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“You got your phone charger?”
“Of course I do.”
“What about your Stella wig?”
I laid the last dark shirt into my suitcase, rolling my eyes. “Yes.”
“Extra underwear?”
I looked up sharply, locking eyes. “Nellie.”
My sister raised her palms from where she sat at my desk chair, immediately on defense. “Just asking, sheesh.”
“Hey, a girl needs her panties,” Margot said helpfully, sitting elegantly on the side of my bed. She’d unbuttoned her suit jacket and let it hang open, exposing her silk shirt underneath. The picture of elegance among the chaos of my messy, tornado-ravaged bedroom. Packing for a trip constituted as a natural disaster when I was in charge of it, apparently. Every piece of clothing I touched wasn’t good enough for the first ever trip by myself. Nothing was good enough.
Destelle was breaking out into the world for the first time—I needed somethingdifferent.
That was probably why I ended up packing most of my Stella clothes.
Even though everyone knew about Stella at that point, I still enjoyed wearing the wig and the dark clothes. It was different now. I didn’t dress as her as an escape anymore. We were one and the same.
“Do you think I’ll fit in that suitcase?” Margot went on, tapping her finger along her chin. “I want to go on a vacation too.”
“It’s not quite a vacation,” I reminded her, flipping the flap of my case over. “Most of it’s work.”
“We need to plan a trip for you and me. Bayview’s cute and all, but I want to go to a coast outside this county. Where there’s a beautiful beach, beautifulboys…”
“Ew,” Nellie commented.
“When I get home, we’ll plan it,” I promised, brain already whirring on locations.
Jamie chose then to walk into my bedroom, his eyes darting between all of us. “Mom’s freaking out downstairs.”
“Is she not going to let Destelle go?” Nellie asked, her voice almost sounding excited. I couldn’t help but give her another look.
“No, she will. I think. She’s—well, I don’t really know what she’s doing. Besides freaking out.”
I tugged the zipper on the rectangular suitcase and hauled it off my bed, extending the arm with a sharpclick. “Well, let’s go check on her. Nellie, can you grab my carry-on?”
She hopped out of my desk chair and snatched the bag from where it sat by my closet, hefting it over her shoulder with a groan.
“Hey.” Margot caught my arm to hold me back, waiting for my sister to leave the room. “I’m really proud of you, Destelle. I’m happy for you.”
“Margot,” I said plaintively, wrapping my arms around her slender frame and squeezing. In our time of friendship, we definitely weren’t huggers, but that didn’t stop her from squeezing me back. “You always rooted for me. I’m in your corner, you know. You’ve got big things ahead of you too.”
“That fashion institute won’t know what hit ’em,” she teased, and pulled back to peer down into my face. Her rare bout of affection nearly made me emotional, but it made me realize the seriousness of this moment. Of the evolution of Stella and Destelle, merging their futures into one. “Great things are in store for you, kid. Seriously. Don’t forget to text me road trip pictures.”
“Destelle!” Nellie’s voice shouted up the stairs. “Comeon!”
“Go, before they change their minds,” Margot said with a laugh, shooing me out of my bedroom, following me with my red suitcase trailing after her.
Once we got downstairs, I knew exactly what Jamie meant by “freaking out.” I could hear it clearly: Mom was crying.
“That’s my cue,” Margot said, passing over the handle to my suitcase. “I’ll head outside until the waterworks subside.”
I propped the suitcase up to follow the sound of Mom, and as I got closer, I could hear Dad trying to shush her. “It’s only three days, Alice. Three days. She’ll be up in Grisham Falls—that’s not far at all.”
“I—I just feel so out of control,” she told him.
