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It’s irrelevant, what Oz thinks of me, because he and chess are out of my life. Maybe I’ll call Defne at some point. Let her know that I’m out for good. But two nights ago I dreamed that every single person I met in the past six months was pointing at me and laughing: I’d been moving the rook across diagonals, thinking it was a bishop. No one corrected me, not even Defne. She was in the first row, sniggering with Nolan.
So, yeah. Not ready to reach out.
I press my palms into my eyes and go back into the kitchen to finish making dinner. I stop at the entrance, and no one notices me.
“— kind of gross,” Darcy is saying, peeking at the Crock-Pot. “Like . . . ew?”
“Super unhealthy, with all that oil,” Sabrina points out. “Maybe she needs a cooking class for her birthday, Mom.”
“That’s a lovely idea, Sabrina. She’ll love that.”
“I’m not getting her a present,” Darcy grumbles.
“I see what she was trying to do. But it’s not a recipe that calls for thigh, you know,” Mom muses. “Maybe breast. Or pork.”
“I don’t wanna eat this,” Sabrina mumbles, and that’s the moment I feel it happen: like a tough little bubble, bloody and red, giving off the tiniest of pops inside my head.
“Thendon’t,” I say. The three of them whip around at the same time, eyes wide. “As a matter of fact, why don’tyoumake dinner?”
Sabrina hesitates. Then rolls her eyes. “Jesus. Chill, Mal.”
“Yeah.” I nod. “Iwillchill. I will stop doing the dishes. I will stop grocery shopping. I will stop earning money for food. Let’s see how you like it.”
“That’s totally fine.” Her hands come to her hips. “You were gone forweeksand we were doingamazing.”
“Oh, really?” It’s like a knife twisted in my rib cage. “You were doingamazing?”
“We were free of this weird dictatorship where we can’t even comment on dinner,” Sabrina says, and I see Mom’s mouth opening to chastise her, but I’m quicker.
“You are such abitch,” I hear myself say.
It sounds horrendous in the silence of the kitchen. It shocks Mom into silence, and Darcy physically steps back. But Sabrina narrows her eyes and stands her ground. So I continue.
“You are an ungrateful bitch. Since all I do is chauffeur you around and make sure your fees are paid.”
“I didn’t ask foranyof that!”
“Then don’tfucking take it, Sabrina. Go out and do the thingIdid. Don’t go to school, quit your precious roller derby— let’s see how much your little buddy McKenzie likes you when she’s in college and you aren’t! Completely give up on every littlething you love so that you can take care of your bratty, ungrateful little sister”— I point at Darcy— “who, by the way, is also a high- functioning bitch.”
“Mallory,” Mom interrupts sternly. “That’s enough.”
“Is it, though?” I look at her. My eyes are blurry, burning with the same heat that’s in my stomach. “Not that you’re much better, since you’re currentlyalsobeing a bitch— ”
“Enough.”
Mom’s harsh voice is followed by a thick, terrible silence.
It’s my undoing: suddenly, I’m in my body again. And with that, I can hear every vile thing I just said like a played- back tape, and it’s unbearable. I’m too horrified, too angry, too stricken to stay one second longer.
“Oh my God. I-I . . .”
I shake my head and turn around. Stagger to my room, vision fuzzy.
I just called my mom, my thirteen- and fifteen- year- old sisters whose livesIruined— I called thembitches. I threw in their face what I’ve done for them— despite the fact that it wouldn’t have needed doing if it hadn’t been forme.
I close the door behind me, fold onto my mattress, and hide my face in my hands, ashamed.
I never cry. I didn’t cry when I told Mom about what Dad did. I didn’t cry when he packed his bags and left. I didn’t cry when we received that phone call from the highway patrol at five thirty in the morning. I didn’t cry when I declined my scholarship offers, when Bob fired me, in Defne’s car on my way back from Nolan’s house. I never cried, even when I wanted to, because when I asked myself if I had the right to those tears, the answer was always no, and it was easy to stop myself.
