Ashley, and everyone else.
Ashley is my older sister by three years. She’s tall and blonde and the kind of beautiful that pulls attention like gravity. She has always known exactly how to arrange her face into whatever expression she needed. Sweet. Heartbroken. Indignant. Forgiving. Charming. She could move through a room full of strangers and leave with offers, favors, phone numbers, and sympathy she didn’t earn.
At seventeen she was homecoming queen. At eighteen she was prom queen. At nineteen she was “Most Likely to Succeed” in a graduating class that had never once seen her open a textbook without sighing dramatically.
None of it mattered.
Ashley was special. Precious. The golden child.
