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“I get vacation days,” Dad said. “What am I going to do with them, go to Maui?”
I looked back and forth at my parents, before settling on my mother. You think
you’re so clever, don’t you? I mentally seethed at her. That this’ll get me to shut up? Dad looking after her wasn’t going to help. For Christ’s sake, he was the one who’d wrecked her blood pressure in the first place.
The very fact that they were resorting to this meant that she was bad enough to need proper medical supervision. She needed to stay at the hospital. Recuperating at home was a terrible idea.
“This is a great plan,” Quentin declared.
I’d forgotten he was there. You could hear my neck screeching like a rusty hinge as I turned to look at him, the whites of my eyes showing like high beams.
“Hospitals aren’t good places to be around,” he said obliviously. “Bad feng shui. Better to rest at home and be comfortable.”
I’d gone back in time. Everyone around me had reverted to the Dark Ages. What was next, a prescription of leeches?
“My parents could drop by,” Quentin said. “You know. Mr. and Mrs. Sun?” He nudged me as if I’d forgotten whom he was talking about.
“Oh, that would be lovely!” Mom straightened up so fast she probably gave herself a head rush. “See, Genie? This is a fine plan. Quentin agrees.”
“Quentin is not the last word in this household!”
Mom scoffed. “And you are?”
Oof. That was more than I could take. I was used to Mom stalemating me in arguments through sheer bull-headedness, but turning words on me like that was a low blow as far as I was concerned. I stormed out of the lobby.
? ? ?
Outside was too warm and humid for the air to be considered fresh. The designers of this hospital had the nerve to put a little patio by the doors with wrought metal chairs, as if people wanted to spend time here drinking in the ambience. I would have preferred a barber’s pole with bloody bandages to serve as a warning: If you are here, you are not well, and you need help.
Quentin found me within a minute. “What’s wrong?”
Where to begin. “Your parents?” I said. “Your parents?”
The deal with Quentin’s parents, which took some getting used to even for me, was that they were shapeshifted clones of himself, formed from his own magical hairs. They had the appearances and personalities of two very polite businesspeople from overseas who were always traveling and completely neglectful of their son in that charming British boarding school way.
Quentin trotted them out whenever he needed to show he had a family. My parents adored his parents. If they had to choose two out of three among Quentin, his parents, and me, they would have pinned a note to my chest and tossed me to the curb.
I knocked my head against a brick column that supported an awning over the patio. “You’re going to have your stupid walking magic tricks pop in to look after my mother?”
Quentin looked hurt. “I thought you liked them. You’ve asked me to have them keep your mom company lots of times.”
“That was when she was healthy! She’s going to try and entertain them! You know how much effort she puts into for guests! What do you think she was doing today when she collapsed?”
Quentin’s lips parted as he realized what he’d done. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was trying to make her happy.”
“Why did you butt in to begin with? She should be under medical supervision, not puttering around the kitchen!”
“I thought being involved was part of being a good boyfriend!”
Being involved silently, maybe. “You sided with my mother over me in an argument. You just took all your boyfriend points, set them on fire, and buried them in a dumpster under the floor of the ocean.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t mean to make things worse. You know I’d do anything for this family and—”
“Quentin, you are NOT part of this family!”
? ? ?
Ooh. Yup. Scientists and historians would look back to that moment and identify it as Peak Genie, where she had to be her usual hurtful, spiteful self, thinking she could emit her awfulness into the atmosphere the same as always without repercussions. Instead she’d barreled straight past the tipping point, sending the feedback loop spinning off its axis. She’d ignored the warning signs, and now the world was nothing but jellyfish and alkaline wastes.
