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family’s genes had reverted back to type.
    It wasn’t that she didn’t look like Poppy. She did. She looked enough like her for people to know, without being told, that they were sisters. But somehow, this made it worse. As one of Win’s high school classmates had once remarked, with the casual cruelty of that age, It’s like Poppy’s the designer handbag, Win, and you’re the knockoff.
    Win hung up the hand towel and took a box of Benadryl out of the medicine cabinet, then popped one of the capsules out of its foil packet, and washed it down with another scoop of water from the faucet. There, that should head off the sneezing fit she felt coming on. She put the Benadryl back on the shelf, but she was careful this time not to look in the mirror once she’d closed the cabinet. Instead, she left the bathroom, imagining she already felt an over-the-counter drowsiness setting in, and thinking, still, about Poppy’s beauty. It wasn’t fair of her to resent Poppy for it. She hadn’t chosen it and, if she were to be believed, she couldn’t even see it herself. Certainly, she was almost completely without vanity. Even in this age of relentless social media, she stood apart. Her Facebook profile was of her cat, and she had never, to Win’s knowledge, taken a selfie. Her idea of getting ready for a nightout on the town was brushing her teeth, and the only thing she owned that was even close to makeup was a tube of ChapStick.
    Win padded down the hallway, turning off lights as she went. No, she wouldn’t resent Poppy’s beauty, she decided, coming back into her bedroom. But she couldn’t help resenting her irresponsibility; Poppy’s life was, mysteriously enough, always on the verge of unraveling. And tonight, tonight was classic Poppy, though even by Poppy’s standards it seemed over the top. No warning she was coming. No mention of bringing anyone, either. She’d just shown up, with a cat that shed his weight in fur every day, a “friend” whose last name she didn’t know, and several cardboard boxes that contained the sum total of her life.
    Win got into bed then pummeled her pillow into a more acceptable shape and snapped off the bedside table lamp, before flopping down with a finality that suggested anger rather than sleep. Was it fair, though, she wondered now, to blame Poppy for her irresponsibility when you considered the way she’d been raised? Win, of course, responsible Win, had been raised the same way, but this time, it was she who had been the outlier and Poppy who had been true to their family’s form.
    Their parents had met, gotten married, and produced two children in quick succession, and then, as far as Win could tell, had never done another conventional thing in their lives again. They weren’t bad parents. They weren’t abusive or neglectful—well, not technically neglectful—though Win sometimes thought that between her father’s drinking and her mother’s self-absorption, they had skirted dangerously close to it. But their attitude toward their children, most of the time, could best be described as one of mild surprise. As if, having brought them into this world, they forever after seemed to be asking, not unkindly, What is it, exactly, that you two are doing here?
    In fact, Win thought, tossing irritably in her bed, that was what their father had said to them one morning when he’d walked into the apartment and found them eating cereal at the kitchen table. Win couldn’t remember how old she and Poppy were at the time, but they were young, young enough so that their feet didn’t touch the floor, but dangled off the chipped, wooden chairs they sat in. It was a summer morning, and they were dressed in cotton nightgowns, spooning cornflakes into their mouths when their father let himself in through the front door and walked into the kitchen.
    He didn’t look too great. His clothes