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"You had soto blow her nose "With Ellie and all the weirdness" She gestures around the roos, the fancy tissue box, too, probably "This And I wasn’t sure, and I felt so duether forever, and I thought I was being paranoid, and I hated that Also--"

"Saying it out loud would’ve made it feel true," I finish, and Isa looks up, her dark eyes wide "Exactly," she breathes, and I nudge her leg with et this kind of thing"

I lean back into the sofa, nearly sed up by the striped cushions "You’re is that are i on with my sister"

My sister

Who’s the reason I’m here this summer

Which, in turn, makes her the reason Isa is here this suone to Key West like we planned?

I alht there on the tip of h and tilts her head to the side

"What are you wearing?" she asks, and I tug at the heray one, at least, but it’s over a white sleeveless blouse andlittle pearl studs in ," I assure her, and she nods, but then her lips start wobbling again

Okay, so scrapping the et ency situation, and hey, I now have some pretty cool stuff at my disposal, stuff I know Isabel has been excited about Why not use just a little bit of it?

I lean forward "You wanna go to the palace?"

Chapter 18

The tour I give Isa of Holyrood is definitely not as thorough as the one the tourists get, and most of the impressive parts are on display for the public, but Isabel, dedicated reader of royal blogs, is thrilled with this behind-the-scenes look We stop in one of the parlors, and she touches a sofa covered in tartan pillows "So, like, the queen sits here?" she asks, and I lean against a doorway "Yup," I reply "Puts the royal buht now"

Alex’s parents still aren’t back from Canada, which, to be honest, is quite the relief Next week, though

No, not even conte that

We leave the parlor and head down one of the long hallways It’s not as cluttered as Sherbourne Castle was--fewer paintings and knickknacks, but then again everything that belongs to the Bairds technically belongs to the country, so rand High stone ceilings arch overhead, and there’s this heavy feeling in the air, like all that history is seeping into the rock

We stop near a thickthat looks down on one of the inner courtyards, watching a line of visitors snaking past The glass is old and wobbly, sa outside blurry

"It’s a palace," Isabel says, turning to ht there in the na slides fro soht in ashe loves so much, made up of different squares of tweed--in this coetI’m so happy to see someone who isn’t a Fliss or a Poppy that I could cry Suddenly, I wonder if this is what Ellie felt like when I’d showed up earlier in the su to be a princess," Isabel says, as if she was just now realizing that

"Yup," I say with a shrug "And then she’ll be a queen, and one day she’ll have a kid who’ll be king or queen, which is actually the weirdest part of all this"