I don’t need to think when I dress; I never do, not like Juniper, whom I hear swearing and sighing as she pulls yet another outfit over her head in frustration, never happy with how she looks. She gets up a half hour earlier than I do just to get dressed and still ends up being late every morning.
Most people who don’t know our personalities can’t distinguish between me and Juniper. With a black dad and a white mom, we have inherited Dad’s skin. We also have Dad’s brown eyes, his nose, and his hair coloring. We have Mom’s cheekbones, her long limbs. She tried to get us into modeling when we were younger, and Juniper and I did a few shoots together, but neither of us could stay at it. Me because posing for a camera failed to intellectually stimulate me, Juniper because she was even more awkward and clumsy under people’s gazes.
When it comes to how we act, how we dress, and everything else about us, though, we couldn’t be further apart.
I put on a cream linen dress and baby-pink cashmere cardigan, with gold gladiator sandals that spiral up my legs. It’s hot outside, and I always wear pastel colors. Mom likes to buy pastels for all the family. She thinks that we look more like a unit when we’re dressed that way. I know of some families who hire stylists to help coordinate not just the clothes but their overall look as a family. None of us wants to look out of place or like we don’t belong, though Juniper often likes to do her own thing, wearing something that’s not a part of our family color palette. We let her do just that—her loss, though Mom worries that it makes us look fragmented. I think the only person who looks fragmented is Juniper.
As usual, I’m downstairs before my sister. Ewan is at the table eating breakfast. He’s wearing cream linen trousers and a baby-pink T-shirt, and I feel happy we match. A good start to the day.
Mom is staring at the TV, not moving.
“Look what I got last night,” I sing.
No one looks.
“Yoo-hoo.” I circle my ankle in the air, graceful like a ballerina.
Ewan finally looks at me, then down at my ankle, which I’m dangling near his face.
“A bracelet,” he says, bored.
“No. A bracelet is an ornamental band for the wrist, Ewan. This is an anklet.”
“Whatever, Thesaurus.” He rolls his eyes and continues watching TV.
“Art gave it to me,” I sing loudly, floating by Mom to get milk for my cereal from the fridge.
“Wonderful, sweetheart,” she says robotically, as though she hasn’t heard at all.
I stop and stare at her. She is completely engrossed in the TV. I finally pay attention and see it’s News 24, and Pia Wang is reporting live from Highland Castle. Pia Wang is the correspondent for the Guild. She covers every case in extreme detail, providing a profile of the Flawed, during the trial and after. It’s never a favorable profile, either. She does a good job of burying whomever she wants, though, to her credit, she’s covering Flawed cases, people who have made bad decisions, so she’s not exactly trying to glamorize them.
I look out the window. Dad’s car is gone. He must have been alerted to the story and had to take off early. That happens a lot.
“This case has garnered more attention than any other,” Pia says, her face perfect with peach-blush cheeks. She is wearing peach, and she looks like you could eat her, a perfect china doll. Glossy black hair, a fringe framing her innocent-looking, petite face. So perfect. “Even gaining attention around the rest of the world, which is reflected here in the turnout outside the Guild court in Highland Castle, with record numbers of people turning out to support their soccer hero Jimmy Child, Humming City’s best striker, who has led us to victory so many years. And today he is victorious again, as he left the court only moments ago having been deemed by Judge Crevan and his associates not to be Flawed. I repeat, breaking news to those who have just joined us: Jimmy Child is not Flawed.”
I gasp.
“What?” I say. “Has that ever happened before?”
Mom finally breaks her stare from the TV. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I … maybe once,” she says vaguely.
“Not a surprising result when a Crevan owns a share in the soccer team,” Juniper says suddenly from behind us. I turn to her.
Mom’s face looks pained. “Juniper…” she says simply.
“Damon Crevan. Owns a fifty-five percent stake in Humming City, but I suppose everyone will tell me that’s just coincidence. If you ask me, it was his wife they put on trial,” Juniper says. “And that dirty man got away with it.”
Nobody disagrees. Jimmy Child’s glamorous wife had been on the front page of every newspaper for the past few weeks as her lifestyle was thrashed out for all to see. Every aspect of her, every inch of her body, was fodder for gossip sites and even news sites.
“Go to school,” Mom says in a warning tone. “Any more talk like that and they’ll come for you, missy.” She clips Juniper’s nose playfully.
She was almost right.