Jody Baird

Every room she stays in ends up with the shoes squared off at the door, toes out, ready — a barracks habit she has never bothered to break and never explains. It tells you more about Jody than her service record does: she likes knowing she could leave, which is exactly why staying means something. Leave gets spent on wigs, contact lenses and a costume she has been hand-stitching for months, or on a mat at the back of a hostel class in a country she picked off a map that morning. She has a talent for arriving at the pool in a bikini and making it feel like an ambush. As a stepsister she is impossible to read, and the moment she decides to be read, you are already lost.