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And the aunts said Yes, of course you can.

After a few weeks, the baby—Lily, the city records said—began to smile and drool whenever Cora showed up. Cora helped the aunts and uncles and auntcles change Lily’s clothes, give her baths, feed her bottles of formula, and so on. There had been babies at Heartwise from time to time, but none that had been this small, and none that had stayed, in Cora’s remembering. She quickly learned that small babies were not easy. Lily cried a lot, and sometimes it was annoying, and she also did a lot of things that were very, very gross. But Cora liked hanging out with Lily, and it was clear Lily liked it right back. “She always cheers up when she sees you,” Aunt Maisie said, and that made Cora feel really good.

Formula eventually got switched out for mashed peas and sweet potatoes, and Lily held Cora’s fingers in her pudgy fist as she toddled through the hallways. Mashed peas made way for myco nuggets and cheesy toast, and Lily ended up in Cora’s bed when the rain was too loud. Lily followed Cora everywhere. Lily told Cora jokes that made no sense. Lily told Cora that she was, quote, “the best one in the whole house.” Lily told Cora that Thomas was being mean to her, and ohhhh boy, Cora got in trouble when she tugged Lily’s toy bunny out of his hands harder than she meant to and he hit the floor and split his lip so bad he needed stitches. Big kids were supposed to know better. Big sisters had other priorities.

Despite three squares a day and snacks in between, Lily was a real scrawny kid, all lanky limbs that looked like they’d blow away in a stiff breeze. One time, some of the kids were lying on their stomachs around the radio, listening to Myth and Magic, and the Storyteller described a new character as skinny as a twig.

“What’s a twig?” one kid asked.

Another kid pointed. “Like Lily!” he said.

From that moment on, the name stuck. Cora asked Lily, privately, if she liked the other kids calling her Twig. Lily considered, then said, “Yes, it’s good. I don’t know anybody else named Twig.” Cora asked her who else she knew that was named Lily. “Oh, you know,” the kid answered obliquely. “Other people.” No further explanation was ever given, but Twig began to correct people when they called her Lily, and so Twig it was.

Cheesy toast would always remain cheesy toast in the hearts of everyone who ate it, but along came broccoli and spinach and all the other things big kids had to eat. But Cora was no longer a big kid. Cora was sixteen, hiding in a supply closet and sobbing her way through her first heartbreak. Twig found Cora there as she blew her nose into a cleaning rag over a girl from school she’d passionately adored for the adolescent eternity of seven solid months before learning that the only person she’d ever love ever in her whole life had been seen making out with multiple other classmates on multiple occasions. Twig did not fully grasp the situation, but she departed for a short while, then returned with a pack of shelf cake and two bottles of soda stolen from the party pantry. She sat down on the floor and said, through a mouthful of missing teeth, “Life is hard, sometimes.” With the gravity of a factory worker counting regrets at a bar, she then slammed a too-big gulp of soda that came straight back out her nose.

Cora would’ve fought god for Twig. Simultaneously, Twig was a tremendous pain in the ass.

Her bedraggled twenty-two-year-old sister stood before her now, behind the thick window in the Flytown gatehouse. This was an in-between space, a space where delivery workers could drop stuff off without having to shed their outer gear. On the safe side of the window, Cora stood clad in her light indoor clothes and slip-on shoes. On the other side—indoors but not cleaned off yet—Twig fidgeted, droplets of rain clinging to her barrier clothes, her boots, her goggles, her breathing mask, and, most notably, the backpack that looked ready to bust at the seams.

Cora eyed Twig up and down. “What did you do?” she asked through the speaker panel.

“I didn’t do anything,” Twig mumbled, not looking up.

Cora stuck her hands in her pockets and raised her eyebrows.

“Really!” Twig insisted.

Cora squinted. “So you just . . . got kicked out for no reason.”

“I didn’t say I—look, Scooter needed a place to crash for a few days—”

“Who is Scooter?”

“From Chapter 252.”

“What is—” Cora made a snap decision to not care about whatever the fuck Chapter 252 was. She was already tired. “Whatever. Scooter?”

“Yeah, he was staying on the couch for a bit, and he started hooking up with Em”—a roommate—“and, like, Avery”—another roommate—“didn’t like that—”

“Why?”

“Because Scooter and Em were being loud.”

“Tacky, but who cares?”

“That’s what I said, but, like, Avery works an early shift, so—”

“Oh, yeah, no, that’s fair, then.”

“Whatever. The point is, Avery was pissed about it, and they told Gaby”—the landlady—“that Scooter sells spike, and Gaby was—”

“Hold up,” Cora said. “I’m sorry, Scooter sells spike?”

Twig let out a sigh more befitting of someone in her tweens than the start of her twenties. “Not to me.”

“Why are you friends with a spike dealer?”

“Because he’s cool? I like him? Why does anyone make friends? And since when are you a cop?”