Twenty minutes later I pulled into the driveway of the biggest house I had ever seen in my life. Or, I guess, to be more accurate, I went through a gate and past a brick wall topped with spikes, and then drove like another two minutes through neatly manicured shrubberies to reach the top of a hill and there was the biggest house I had ever seen in my life. I parked outside of what looked like a five-car garage, and shut off the ignition. Noelle looked out the window, not meeting my eyes.

“Wow,” I said. “This is something else. I’ve never seen a house this big. Gosh, it must be nice to—”

She shot me a look of such absolute disgust that I couldn’t help but cringe. Without another word, she got out, slamming the door shut behind her.

“Oh, okay,” I said to no one. “Sorry.”

I unbuckled and got out myself, but by the time I had gotten my backpack out of the back seat, she was already gone. I looked around, taking in the surroundings. We might as well have been in the woods—I couldn’t even see the wall that marked the edge of the property any more. And in the distance I could hear water… a waterfall? Or a pool, probably. Jeez.

Since Noelle had already taken off, I tentatively approached what looked like the front of the house, climbing up marble steps to get to the front door. Should I… should I ring the bell? No, I should just go in. Play it cool. 

The door was unlocked and then I was standing in a foyer that felt like I had seen on an episode of MTV Cribs before. The floor was this spotless tile mosaic and the room had two staircases that curled up the sides of the room to a balcony overlooking the door. I swear to god, there was a little four-foot pillar with a vase on it. Who has just, like, a vase in their house? Noelle’s dad, I guess, who was apparently the same kind of person who has a six-foot tall painting of himself sitting grimly in an armchair, because that’s what was hanging on the back wall.

I was standing there, weighing my options and whether I should go upstairs or try my luck down here—or hope that, like, a butler or something would come save me, because this seemed like the kind of place that had a butler—but I found myself rescued by an unexpected arrival. Someone walked in from the right, incongruously holding a glass of milk. They took one look at me, and their eyebrows raised.

“Um, hi.”

“Sup,” they said, and then they took a sip of milk.

“I’m… well, I mean, I’m a classmate of Noelle’s, and we were going to work on a group project, but I’m not sure where she went.” I looked the person over. They looked to be a year or two younger than me, though they had dark circles under their eyes and kind of a world-weary demeanor. They were at least shorter than me, for sure. They wore a baggy black hoodie and ratty jeans, and honestly looked way out of place in the very ornate surroundings, even though they were acting like they were perfectly at home. But something about them reminded me of Noelle—their hair I guess? It was the same dark color, but shorter and thicker, a complete mess of bed-head. “Are you Noelle’s…” I hesitated for a moment. “Sibling?” I said weakly, cursing my awkwardness.

Something about that seemed to amuse them, because their eyes lit up and mouth curled up in a smile. They paused for a long moment, looking me up and down. “Brother, yeah,” he finally said. “Sam.”

“Oh, cool,” I said, relieved. “Do you know where she is?”

“She went upstairs,” Sam said. He smirked. “She looked kind of pissed off, though. What’d you do?”

I winced. “I’m not sure? I was just trying to say that she had a cool house.”

“Ah. That’d do it. You should give her some space.”

“Oh.” My shoulders drooped.

He seemed to take pity on my situation. “C’mon, we can wait in the kitchen and she’ll be down in a bit, I’m sure.”

“Okay,” I said, following him down a long hall. I don’t know what I expected for the kitchen, but the room definitely exceeded it. It was a big open room, with stools at a kitchen island. They had two refrigerators. And through picture windows I could see that they did, in fact, have a huge pool in their backyard. It figured. I gingerly stepped forward, wondering if I should take my shoes off or something.

“You want anything?” Sam offered. “Milk? Soda?”

“I’m good.”

He nodded and went back to sit on a stool, next to where a textbook and papers were laid out on the kitchen island. He seemed more interested in me than the schoolwork though. “So you’re a friend of Noelle’s?”

