Before we knew it, Halloween was here. I texted Jacqueline and asked her if I could come over after all, and she seemed pretty happy I'd changed my mind.

I rang the doorbell and waited. Jacqueline's house was more like a villa, with side gardens and three floors.

I heard shouting inside. It was around seven PM.

"Nobody open the door! Just stay on your lazy bleeeep!!" Mitchell must have already been there. "I'll hurt you! I swear I'll hurt you!"

Jacqueline opened the door. She was in a way-too-big hoodie and leggings.

"You made it!" she hugged me. "I'm so glad. Walker's been here for only ten minutes, but I swear I'm two seconds away from throwing him out the window."

She led me to the living room. Mitchell and Walker were already there, bags of snacks scattered around them.

Jacqueline threw a pillow at Walker. "Get out of my spot."

Walker shrugged and got up from the corner of the couch. Jacqueline sat where he had been, stretching out her legs and making herself comfortable. She grabbed the remote.

"So," she started. "You're probably here for horror movies, but we've got a twist. You see, Mitchell-"

"Oh, no," Mitchell groaned from the other corner of the couch. "Here we go again."

"-is terrified of horror movies," Jacqueline finished. "So the first time we did this, we gave it a twist. We watched every single Tinker Bell movie in existence. The second time, we watched all three Descendants movies. This year, we were thinking of bingeing the first four Harry Potter movies, and pick up where we left off next year."

"Watch our rival fandom's movies? Sounds good to me," Walker said, trying and failing to toss up a piece of popcorn and catch it in his mouth.

"Sure," I said, more focused on Walker trying to look cool, because he was failing miserably and it was hilarious.

"It was my idea," Mitchell said.

"Was not!" Jacqueline argued. "I suggested it."

"I swear, you guys fight like an old married couple, and we're your kids," Walker said, finally giving up on his popcorn tricks.

"That's honestly fair," Mitchell admitted.

Jacqueline flipped through to some website. Right before she hit play, a tall blond girl with emerald green eyes came into the room, talking on the phone, rummaging through the drawer of the TV stand.

"Mireille!" Jacqueline snapped.

"Hold on a sec- what?!" the blond girl, Mireille, pulled her phone away from her ear and glared at Jacqueline.

"I thought I threatened you clearly that the living room was off limits!" Jacqueline said, exasperated.

"And I need to find my favorite lip liner! I'm going out!" Mireille continued rummaging through the drawer.

"You left it in Claire's room when you were snooping," Jacqueline told her.

"Finally, you do something useful!" Mireille stormed up the stairs, still talking on the phone.

Jacqueline didn't say anything and just started the movie, but there was an underlying tension for the first ten minutes until Jacqueline stopped looking like she wanted to kill everyone in the room and started commenting.

"Imagine if that whole bleep beard was curly and not straight," she said in the scene where Hagrid and Harry were walking down Diagon Alley.

Mitchell slowly set down his button. "Based on how much you complain about your curly hair, which grows on your head and not your face, I'd say Hagrid would Avada Kedavra himself."

Jacqueline grinned. I'd heard that she'd pixie-cut her curls just to piss off her parents, and when I first met her in the Hunger Games, it had grown to just over her chin. By summer break it was an inch or two away from touching her shoulders, and now it grew a good few inches past her shoulders. Her hair grew fast, I had to give her that.

By the time they got to Hogwarts, Mitchell was pointing out every single cinematic error and sprouting behind the scenes details.

"How do you know all this?" I asked him, intrigued.

He grinned sheepishly. "One of my uncles worked on the set of Harry Potter way back then. It's just stuff he told me."

"You guys have, like, the most interesting lives ever," Walker said, his fingers only a slightly darker orange than his hair from Cheetos.

"Not really," Mitchell said. "I'm just related to interesting people."

Jacqueline didn't say anything. Once the second movie was over, she reached for the remote, but Walker blocked her hand.

"Snacks are out," he said seriously.

He was right. The couch and table were loaded with empty bags and bowls.

Jacqueline sighed. "That was enough snacks to last a day!"

"Nothing lasts a day with this guy," I told Jacqueline, pointing to Walker. "He eats like a satyr."

