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the floor until urine soaked right through the paint in Ruby’s ceiling. As Ruby’s luck had it, Laura’s upstairs neighbor, Mr. Colella, decided to move to White Plains. He didn’t tell Laura that his apartment was rent-controlled, or that he was offering it as an indefinite sublet, at rent-controlled rates with a few hundred dollars tacked on so he could pay for the utility bills on his Cape Cod. Otherwise, she would have snapped it up. He told Ruby instead, who now lived directly above Laura at less than half the rent.
    Ruby had taken a year off of school to give her attention to an engagement with a budding lawyer named Samuel. That put them in the same class at Parsons, as well as the same building.
    Which was great, just great, as it coincided with their last year of school—a pressure cooker, especially when she worked full-time at Jeremy St. James and her sister upstairs partied like a musician and seemed to pull magical design projects out of her ass until she graduated with honors. Laura graduated in a pile of sweat, spit, and exhaustion. By that time, the comparisons between them were constant, except Ruby was also two-and-a-half inches taller, two sizes smaller—depending on the time of the month—and had better hair. If justice existed in the world, Laura was at pains to find it.
    She knew a Sunday evening wasn’t going to come and go without Ruby and Mom, so she wasn’t disappointed when Ruby texted her— Do you have a load in? —sixty seconds before she blew into the apartment. Laura didn’t even have a chance to text back.
    Ruby peeled off her jacket and placed it on a hook by the front door. Her stylish and not-too-unwieldy laundry bag trailed behind her and, when she smiled, the room lit up like noon at the equator.
    “Your sister has a load in,” Mom said, pecking Ruby on the cheek. “So, eat first.”
    “I’m not hungry,” Ruby responded, poking her head into a steaming pot of whatever. “Wow. Jeremy St. James killed his backer. It’s like the goose with the egg.”
    “He didn’t kill anyone.” Laura kept her tone professional. Ruby did not, and never would, know how Laura felt about her boss.
    “Hey, are you going to work tomorrow? Is there even a job? We don’t use patternmakers at T&C, but they’re always looking for tech designers.”
    It was an open-handed slap in the mouth, followed by a backhand. After Parsons, Ruby wound up designing for Tollridge & Cherry, a huge operation with retail stores, a full-color magazine that showed up in mailboxes constantly with the same products rearranged, and a web presence that kept China in business. Laura ended up a patternmaker at Jeremy St. James, forever a patternmaker, according to Ruby, shut out of designing like a kid with her nose pressed against the candy store window.
    “He’ll be in tomorrow,” Laura said. “The show’s next Friday, and I haven’t heard anything about a cancellation. By the way, do you need tickets?” Laura got her own backhand in there. T&C didn’t have shows, naturally. They sold ski caps, pea coats, and striped sweaters in winter. They ran the same khaki pants eleven out of twelve deliveries. The invitation meant Laura felt no fear that Ruby would be able to steal a thing from Jeremy.
    “Oh, those shows.” Mom spooned the thick white something into bowls. “They put you girls under all this stress, and then what? You’re just behind on Monday. It’s like a wedding.”
    “Speaking of,” Ruby said, clapping her hands together, “I brought my sketch book.”
    “Yay,” Laura mumbled. She tried to be upbeat about Ruby’s wedding, and the dress she had committed to make, but as the date approached, the feeling of dread grew like cheap leather pants.
    It wasn’t that Laura wasn’t happy for Ruby. Her envy didn’t go that deep. She could be happy for her sister’s rent-controlled apartment, for the better job, and the two inches and twenty pounds difference between them. But she could not be