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The emergency money.
The little room I was going to rent where nobody could come inside without knocking.
The sewing machine I was going to save for next. The Singer one, from the shop on Pine Street, the one with the lady who let me test the pedal even though she knew I couldn’t afford it yet.
Every shift.
Every lunch I skipped.
Every stupid thing I didn’t buy.
Every time I looked at something beautiful and told myself later.
Gone.
A sound comes out of me, thin and broken, like a wire snapping somewhere no one can see it.
I sink to the floor.
The boards are cold through my jeans. A dust bunny sits by my knee, and I don’t brush it away.
My hands grab fistfuls of my own hair and pull until my scalp stings. It doesn’t help. Nothing helps.
“No.”
I can’t breathe.
My chest pulls in tiny useless gasps, shallow and quick, like a rabbit caught in an open field with wolves closing in from all directions. Air comes in and goes nowhere. My ribs won’t open wide enough to hold it.
I rock forward, forehead almost touching my knees, still gripping my hair, still pulling, like if I hurt myself enough this will stop being real.
“No, no, no, no.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
Mom.
I look up over my knees, blinking through wet lashes, hair stuck to my damp cheeks where my fingers tore it loose.
She stands in the doorway, hip cocked against the frame like she’s been there a while, watching me fall apart on the floor and waiting for me to finish so she can be annoyed about it.
Her arms are crossed, and one slipper hangs half off her heel because she couldn’t be bothered to put shoes on before coming over to see what all the noise was about.
Her expression looks irritated—not guilty, not worried, not even curious.
Annoyed.
Like I’m a dog whining at the back door after she just let him out five minutes ago.
Her lipstick is fresh.
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Just air going nowhere again, worse than before because now she’s watching me do it.
I point at the bed instead. At the box sitting there, empty, with its lid beside it like an open mouth that has nothing left to say.
My hand trembles violently. “Where…” The word catches in my throat, a dry rasp that vanishes into the stale bedroom air. I force a swallow, the movement painful against my raw throat. “Where’s my money?”
Her eyes roll so hard I can almost hear them scrape against their sockets. “Good lord, that’s what you’re screaming about?” The weary exasperation in her tone confirms everything before she even forms a proper answer.
