Rules for Stealing Stars by Corey Ann Haydu

could make the magic stay. Make it stronger. Use it in all the closets and be in control all the time. I hate that you’re able to do things I can’t do. Do you focus your mind? Did you know it was you that made things grow and move and become even more magical?”
    â€œI’m not sure I’m anything special,” I say. If I was so powerful, I wouldn’t have let Marla be alone with Mom yesterday and I wouldn’t have ruined Eleanor’s night and I wouldn’t feel the way I do right now—small and breakable.
    â€œEleanor and Astrid don’t have what you have. Or what we have,” Marla says. “They have their twin thing and Eleanor’s closet, but they need those dioramas. You’re so used to thinking they’re the best, you haven’t even considered that maybe they’re not.” She rubs her hands together like a villain in a movie, so I take one of her hands to make it stop.
    â€œThat buzzing thing in there looked sharp. Like it could hurt you.”
    Marla nods. “It hurts a little, I guess, if it flies into you. But it’s so pretty. And funny. It, like, teases, you know?”
    I think of the lightbulb that shrank and turned pink and playful with me. “Sure,” I say. “I mean, I guess. It looked sort of mean. But it sounds like it’s, um, nice?”
    Marla’s other cold, cold hand grabs mine. I don’t want to tell her how scared I am, but I can barely feel my fingers. I don’t like any of it. I feel the opposite of the delicious UnWorry in my closet.
    â€œPlease don’t tell,” she says. Her eyes are too dark for her face, too dark for the sister I’ve known for all of my eleven years. And her hands are too cold to belong to a girl, especially in the summertime, but I try to ignore both of thosethings, because her voice is so soft and nice and she has that look of calm that I know I’ve felt before. “I need something that’s mine too,” she says.
    I can’t argue. Especially not after last night.
    We eat breakfast, and I try to talk to Marla about the bad closet and about what happened with Mom last night and about how to stay safe and have magic and how we should tell Astrid and Eleanor about what we saw.
    â€œBeach!” Marla says in nonresponse, a cheerleader all of a sudden. Usually when we go to the lake during the summer, Marla sits on the dock and rips splinters of wood from its surface and complains about sand being in her sandwich. Today she is too eager and in this old bathing suit that must have been Eleanor’s or Astrid’s before hers. It seems especially cruel to get bathing suits as hand-me-downs.
    â€œWe should ask Mom if it’s okay,” I say. She has strange and specific rules about the lake, and new rules pop up all the time. We can’t go before noon or after three. We can’t go with boys. We have to be no more than five feet away from one another at all times. We have to bring a cell phone.
    Asking Mom if something’s okay is Marla’s favorite thing to do, but she doesn’t seem that interested right now. She shrugs and leaves a note on the counter, but the note says we’re going to the store for sodas, not to the lake for aswim. It’s a side of Marla I’ve never seen before.
    â€œWhat do you think Eleanor’s secret boyfriend looks like?” I say on the walk to the beach, wondering if maybe I can start a conversation in one place and make it go somewhere else. Marla shrugs. She seems already irritated by the sun and the sand the moment we get to the lake.
    Whatever calm she got from the closet is fading fast. I try again.
    â€œI haven’t heard from LilyLee in kind of a while. Do you think she has some new best friend?” I say. Marla shrugs.
    â€œDo you miss anything from home?” I say. Marla shrugs.
    â€œDid you ever hear of ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses’? It’s one of Dad’s