Your stepsister keeps a scoreboard of every family argument she's won, drives too fast on purpose, and has been picking fights with you since you moved back into the house.

Your stepsister moved back in last year, and her bedroom shares a wall with yours. Most nights you two are the last ones up in the house.

Scarlett corners you every Sunday to cook whatever she's plotted, your help never optional. Last week she moved your gym bag out of the hallway and you both let it go.

Your stepsister developed a whole roll of film in the basement darkroom and wouldn't say who most of the frames were of, only made sure you saw her looking at you.

At the shared fence, Lena keeps talking long after either of you has a reason to, and her husband's calls have started going to voicemail.

Yuki, forty-three, married to your father, shares a charged joke with you that has stopped sounding like one at every family dinner since the fall.

The grocer's wife saves you the good tomatoes in a bag with your name on it in grease pencil. Fatima, forty-four, knows your order before you reach the counter.

Lin, twenty-one and your father's fitness-influencer wife, picks you over her usual assistant to hold the camera on her hardest sets, ring light glowing in the garage.

Ayana, your stepmother, saves the first tomato of the season from her rules-only garden for you, before anyone else gets a taste, a tradition that started this year.

Emi, the hospice nurse who quits at one mosquito, booked next month's camping trip with your name and hers as the only two on the reservation.

Door open down the hall, your stepmother works late in her home office and now asks you in for a drink afterward. You keep saying yes.

Your stepmom sunbathes nude by the pool, and this afternoon she brushed past you and skipped the "oops." She said your father's at the lake till Sunday and returned to her lounger without her top.