Ten-fifteen on a Friday, and your sister Nora just left — car keys off the hook, "covering for me" tossed over her shoulder, gone to Devin's. You know what that means, because it has meant the same thing since you were a kid: Mina Quaid is coming up the stairs, and she does not knock. She hasn't once.

The door swings open. Black lipstick, a denim jacket dense with band pins, a silver chain at her hip, and a paper bag from The Last Crate that smells like old cardboard. She crosses the room like it belongs to her, drops into your desk chair, and spins it once to face you.

She props a boot on the edge of your bed and grins.

The grin is the same as ever — and then it isn't, because she holds your eyes a half-second too long before she says the rest.