“Mm. I don’t know if I’d say friend. We’re just in the same class.”

Sam grinned. “It’s not like she has people over that often. Other than her boyfriend at least.”

“Really?” I asked, surprise creeping into my voice. “I’d have thought… well…” I tilted my head in the direction of the pool. “You could throw a pretty great party out there.”

“Noelle’s always kept everyone at kind of a distance. I think she always worries that people just want to be friends with her because of… well.” He waved an arm vaguely.

“Yeah. We only talked a little but that much is clear,” I said. “She’s suspicious of people who look at her and just see the outside stuff, like she’s rich and cute and everything.”

“Yeah, exactly.” He glanced back at me, his smirk deepening. “So you think my sister’s cute, huh?”

“W-what?” I stammered. Was everyone in their family like this? “I mean, I was just saying… for the sake of…”

Sam started laughing, and I let out a sigh.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “Please don’t tell her I said that. Obviously, she’s gorgeous, but she already has a boyfriend, and he’s, like, way hotter than me. I’m not interested in… I don’t know, getting in the way of that or whatever.”

Sam took another sip of his milk. “Our dad would probably be thrilled.”

“What?”

“He hates Dustin.” He shrugged. “He’d love for her to dump him and get with someone more socially respectable. But he still puts up with it. I guess it’s better than Amy, anyways.” He paused, seeing my blank look. “She’s our older sister.”

I blinked. “What’s the deal with that, anyways? Noelle mentioned her, and something with our science teacher, but… She wouldn’t say anything else.”

Sam hesitated, drumming his fingers on the kitchen counter as he thought. “You really want to know the whole story?”

“Yeah,” I said. I mean, maybe this was getting in over my head, but… this house and everything was already really messing with my idea of Noelle, and I felt eager for anything that could help me understand where she was coming from and who she was.

“Okay, well, to start off, you should know that the Campanellis traditionally have terrible luck in romantic partners. It comes from our dad’s side, because he’s on wife number four.” Sam rolled his eyes. “This one isn’t one of the better ones either.”

“Really? So…”

“Amy was from his first marriage, and is several years older than us. Noelle and me are from number two. We still see Mom every now and again, but she’s remarried and has a whole other family now. That takes most of her time and attention.”

“That… that sounds like it sucks.”

“Yeah, well. What are you gonna do?” Sam shrugged. “But Amy, okay… So it’s Amy’s senior year. Noelle at the time is in... sixth? seventh? grade. And Amy and Noelle are really close, right? To be fair, Ames is pretty busy being a cool high-schooler, but she always makes time for her lil sis.”

“And where do you fit into all this?”

Sam smirked. “I’m way cooler than both of them put together, obviously. Well, and… look, Noelle and I get along fine, but we’ve never been that close. Nothing like her and Amy. I guess the two of us don’t share a lot of the same interests.”

“Well, it does make some sense that two sisters can be a bit closer than a brother and a sister,” I said.

Sam laughed again, though I didn’t really get what the joke was. “Yeah. And this is a few years ago, back when I was mostly spending my time alone in my room, reading fantasy novels. I wasn't exactly the most fun person to hang out with.” He shook his head. “But okay, so, Amy and Noelle are tight. They tell each other everything, or at least so Noelle thinks. And Noelle is used to just bursting into her room at any time, day or night, to ask for help on homework or show off a picture she’s drawn or… complain about boys, I guess? What else do girls do?”

“Braid each other’s hair?” I offered.

“Sure, yeah, that kind of thing.” Sam ran his hand through his own shaggy hair, the motion momentarily reminding me of Noelle again. The more I watched him, the more their resemblance made itself clear. “But one evening, Noelle does this, not realizing that Amy’s best friend Jess is over to study for some test. And when she bursts into the room... Well, the only studying going on is Amy studying the inside of Jess’s mouth. With her tongue.”

