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by Amber. Mattie bumps into the coffee table and giggles. Someone’s been hitting the rum a little too hard.
    “Oh, hello , lovely sister. So sorry to bother you. But Samantha’s coming to pick us up, and we’re going to a movie.” She slurs her words slightly and laughs again.
    Amber eyes Rollins hungrily. She plops down next to him on the couch and gives him a sly smile. The tiniest worm of envy works its way through the apple of my heart. I don’t know where it comes from, but it annoys me and I squash it by glaring at my sister.
    “ Mattie ,” I growl. “You said you were going to stay here tonight.” My eyes gravitate toward Amber and Rollins on the couch. She’s batting her eyes at him, and it looks like he’s trying to inch away from her.
    “Come on, Vee. All the Poms are going to be there. Do you want me to miss out?” She yanks up the volume on her “poor me” shtick, the one I always fall for.
    Out of the corner of my eye, I see Amber moving closer to Rollins and hitching up her skirt. She lifts a single finger and reaches out to touch Rollins’s pierced lip. “I like your piercing. I bet it feels great—”
    I interrupt Amber. “Fine, Mattie. Go to the movie. But you’d better be back here by midnight. I’m not covering for you if Dad gets home early.”
    A blaring comes from outside, probably Samantha leaning on her horn.
    Mattie pops a hip. “Don’t do me any favors. Come on, Amber, let’s go.” She pries Amber away from Rollins, and the two of them skip out the door.
    The older sister part of me winces at the thought of letting Mattie go out, as drunk as she is, but the rest of me feels suddenly lightened. At least they’re gone. They’re Samantha’s problem now. And why do I always have to be the teenybopper police, anyway? I’m not the parent. I deserve a night to just enjoy myself, don’t I?
    Rollins looks relieved, too. “Should we rewind? We missed the best part.” It takes me a moment to realize Rollins is talking about the movie.
    “Oh, yeah.” I find the remote control under a pillow on the floor. I find the part we were watching before we were so rudely interrupted and push Play.
    I settle back into the chair and pull the blanket up to my chin. After a while, my eyelids start to droop. I shake my head, trying to wake myself up.
    “Vee? Are you okay?”
    I hold up a finger and take deep breaths, but it does no good. I feel that I’m about to go. Quickly, I take inventory of what I’m touching. Chair, blanket, clothes. So I could slide into anyone who’s sat in this chair recently—my dad or Mattie. Shit.
    I jump out of the chair, not wanting to slide into my father in the middle of some gross medical procedure, but it’s too late. I feel myself falling to the floor. Rollins cries out.
    Wherever I am, it’s not the hospital. I’m not at the movie theater, either. I’m in a bedroom—a girl’s bedroom, it looks like.
    The girl I’ve become cries as though someone ripped her heart in half. She sobs, clutching a lacy blanket, wiping her snot on it. Someone rubs her back. The pressure against her skin moves in circles, this way and that. It feels so good. It feels like everything I should have but don’t.
    The sensation calms me, but it does nothing to stop the noise coming out of the girl I’ve slipped into. She wails like a banshee for ten seconds, then gulps in air until it feels like her lungs are going to explode. The pink walls, punctuated with framed pictures of ballerinas, seem to be closing in.
    A middle-aged woman, presumably the back-rubber, comes into view. Her cheeks are full and flushed, and she reaches out a soft hand to tousle the girl’s hair.
    This is what a mother is.
    “Honey, those girls are no good for you. I’ve been telling you that all along.”
    The girl just cries harder. I can barely see through her tears.
    “ Sophie ,” the woman says.
    The realization creeps up on me: I’m inside Sophie Jacobs. What could I have been touching