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Parrish is asleep in a cold silver box. They’ll dig a hole in the ground and plant her on Saturday.
    What about the rest of her, the real Cassie?
    I think she’s coming here.
    Emma goes to bed and Jennifer goes to bed and Dad goes to bed. On the other side of town, my mother stays up too late, but she finally goes to bed, too.
    I cannot sleep. Heat lightning shoots through my skull, short-circuiting the wires. I am cold, then hot, and then I can’t feel my fingers or my toes. Someone is standing on the other side of my door. I can feel it. But . . . no.
    Everyone is sleeping. Everyone is enchanted, pulled under into a dream.
    The moon drips through my window.
    I wait.

    Spiders hatch and crawl out of my belly button, hairy little tar beads with ballerina feet. They swarm, spinning a silk veil, one hundred thousand spider thoughts woven together until they wrap me up in a cozy shroud.
    I breathe in. The web presses against my open lips. It tastes dusty, like old curtains.
    The smell of ginger and cloves and burnt sugar drifts over my bed, the smell of her body wash and shampoo and perfume. She’s coming. Any minute now.
    I breathe out and it begins.
    Thorn-covered vines creep across the floor, crackling like a bonfire. Black roses bloom in the moonlight, born dead and brittle. The web on my face holds my eyes open, forcing me to watch as Cassie steps out of the shadows, briars twining up her legs and around her body, reaching up through her hair. One minute she’s by the door, the next, she stands over me. The temperature in the room has dropped twenty degrees. Her voice is in my head.
    “Lia,” she says.
    I can’t make a sound. Spiders crawl on my face and leap across to her arms. They fly back and forth, knitting us together.
    “Come with me,” she says. “Please.”
    The web locks us into place, staring at each other as the moon slithers across the sky and the stars fall asleep.

    “Wake up, Lia!” Emma shakes my shoulder.
    I groan and bury myself deeper in the warm cocoon.
    “Wake up!” She turns on the light. “You’re going to be late.”
    I open my eyes and raise my hand to block out the glare. I’m still wearing my clothes. It’s dark outside.
    “What time is it?”
    “Duh,” says Emma. “After six thirty.”
    My room smells like dirty laundry and old candles, not spices or burnt sugar. I plant my face in the pillow.
    “Five more minutes.”
    “You have to get up now.” She drags the comforter off me. “Mommy said.”
    “Hey! It’s cold.”
    “Don’t yell; Mommy has a migraine. I tried to wake you up nice, but you didn’t move.”
    I swing my legs over the side of the bed and sit up.
    There are no spiderwebs in sight, no rose petals on the carpet. Cassie is in the morgue, belly slit and draining like a fresh-caught fish. It didn’t happen.
    I shiver, pull the comforter back up, and wrap it around my shoulders. “Where’s my dad?”
    “It’s Tuesday, silly. Squash day. Why is squash the only vegetable that has a game named after it?”

    Crap. Tuesday.
    “Where’s Jennifer?”
    “Drying her hair. Where are you going?”
    It’s Tuesday.
    I race downstairs to the laundry room, as far away from Jennifer’s ears as I can get. I turn on the tap, lean over the sink, and guzzle until my belly is a big water balloon. I sail on the tide toward the kitchen, heavy-loaded with ballast, waves splashing.
    When Jennifer comes down with dry hair and sloppy eyeliner, I’m on the first cup of coffee of the day. Black. I have Daddy’s dirty plate in front of me so it looks like I ate toast and jam.
    “Migraine?” I ask.
    She nods once, winces, and puts a mug of water into the microwave.
    My little not-sister shoves a shoe-box diorama across the table at me. “It’s a coliseum in Greece,” she says.
    “Where they tortured the people and fed them to the tigers.”
    “Sounds like middle school,” I say.
    “That is not funny,” Jennifer says. “And it’s the Roman Colosseum, in Rome, not