skills early: sleep through crying, hide emergency crackers, and never stand still when something heavy was flying toward your face.

“Oh, my goodness,” Margaret Bell said. “Hazel, I’m so sorry. Ivy isn’t usually—”

“She’s fine,” I said.

I picked up the book and inspected it. Thick cover, decent weight, poor balance. “Good choice for defense,” I told Ivy. “Terrible throwing book.”

Ivy sat curled in an armchair beside the window, fourteen years old, pale and thin, with dark hair falling over one side of her face. She had not spoken in almost two years. That was one of the few things Mr. and Mrs. Bell had told me before the adoption became official.

What they had not told me was how her eyes looked.

Not angry.

Terrified.

I knew angry children. Angry children watched your face to make sure the hurt landed. Frightened children did something else. They disappeared without moving.

I smiled and sat cross-legged on the carpet.

“Hi. I’m Hazel. Apparently I live here now, which makes me your little sister.” I held up the book. “I appreciate the welcome gift.”

Ivy stared at me.

Behind us, Thomas Bell looked like a successful businessman who had just discovered that wealth did not come with an instruction manual for daughters. Margaret stood beside him with both hands pressed against her chest.

And behind them was Mrs. Nora Pike, director of the children’s home where I had spent nine of my eleven years.

Mrs. Pike sniffed loudly.

“Hazel,” she said, “perhaps you should give Ivy some space.”

I turned around. “Mrs. Pike, have you ever known me to give anyone space?”

“No.”

“You once argued with a locked supply cabinet for twenty minutes.”

“It looked guilty.”

“It contained detergent.”

“That proves nothing.”

Margaret made a strange little sound. It took me a second to realize she was trying not to laugh.

Mrs. Pike wiped her eyes again.

That was when I understood why she had cried while signing the final papers.

Relief.

After nine years of my questions, plans, negotiations, snack investigations, unauthorized talent shows, and one regrettable incident involving a garden hose, three bedsheets, and the mayor’s wife, Mrs. Pike had finally found someone willing to take me home.

I turned back toward Ivy.

She had moved one hand toward another book.

I raised a finger. “Careful. Your second throw needs to improve on the first. Repeating mistakes ruins a reputation.”

Her eyes narrowed.

Excellent.

There was a person in there.

Thomas cleared his throat. “Ivy, sweetheart, Hazel will be staying with us permanently. We discussed this.”

Ivy turned toward the window.

Gone again.

Something inside me tightened.

Later, after they showed me my bedroom—which was nearly the size of the entire girls’ dormitory at the home—I dragged one of my blankets into the hallway and sat outside Ivy’s closed door.

“Hello again,” I announced. “This is Hazel Bell, formerly Hazel Reed, formerly unidentified screaming infant, according to Mrs. Pike.”

Silence.

“I have been informed that you dislike talking. Conveniently, I enjoy it enough for two people.”

Nothing.

“So here are your choices. You can listen to me talk forever, or eventually you can speak just to make me stop.”

A soft thump came from inside.

I leaned closer. “Was that surrender?”

A crumpled piece of paper slid under the door.

GO AWAY.

I found a pencil in my pocket.

At the home, smart children carried pencils. You never knew when you might need to leave a warning, keep score, or forge a permission slip for dessert.

Under Ivy’s words I wrote:

REQUEST DENIED. HANDWRITING ACCEPTABLE.

The paper disappeared.

A minute later another note came out.

LEAVE ME ALONE.

I wrote beneath it:

BETTER. STILL NO.

For the next hour, I told the door every ridiculous story I could remember. There was Benny, who once sold the same ham sandwich to three boys. There was Lisa, who put toothpaste in Mrs. Pike’s slippers because she had heard peppermint kept bad luck away. There was my personal battle with a pigeon over half a dinner roll, which ended with both of us losing when the bread fell into a storm drain.

Eventually, something moved on the other side of the door.

Ivy had sat down.

I knew because I heard the floor creak close to me.

So I kept talking until I fell asleep with my cheek against the hallway carpet.

The next morning, I woke beneath a blue blanket that smelled faintly of lavender.

It was not mine.

Margaret and Thomas stood at the far end of the hall, staring at me. Margaret’s hand covered her mouth.

I sat up. “Do blankets in this house move by themselves?”

Neither answered.

Then I looked at Ivy’s door.

Still shut.

But one corner of the blue blanket had been pushed underneath it.

I hugged that blanket once before I remembered I was supposed to be tough.

Then I raised my voice.

“Thank you, mysterious hallway ghost. This act of kindness has been officially recorded.”

The doorknob clicked.

Not opened.

Just clicked.

A warning.

I grinned.

By breakfast, Margaret and Thomas had filled my bedroom with presents. Dresses, sweaters, shoes, stuffed animals, hair ribbons, notebooks, a pink backpack, and a winter coat so soft it felt as though a cloud had married money.

I stood in the doorway.

“Did a department store explode?”

Margaret knelt beside me. “We wanted you to have choices.”

Choices.

That word hit strangely.

At the children’s home, choice meant which sweater had fewer holes. Whether you saved the crust of your bread for later. Whether you cried under your blanket or waited until the bathroom was empty.

I picked up a glitter-covered shoe.

“Is this for wearing or blinding enemies?”

Thomas laughed.

“For wearing.”

“Seems wasteful.”

Margaret smiled. “You can keep anything you like. We can return anything you don’t.”

Return.

My body went cold before I could stop it.

“You’re not going to return me, are you?”

The room changed.

Thomas’s smile vanished.

Margaret’s eyes filled immediately.

“Oh, Hazel.”

“I know I talk too much,” I continued quickly. “And I ask questions. And Mrs. Pike says I have difficulty recognizing ordinary boundaries, although I think ordinary boundaries have difficulty recognizing me.”

Thomas crouched in front of me.

“Nothing in this room matters more than you.”

Margaret reached for my hand, then stopped, as if remembering that children who had belonged to institutions sometimes needed permission before they could belong to people.

“We are not returning you,” she said. “Ever.”

I nodded, because crying was dangerous once it started.

“Good. Because I already chose the socks.”

That afternoon, I carried half my presents to Ivy’s door.

“I’m sharing,” I announced. “Partly because I’m generous. Mostly because nobody needs this much pink.”

No answer.

I placed things outside one by one.

“Backpack. Too shiny. Hair ribbons. Possibly useful for tying evidence. Slippers. Questionable. Stuffed goose.”

The door opened two inches.

A pale hand shot out.

The goose vanished.

The door closed.

I stared.

Then a note slid underneath.

ONLY THE GOOSE.

I wrote back:

THE COUNCIL ACCEPTS YOUR TERMS.

Another note appeared.

THERE IS NO COUNCIL.

I wrote:

THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THE COUNCIL WOULD SAY.

For the first time, I heard a sound behind the door that might have been a laugh.

Tiny.

Gone almost immediately.

But real.

That night, I found the stuffed goose sitting outside my bedroom door wearing one of my hair ribbons.

Around its neck was a note.

STAY.

I read that word three times.

And for the first time since the adoption papers had been signed, I wondered whether the Bells had brought me into this house for a reason nobody had told me.