I stared. “What?”

“They’re making out. I think at this point either Amy or Jess has her shirt off, too.” Sam’s eyes flicked to the side and then back to me, openly smirking. I was too distracted with trying to put together the puzzle pieces. Was he saying… No, there was no way, right?

“But… What?”

Sam snickered to himself. “She’s gay. My oldest sister is a raging lesbo. What’s not clicking?”

Oh. Okay.

Sam kept watching me carefully, as if he was waiting for a response. I wasn’t sure what exactly to say, though. Normally, this would be when that one corner of my brain would kick into gear and overanalyze every social cue until I could figure out the proper socially-acceptable reaction to have. But for some reason this time, I was too distracted with thinking about what Sam had said. I was genuinely impressed, and maybe even a little bit jealous of his sister. So I did the stupid thing, and said the first thing that popped into my mind.

“Wow,” I said. “Good for her.”

Sam smiled broadly. “Right?” Apparently that was the right answer. Somehow. “Only… Well, you know what I said about Campanellis having terrible luck in romance? Amy’s friend, and I guess sort of girlfriend, Jess… well she freaks out at being caught. Noelle’s not going to tell anyone, obviously, but Jess has a change of heart about everything, and dumps Amy. Brutally.”

“Ouch.”

“Oh, it only gets worse… Amy would disagree with this part of the story, but I’m pretty certain it’s Jess who starts the rumor around school that Amy’s gay. Maybe it’s for cover or something, like she’s so worried about what other people might think that she wants to get out in front of it, make the story about how Amy tricked her and took advantage of her.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Which is bullshit, of course, but this is high school and at the first sign of weakness people are ready to eviscerate you. Particularly if you’re a cool loner, like Amy.”

“That’s terrible.” I paused. “But I don’t get it, how does Mr. Clark come in?”

“Because all of this comes to a head in his third-period biology class. It’s mostly just whispers and rumors, right? Amy is sick of it, but there’s nothing concrete. Until someone passes her a nasty note in class. It’s exactly as awful as you can imagine, and she decides that this is enough. She’s going to stand up for herself.”

“Oh no…”

“Yeah, she literally stands up in class and announces to everyone: so what if she’s a lesbian, if anyone has a problem with it they can say it to her face.” Sam’s face fell. “And her teacher takes her up on it. He gives her detention for, like, two weeks for being disruptive, then goes on a rant about morals and the importance of family structure and all of this shit, not letting her get a word in edgewise.”

“Of course,” I said, my stomach sinking. “Ugh. That figures.”

“And from that point on, Amy’s life is hell now. It’s open season because everyone knows that the teachers aren’t going to do anything about it. Meanwhile, her biology teacher is using every possible excuse to try and flunk her out of the course. It’s so bad that even though Amy is trying to keep things together and not let it get back to the family, Noelle back in junior high is starting to hear about it. And Noelle…” He trailed off, glancing off over my shoulder again. “Noelle just blames herself.”

“As I should, since it was all my fault to begin with,” Noelle said from behind me. I turned to see her leaning against the doorframe, her arms crossed. “Are you done, Sam? Or are there any other dark family secrets you want to spill to the first stranger you come across?”

He laughed. “Nah, saving that for the next time he comes over. I like this one, Noelle, you should keep him.”

My face went scarlet. How long had she been standing there? Had she heard everything? Oh god, did she think I was a creep for asking about all this? I felt suddenly terrible for the invasion of privacy.

Noelle just rolled her eyes. The funny thing was, she looked less annoyed than before, even if I couldn’t see any reason for it. “C’mon,” she said to me. “Let’s go to my room and get started on this. Unless you’ve changed your mind about working with us, now that you know the full story?”

“N-no,” I said, trying to sound confident and completely failing. “I’m up for it. Whatever we’re doing.”

“Good.” A small smile crossed Noelle’s face. “Then let’s get to work.”