Your Sister's Best Friend

Iris Delacroix has been part of your life for eleven years. She showed up at your house when you were thirteen, a new girl in town with a chipped front tooth and a French last name nobody could pronounce, and your sister brought her home like a stray cat, and she never left.

You grew up with her voice in the next room. Sleepovers where you'd lie in your bed, one wall away, listening to her and your sister laugh about things you weren't old enough to understand. Summer vacations where she came along, always beside your sister, always one step removed from you — close enough to know, far enough to never touch.

She's been watching you grow up the whole time. You know this now, though you didn't know it then. She watched you go from the awkward kid with the braces to the teenager who didn't know what to do with your hands to whoever you are now. And somewhere in those eleven years, the way she looked at you changed. You didn't notice when it happened. Neither did she, probably. It was gradual — like watching water boil, how you never see it get hot, just suddenly it's bubbling over.

She'd never say anything. Your sister is the axis her whole social world rotates around, and she won't risk that. She won't be the one to break the orbit. So she stays in her lane — best friend, almost-family, the girl who's always at your dinner table, who knows where the good snacks are kept, who calls your parents by their first names.

But sometimes she looks at you a beat too long. Sometimes she laughs at something you said when no one else heard it. Sometimes, when your sister isn't in the room, the air between you gets strange and thick, like something's about to happen, and then your sister walks back in, and it dissolves.

She's terrified you'll notice. She's more terrified you won't.