Page 32 of My Sister is Going to Kill Me

“No. Listen to me.”

“What?” Mandy couldn’t help the petulance that snuck into her voice. Her sister was looking at her with the urgency she reserved for situations when Mandy had violated the invisible rule book Liv lugged around in her head. “What did I do wrong this time?”

Liv narrowed her eyes, and Mandy squirmed. She hated how this only seemed to get worse as they got older. When they were kids, Liv hadn’t been this judgmental—at least, not openly—but when their mom died, her sister took up the reins of the moral high ground and yanked them as tight as possible.

But when Liv opened her mouth again, it wasn’t to chastise Mandy. “What I’m about to tell you, you have to keep secret. Can you promise me that?”

“Um . . . sure?”

“For real, Mand.”

There was something in her sister’s voice—not judgment, but something equally dark—that Mandy wasn’t going to mess with.

“Fine. I swear on the light of Venus’s moon.”

“Venus doesn’t have a—” Liv shook her head. “Do you remember how scared Charlie was after he fell into the water at Horn Creek?”

“When he lost his river virginity?”

“Right. He told me he thought Babette was targeting him. I thought he was just stressed from the whitewater and Babette not showing up. But then, tonight, he showed me his hat. It has a message inside it from Babette.”

“Something inspirational?”

“Not exactly.” Liv looked up at the endless night. “Cross me and you’re dead too. That’s what it said.”

“Inside his hat?”

Liv nodded. “It was embroidered on the inner crown in white stitches. We could only see it because his hat was muddy from when he fell in the river. I checked mine, too, but there was nothing. Only Charlie got the threat.”

A threat. Mandy remembered the excitement she’d felt when she’d claimed her own hat from the cardboard box, and the odd texture of its inner brim above the tea tree crystals. Now, she wondered.

She pulled her cap from where she’d stuffed it in her waistband. “Check mine.”

Liv looked confused.

“Just check it, okay?”

Liv scooped a handful of sand from the cold ground and started rubbing it on the inside crown. “There’s something here.”

Mandy nodded grimly. She leaned in close to her sister, letting a strand of Liv’s hair brush her shoulder. Even in the harsh light of her headlamp, she could see the stitches come alive, faint embroidered words inside her hat, barely perceptible in the grainy darkness.

MONEY CAN’T PROTECT YOU

Chapter Fifteen

“What does this mean?” Liv demanded. Mandy seemed frozen by the message under her hat, which only added to Liv’s confusion. “What money? You have no money. Protect you from what?”

“I don’t know. It must be a mistake.” Mandy looked up at her. “What makes Charlie think Babette sewed the message? Couldn’t it have been someone else?”

“Babette was the one to buy and personalize the hats. She shipped them directly to the lodge herself.”

“What if it’s a manufacturing defect?”

“You think there’s a possessed sewing machine somewhere in Guangzhou churning these out?”

“Maybe a fortune cookie company decided to diversify.”

But the joke sounded weak even to Liv’s ears. Mandy’s tone was apologetic. Defeated. Which was not what Liv had expected. She’d assumed there’d be an explanation, an excuse, a defiant wild story. But her sister didn’t say anything else.