“Don’t even.” Cady pushed past Emily, into the house. The television was paused in the middle of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer rerun. “Don’t you even start with me. Get me my notebook, and my bracelet. Now.”
Emily whirled and ran for her bedroom. Cady heard her dresser drawer open and close. Then Emily returned, tugging the black, spiral-bound notebook and the bracelet from a tattered tote bag bearing the public library’s logo. She all but shoved them at Cady, like they would burn her hands if she held them too long. Cady snatched them, slid the bracelet onto her wrist, then riffled through the pages, afraid Emily’s insanity had extended to damaging them. But the journal was intact, untouched. Even the waxed paper she’d put over her watercolor pages was in place.
Cady closed the notebook and clutched it to her chest. “What about my website? Did you do that, too?”
Tears trickled down Emily’s cheeks. She nodded.
“How?”
“A couple of guys in my programming class were messing around with DDoS attacks. They helped me set it up.”
“Tell them to call it off. Now. Bryan’s closing in on them, and if he finds them, he’ll show no mercy.”
Emily’s laptop, the top-of-the-line MacBook Cady bought for her birthday because Em needed it for her design work, was open on the coffee table. She sat down, swiping at her cheeks as she opened iMessage and typed out a fast message. “Okay, they’re shutting it down.”
Clutching her notebook and bracelet to her chest, Cady scrolled down to Bryan’s name in her texts. I figured out who’s behind the DDoS attacks. They’ll stop.
Three dots appeared immediately, then WTF? Who?
I’ll explain later.
She powered down her phone, shoved it in her back pocket, and stared at Emily. Was this how Conn felt all the time, this sick, seething betrayal by the people who were supposed to love you the most, protect you, keep you safe, that left him angry, powerless? For a soaring, heady moment she let the tumult roil inside her, the rage, the frustration, the fear that nearly derailed her professional life. It coursed under her skin until every nerve ending was lit up.
Then a detail registered. Emily’s Hello Kitty flannel pajama bottoms, faded and pilled, way too short for her, even before she rolled them at the waist and turned them into capris. She’d bought those pajamas for Emily five years ago, before she made it and Hello Kitty was a treat, not a fashion icon to study, back when Emily was just beginning to transition from tween to teen.
Her sister. No longer a little girl, not yet a woman, but always, always family. Crying like her heart was broken.
Cady stalked into the kitchen and snagged the box of tissues from the little desk where her mother paid bills and organized her calendar. Back in the family room, she tossed the box on the sofa. “I’m so mad at you right now.”
Emily plucked tissues from the box, buried her face in them, and sobbed.
“I had something. For a new song. I had something.” Words, as always, failed her when trying to describe the ineffable creative process. “I went into my studio to work, to start playing with it, using a melody I’d written down months ago, and my notebook wasn’t there! What the hell, Emily?”
Emily’s tear-streaked face lifted from the soggy tissues. “You don’t understand what it’s like to be me! I’m just Queen Maud’s little sister, stuck in Lancaster while you go off and tour the world and pose on the red carpet and date famous guys. You don’t know what it’s like to be a nobody!”
“Emily, what the hell are you talking about? I do know what that’s like,” Cady said, bewildered. “You know I do. You were there when I was a nobody!”
“But we were nobodies together!” Emily wailed. “Now you’re famous and I’m just a stupid high school kid who can’t even get followers on Instagram. Every time Ella Bergstrom gets chosen for another fashion show or gets another profile, she tells me how great she’s doing all on her own, without her famous big sister’s help. Why don’t you go to premieres with Maud? Why isn’t Maud wearing your designs? I’m a failure. I’m not going to get into Parsons.”
Forget about maintaining equanimity in the face of a rival’s greater success; Cady would have cheerfully splashed bleach all over Ella Bergstrom’s workshop. “But why did you steal Nana’s bracelet, and my notebook?”
Emily blew her nose. “Because I thought if you got frightened, you’d move home again.”
“Oh, Em,” Cady said.
More sobs. “You’re leaving again, so soon!”