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lying, and you don’t have to carry the lie around.” Yeah, right. Good advice from liars. What else had they lied about? Why should she believe them about anything?
    Megan’s arms and legs felt as though they would explode if she had to lie in bed one more minute. She stuck her head over the side of the bunk and listened to Betsy. Deep, regular breathing. She was gone. Carefully Megan stuck her feet out and found the rungs of the ladder. She climbed down, front side forward. Her toes curled on the cold linoleum. She touched the back of the door and felt something soft, somebody’s jacket or robe. She pulled it off the hook, opened the door, and stepped out into the living room.
    The dying fire lit the room softly. The door to the big bedroom was closed. Good. She looked at what she had grabbed. Uncle Howie’s kangaroo jacket. She pulled it over her head. It was as long as a dress. The sleeves hung down like flippers. She crawled into a corner of the couch, stretched the soft fabric over her knees, and pulled up the hood. It smelled like seaweed and smoke.
    She stared through the screen into the fire. The worst thing was the way Mum seemed to expect her to be, like, thrilled. And they were so happy with the way Betsy was acting. When it was only that Betsy was too dumb to get it. Well, forget thrilled. She wasn’t thrilled. She wasn’t thrilled and she wasn’t going to lie about it. She would be polite. She wasn’t about to sulk or have a Betsy-style tantrum. It wasn’t worth the effort. But this Natalie person was not her sister. She was just an accident. Why did you have to include an accident in your family?
    The firelight played over the scrapbooks in the bookcase. Would Natalie want to come here? Would she be writing in the book? Maybe she would want to bring her husband when they were married. Maybe they would have a baby, and it would be one of the births recorded. Hey, hold it, was there anything . . . ?
    Megan did some arithmetic. If Natalie was twenty-four years old, then she was born in September of . . . Megan pulled her arms out of the flipper sleeves and reached over to the bookcase. That was too early. Here it was. Surely there would be some hint. She turned the pages. Records of storms and seal sightings, recipes, some driftwood sketches that Gram had made. On the day Natalie was born, some family called the Gills had been for the weekend and had fed lettuce to the rabbits. Nothing. So these books were a lie, too. All that stuff just closed over the top of what had really happened and hid it.
    Megan let the book fall to the floor.
Fwap.
She hunched down in her jacket and listened. But there was no noise from the big bedroom. There was no noise at all. Just the sound of ash falling in the fire, a whispering sound, a sound like a secret.

Chapter Seven
    TUESDAY MORNING BEFORE school Megan phoned Erin to book her for recess. Erin wasn’t sure. “I wanted to play volleyball.”
    â€œForget volleyball. I need to talk to you.”
    â€œWhat’s happening?”
    â€œTutankhamen’s tomb.” Tutankhamen’s tomb was a code reserved for serious occasions. It meant, “Can’t talk now. Parents might be listening.”
    â€œOkay, see you later.”
    Erin was so amazed by Megan’s news that she stopped eating her cookie in midchew. Erin never forgot about food. “Wow. You’re so lucky.”
    Lucky? “I don’t see what’s lucky about it.”
    â€œGetting to have an older sister. You know Tyler in Mrs. Frame’s class? He has this older sister, from when his dad was married once before, and she lives in California and he got to go there for the whole of spring break.”
    â€œThat’s completely different. He’s known about her for his whole life, right? Not like some surprise. This Natalie could be a space alien, for all I know.”
    â€œSo when do you get to meet her?”
    â€œShe’s