Mitchell laughed. Jacqueline rolled her eyes. "Fine. I'll go grab more snacks. Anyone gonna help?"

"I'll come!" I said. Not because I wanted to help as much as I wanted to ask about her sisters.

Jacqueline loaded the buttered popcorn bag into the microwave and started pouring Cheetos into a bowl. I grabbed a few packets of Oreos and asked, "So who's Claire?"

Jacqueline gave me a look like she was about to release some bleep-worthy words on me, then just sighed. "Claire's my oldest sister. She's 24."

"And Mireille?"

"Other older sister. 19."

"How come I've never heard of them?"

Jacqueline threw away the bag and gave me another long look. "I don't like talking about them."

"I can kind of see why. But how come you and Mireille look so different? Is it because you look like your dad?"

She didn't look at me as she gathered more snack bags. "Yeah, it's because I look like my dad. Who isn't the same as hers."

I slammed my hand down over the snack bags. "Elaborate."

Jacqueline blinked, not even surprised. "Claire and Mireille are my half sisters. We have the same mom, but then my mom cheated on their dad and had me. When I was a year old, my dad got a DNA test and found out I wasn't his kid, which was already obvious since we looked different. My dad's eyes are blue. He's blond. My mom's eyes are green. She's blond. So no way in heaven could they have a brown-eyed redhead. They got a divorce when I was around two. Mireille and Claire have hated me ever since."

I blinked three times. "Does Mitchell know?"

"Yeah. Mitchell knows."

"And Celine?"

"Celine knows."

"Anyone else?"

"Nobody, until you." She pulled the popcorn out of the microwave. "Don't tell anyone, okay? I might tell Walker. Maybe. But definitely not now."

I nodded, and we went back to the living room.

Nothing really memorable happened while we watched the third and fourth movies, unless you count Walker's attempt to do a handstand. Jacqueline led us all out the door in a bit of a hurry, almost like she was hiding us.

Overall, it was a great night. Maybe better than going around with Fiona and Delphine begging strangers for candy in the dead of night.

I didn't bother to text either of them when I got home, but only because I was dead tired. I barely managed to change out of my pajamas before I went to bed. It was one in the morning.

The next day I met Fiona by the bus, but Delphine was nowhere to be found. I asked Lucas if he knew where she was, and he only shrugged and avoided my eyes. Weird.

Fiona and I both tried to text her, but she didn't even read the messages.

"We should go check on her," I said during lunch. "This isn't like Delly."

"I know," Fiona said. "She always texts us when she's home sick. Why not now?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I'm worried."

"My mom will take us to her house after school," she assured me.

We'd never been to Delphine's house, but we had her address, so Fiona and I got into her mom's car without even saying goodbye to anyone and gave her the address, asking her to take us to Delphine's. As soon as Freya's slow booty was in the car, Mrs. Albert stepped on the gas.

It was weird how the least expected people turned out to be the richest. Jacqueline, rich. Delphine, rich. And they didn't look or act like it in the least.

To say Delphine lived in a villa was an understatement. It was sort of a mansion, with big gates and everything. A maid- you read it right, maid- led me and Fiona through the house to Delphine's room. Fiona leaned closer to me as we went up the stairs.

"I can kind of see why Delphine changes the subject every time we talk about going to her house," she said quietly. I nodded. The house and the gates and the maids were so not Delphine it wasn't a wonder why she mysteriously went deaf every time we brought up her house.

The nice lady stopped in front of a large door. Fiona raised her hand and knocked.

There was a strangled "Come in!" from inside the room.

Delphine's room was huge, and totally not what I expected. Fiona and Freya's room had that pink aesthetic look to their room, but Delphine's was entirely different.

Her room looked so modern and stylish compared to the rest of the rather classic mansion I almost thought I'd stepped into a different house.

Delphine, for the first time since I'd known her, looked downright messy. Her curls were everywhere, she was in her pajamas, and she looked like she hadn't moved since the morning. She pressed a button on what appeared to be a speaker, turning off what I could've sworn was Olivia Rodrigo.

"Delly?" I said gently, sitting down at the edge of the bed. "What's wrong?"

Fiona took her hands. Delphine looked up. Her eyes were red.

"Lucas broke up with me."