“The Raptor?” I repeated, but that was when the elevator doors slid open on the fifth floor, and I stepped out.
“Five D,” the pizza box guy said, pointing. “Just down to the left.”
“Thank you,” I called as the doors slid closed again. I headed down the hall, unzipping my coat as I walked and tucking Brad inside, not sure what someone who was called the Raptor looked like, and also not particularly sure I wanted to know.
I made it to the front of the door… but couldn’t quite bring myself to knock.
I did not want to do this.
You don’t really have a choice, a small voice in my head reminded me.
I closed my eyes for a second, wrestling with myself. It had been easier when I was concentrating on getting here—the trains I needed to take, counting the stops, making sure Brad didn’t go chasing after any rollerbladers (we hadn’t seen any, though, so he’d been fine so far). But now that I was here—and there was nothing left to do but knock—I didn’t want to do it.
The truth—the one I had never admitted to Kat, or Beckett, and barely liked to admit to myself—was that my stepsiblings were nice to me. They always had been.
But I wasn’t nice to them.
When my dad married Joy, upending my life right as I’d started to get adjusted to the postdivorce landscape, I suddenly had three stepsiblings I was expected to have a relationship with. And I didn’t want to. If I bonded with Mallory, Margaux, or Mateo—joined in on the text chain, started hanging out with them like they were always inviting me to—it would be like saying I was okay with any of this. And I was going to college next year anyway, so what was the point?
Occasionally, I’d feel my resolve start to crack. They’d be kind and funny and inviting, and it was like it was hovering right there like a mirage—the relationship that we could be having. But all it would take was seeing a Story of everyone watching a movie at my dad and Joy’s, with a big bowl of popcorn to share. A picture on one of their feeds of everyone out to dinner, appetizers for the table. Hearing one of them in the background when I was talking to my dad on the phone. A world I was not a part of, my dad smiling and relaxed with his new kids, his new wife. All of them getting so easily what it felt like I was fighting so hard for—and I’d slam the door on them again.
Except for tonight, apparently.
Knowing there was nothing else to do, I took a breath, flexed my poor beat-up toes, and knocked on the door of 5D.
There was no answer. After all of this—after psyching myself up to do something I really didn’t want to do, after dragging myself and Brad uptown, after all the pain my feet were in—Mateo wasn’t even here? It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. In the reality he was living in, people still had their phones and it wasn’t necessary to show up in person to contact them like we were in the 1850s. And it was a Friday night—he might have decided he had lots of better things to do than wait around for his stepsister, who he didn’t really even know and had never been particularly nice to him.
I knocked again, and this time I was pretty sure I heard something inside—sounds of scuffling and loud whispering. I pressed my ear closer to the door and knocked a third time.
“Um, can you come back later?” a voice called from inside. It was hard to tell through a door, but I didn’t think it was Mateo. This voice was high and stressed and—I was pretty sure—British.
“I’m looking for my… for Mateo Lampitoc?” I called, suddenly worried that the crew guys had gotten it wrong and this wasn’t actually the right room after all.
The door creaked open a few inches, and I saw brown eyes behind thick black glasses look at me. “Hi,” I said, wondering just what exactly was going on, as the door closed again. A second later, though, it swung open, wider, and I was yanked inside.
I stumbled in and looked around, trying to get my bearings. It was a suite, I realized—I was in what seemed to be a common room, with two mismatched couches facing each other, and two doors off either side of the common area, where I assumed the bedrooms were.
“Apologies about that,” said the guy who’d yanked me in. He was around my height and was, in fact, British. He looked like a less-cute Dev Patel—though in fairness, that is a very high bar to clear—and seemed very nervous about something. “Were you followed? Did you see anyone in the hall?”
“I… don’t think so.”
“It’s safe!” he yelled out behind him. “You can come out!”
“Is Mateo here?” I asked as one of the doors opened and two people emerged—a petite girl wearing a flowing black dress, and my stepbrother.
He smiled when he saw me, though he looked confused. Mateo didn’t really look like Mallory—though when all three of the siblings stood together, you could see a family resemblance, the same nose and smiles repeated. Mateo had dark, straight hair that he kept short, tan skin, and brown eyes. He was probably around Kat’s height, but broader—I’d heard him complain once that his friends were always asking him to help them move. But I didn’t think it was just about the fact that he looked like he was in good shape. There was just something about him that seemed steady, like the kind of person you’d trust with your couch or refrigerator.
He was by far the most stylish person in the room. Not that there was much competition—in addition to the girl wearing the dress, the British guy was wearing a knitted sweater and plaid pajama bottoms. But Mateo was wearing a gray Dodgers hooded sweatshirt, with a fitted jean jacket over that and the hood hung over the collar. He had olive-colored pants that were just a little bit cropped, brown boots that laced up, and a black beanie. It shouldn’t have worked, but it absolutely did.
“Hey, Stephanie,” he said. “What’s—”
Whatever he was going to say was drowned out by the girl, who shrieked. “A puppy!” she said, running straight up to Brad. “Who’s my woofer? Who’s a pupster?”
“That’s Brad,” Mateo said, coming closer.
“Brad!” This seemed to send the girl into paroxysms of joy. “That is the best name for a dog ever. May I hold him?” She didn’t give me a chance to answer, just scooped him up and headed over to the couch with him. Brad did not seem to mind this in the slightest, and I could see he was already doing his paw-waving trick for her.
“That’s Alyssa,” Mateo said, looking over at the couch. “She, um… likes animals.”
“Welcome to the Brandenburg Suite,” the guy who’d opened the door for me said, gesturing around grandly. “Sorry about the delay. We thought you were the Raptor.”
I took a breath to ask who that was—and if it meant raptor in terms of the bird, the mascot for Canadian basketball players, or the dinosaur that could open doors—but Mateo was already crossing over to me. “Archie, please stop calling our suite that. It’s not going to catch on.”
The British guy—Archie—shook his head. “It just hasn’t been given a chance yet.”
“Nobody even gets the joke!”
I raised my hand, then realized what I was doing and quickly put it down again. “I did.”
Archie pointed at me in triumph. “See!” Then he frowned. “Wait a minute, who are you?”