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In short, it was both the best three days I’d ever had, , and a fairly standard ith Charlotte Holmes My sister, unused to this pheno Hol her hair, dragging her away to show off things in her roos were, but fro fro that their soundtrack was LAD, Shelby’s boy band du jour My guess was that Shelby was showing off her paintings My mother had told me that my sister had taken up art with a passion while I’d been away, but that so far, she’d been too shy to show anyone what she’d made

Not that I would have knohat to say to her about it I didn’t knohole lot about art I knehat I liked, what s that felt secret Scenes set in a dark rooirl with her face turned away When asked, I trotted out Reh to be honest, I’d lost the ability to call it up clearly in my head I tended to spend too s, loved them too hard until I wore them down After a while, they becas I actually enjoyed

"Shelby wanted ive herI’d asked if she’d been talking to ht in London; ere leaving for Sussex the next afternoon My mother had turned my bedroom into a study, so here we’d been all week--on a pair of hideaway s stacked behind us like a barricade The sky outside was beginning to lighten One tradeoff of being friends with Holh?" I asked

"My father thought it was an io on endlessly about color and composition, thanks to him and"--she scowled--"my old tutor, Professor Demarchelier"

I propped myself up on one arm "Do youmake art?" It struck me, then, how little I knew about her, how all the facts of her life before this September had come to me either secondhand or in bits and reluctant pieces She’d had a cat named Mouse Her ht book had been, or if she’d ever wanted to be a ist, or even what she was like when she wasn’t wanted for ine she’d tried out other kinds of art as well I tried to iirl in a dark rooht, with her face turned away, but as I watched her, she tilted her face toward me

"I don’t have the skill, and I don’t invest s I’ood A nice sense of coo Art talk Her range is lihbor’s dog"

"Woof is usually sleeping in their backyard" I smiled at her "Makes him an easy subject"

"We could take her to the Tate Modern Too If you wanted" She stretched her arms out above her head In the darkness, her skin looked like cream in a pitcher I jerked my eyes back up to her face It was late, and when it was late, I had these kinds of slippages

I had the, I could adether Her offer had sounded genuine "Sure If you actually want to You’ve been really nice to Shelby already I think you’ve heard enough LAD for a lifetime"

"I love LAD," she said, deadpan

"You like ABBA," I reminded her "So I don’t actually know if that’s a joke Next I’ to find out that you wear a fanny pack in the summer Or that you had a poster of Harry Styles in your room when you were eleven"

Holmes hesitated

"You did not"

"It was Prince Harry, actually," she said, folding her arood dresser I have an appreciation for fine tailoring Anyway, I was eleven years old, and lonely, and if you don’t stop s at me, I will come over there and--"

"Yes, I’ you appreciated, and not his--"

She hit h a oose down "You’re a Holmes Your family’s famous You could have maybe made it happen Princess Charlotte, and the bad-boy spare God knows you’re pretty enough to pull it off I can see it now--you in a tiara, doing that screwing-in-a-lightbulb wave in the back of some convertible"

"Watson"

"You would have had to eneral assemblies You’d have to have your photo taken with puppies"

"Watson"

"What? You know I’rew up is just beyond , I knew it, but I was too tired to put the brakes on "You’ve seen our flat It’s a glorified closet You’ve seen how ht-lipped when you talk about your fao to the Sussex Downs and get sucked in by the decadent, mysterious Holmeses and never come back And you smile politely and bite back whatever you actually think of her, and my sister, and where we live Which, let’s face it, has probably taken a ton of effort on your part, because you’re not particularly nice You don’t have to be You’re fancy, Charlotte Holmes Repeat after me I’oogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">