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self-conscious step I took. When I reached the stoop, I turned back to look at him. He took his eyes off the roof and looked at me.
    “It’s a mess,” he called, “but I kind of like it.”
    Then he honked and waved and drove off.
    I walked through the front door feeling a little dizzy. I stopped in the foyer and looked around.
    Architectural jumble. Well, maybe he had a point. The entryway was even more ornate than the outside of the house—the wide stairway spilling out only a few feet from the front door, the high ceiling with crisscrossing arches, and wood-paneled walls with intricately carved details, like cherubic faces and squirrels and birds and sprays of flowers. It looked like a fairy tale had exploded all over the walls.
    Straight ahead was the hall that led back to the living room. To the right was the kitchen, and just past that, the dining room. To my left was a sitting room that nobody ever sat in.
    What did Carter know, anyway? I went up the long, straight staircase to the dark hall of bedrooms.
    Mine was the first one on the left. I went inside and flopped onto the bed, my eyes sweeping the plaster molding for signs of architectural failure.
    I had to stop thinking about Carter Blume.
    Part of me wanted to develop the pictures from the previous night, but my eyelids started to feel like they were being pulled shut. I gave up and closed them, the delicious promise of a nap settling over me like a blanket.
    I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when I heard my sister’s voice.
    “Now, Arabella,” she said. “Don’t be a pig. You have to share.”
    A pause.
    “I know it fits you perfectly, but she’s new and she doesn’t have anything to wear. Think what she’s been through. Don’t you care about her feelings?”
    Another pause. I pressed my hands against my head.
    “But what if we have company again? You know Sar—”
    I couldn’t take it. I reached up and thumped on the wall with my fist.
    A minute later there was a tiny tap-tap-tap on my door, and Kasey popped her head into the room.
    “I didn’t know you were home,” she said. Her eyes were wide.
    I traced the outline of the bump on my forehead. “Why are you talking to your dolls, Kasey?”
    “I’m not,” she protested.
    “You know you’re thirteen , right?”
    “That’s not what I was doing!”
    “It’s just a little crazy, that’s all.”
    “I am not crazy, Alexis! You’re so rude !” She slammed my door and stomped back to her room.
    I tried to go back to sleep, but I felt a little bad. So I got up and knocked on Kasey’s door.
    She opened it a crack. “I’m writing a story and I was just working on the dialogue!” she said, before I could apologize.
    She backed away from the door, and I followed her inside.
    It had been a while since I’d been in her room. She’s too worried that I’ll break something. Even our mother isn’t supposed to go in there, according to Kasey. If I banned my parents from my bedroom, they’d assume I was operating an international drug cartel, but Kasey’s always been the well-behaved daughter, so she gets away with it.
    I stared at the dolls, which were lined up on the built-in shelves like a sinister chorus. There wasn’t room for all of them—there were more in an old cabinet squeezed between the bed and the window, and half the closet was filled with them too.
    Kasey had rag dolls, porcelain dolls, talking dolls, peeing dolls, baby dolls, dolls in elaborate costumes, and dolls stripped down to their pantaloons (like the poor new girl, whichever one she was). Some were so old and used that their soft, smooth cheeks had been worn to a shine. Some were brand new. Some were half bald. Some were pristine.
    But they were all creepy. It was the only quality they shared.
    I was dying to photograph some of them, but that was just unheard of. Impossible.
    Kasey seemed to realize for the first time that I’d entered the forbidden zone.
    “Let’s go talk somewhere else,” she said,