Junie thought summer was so boring already, and we were only a week in. Junie would’ve rather had Mom home than me. It shouldn’t have cut so deep, but I’d been trying so hard. To get them to listen, to make them have fun, to keep my head above water.
I don’t want to do this anymore.
There was a sharp gasp. Junie had been rocking back in the kitchen chair again, but this time, she’d leaned too far. The table slid out of her grip, and her feet knocked against the underside of it as she fell.
Junie and the chair crashed against the ground at the same time the bang from the table tipped my glass of water over, spilling onto my sketchbook.
And onto the drawing of Jamie.
I shrieked, pushing off the couch and bolting back to the table. I snatched the cup up, but the damage was done. Water pooled onto the drawing I had on top, quickly seeping through to the sketchbook underneath. I snatched it up, and water streamed off the pages, dripping onto the floor. “Junie!” My voice cracked. “I told you!”
Junie looked up at me wide-eyed for one singular second—before she started to wail, her face blooming red as she remained on the ground.
The paper I’d been sketching Jamie on feathered between my fingers, his downturned head turning into a streaked mess. In my sketchbook, the graphite from my pencil bled onto the other pages, smudging and smearing,and all my sketches became muddled plots of gray. The pressure in my chest squeezed and squeezed?—
Until I exploded. “Why can’t you just—listen?” I demanded, fist tightening around the sodden pieces of paper. “Why can’t any of you listen? At all, ever? Why does it have to be so hard?”
Ivy shrunk her shoulders to her ears. “Ididn’t?—”
“Theo, youknewabout the slime. Why would you play with it on the couch if you knew you shouldn’t? Juniper, Ijust told youabout the chair!”
Junie’s wail sharpened, high and piercing. Theo started crying, too. Ivy was saying something—apologizing maybe—but the words tangled with the noise and the drip, drip, drip of water hitting the floor.
I threw my sketchbook back into the puddle on the table. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” I said, the forbidden words finally ripping their way out. My anger flared hotter, burning me alive. “None of you ever listen to me. You’re disrespectful, and spoiled, andI don’t want to do this?—”
“Daisy?”
Mom stood in the open doorway, keys jingling in her hand, eyes wide. Junie and Theo’s crying paused, showing just how exaggerated it was to begin with.
“I could hear you from the driveway.” Mom glanced around the room. “What on earth is going on?”
Ivy ran over to Mom, tucking herself behind her as if afraid. “Junie fell over, and Daisy was mad about her sketchbook.”
And almost like the mention of her name triggered it, Junie started to cry again, louder than before.
Mom dropped her purse on the ground, hurrying over to where Junie still lay on the ground. “Your sketchbook?” Mom demanded. “That’s what you checked first?” She shot me an exasperated look as she crouched down beside Junie. Junie fell into Mom’s arms, wailing harder. You’d think she had blood all down the back of her head for as loudly as she cried, but her blonde hair was only mussed.
My sketchbook, Mom had scoffed. As if it weren’t filled with all the little moments of happiness and despair, and as if it weren’t the thing that’d brought me back from the brink several times. Ruined, but unimportant.
“She didn’t even hit her head,” Penn said from the couch. She had no scowl on her face, but her eyes were very wide. “I could see from here. It just scared her.”
Mom still frowned. “It’s still nothing to yell about, Daisy.”
I stood there, watching Mom smooth her hand down Junie’s back, listening to the water continue dripping off the table. “Nothing to yell about,” I echoed, gaping at her. “A sketchbook I pour my heart into is ruined, and it’snothing to yell about.”
“It was an accident?—”
“How would you know?” I demanded breathlessly, the words clawing and cracking their way out of my throat. “You only just came through the door, and it only took one look at everything to decide I’m the bad guy.”
“When you’re yelling, and your sister is crying, thenyes, Daisy, you’re the bad guy.” Mom set Junie aside from her to stand. “You’re the adult here, and?—”
“I’m not the adult!” My throat tightened, finally speaking the other words that were never, ever supposed to be said aloud. “I’m not the adult, or the parent, or the mom. I’m thesister. I’m a kid,too, and you don’t know how much they don’t listen, and you don’t know how overwhelmed I am, andI don’t want to do it anymore.”
The sound of my voice fractured through the house, the walls seeming to shudder with the weight of the sound. My chest rose and fell hard, the dread threatening to swallow me whole as I stood there, swaying with the ferocity of my anger. This time, though, I had no sketchbook to distract myself with.
I don’t want to do this anymore.
And then the guilt hit. Sinking. Swamping. Suffocating. Looking at Junie’s quivering shoulders, with Theo’s cries still echoing in my ears, I could barely breathe around it. I couldn’t turn away from Mom, even as my eyes began to burn and the expression on her face began to twist. I could remember the keening sound of Mom’s cries through her bedroom door, could practically hear it echo in my ears now.I don’t want to do this anymore, she’d cried that day.Not without you. I can’t handle it without you.
