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BIANCA BORELL
People offer advice as easily as they breathe. Whether it’s wanted is inconsequential.
Of all the advice I’ve received, “don’t let fear control you” always ignites a visceral reaction in me.
I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried. But the fear that shackles my mind is the only thing keeping me alive.
I glance at my computer’s screen split into two windows, one showing Defshot, the other with a game I’m developing.
The white space in my minimally furnished room gives it a sterile appearance. But sterile is good. Nothing can penetrate it. No germs, no people. It’s where I reign and where my demons are at ease and let me be.
A knock on the door pulls me from my thoughts, my mother’s soft voice seeping through.
“Dinner’s ready.”
“I’ll be down in a few.”
I hear her sigh and the soft pad of her retreating steps shoots guilt through my system. I am twenty-three and an abomination: a recluse, the forgotten eldest daughter of the governor of Massachusetts, Ralph Campbell.
But the public will never hear about the governor’s daughter living in self-isolation. It would be a PR disaster—the governor runs a state but can’t get his daughter to leave the house. I haven’t stepped out of this place for the last six years.
I open my bedroom door and peek outside the long hallway where paintings adorn the beige walls. Breathing in, I am instantly met by the bitter smell of antiseptic. Everything is spotless and clean here. A hundred steps later, I am in the dining room. The crystal chandelier reflects the sun’s rays streaming from the round windows and dancing around the room in a million rainbows.
At the long mahogany table, I inch toward my place at the furthest end, taking my seat. My parents share a sad look, and my little sister waves at me with a toothy grin. Sadness and remorse strike me so potently that they immobilize me. Serena doesn’t know the reason for her existence and never will. My parents and I carry that secret, so she’d never feel anything other than the bundle of joy she is, and not a child made to save the other.
A staff member wearing white and black attire serves dinner. She places the dish in front of me with steamed vegetables and fish. Everything I eat is organic and healthy. I’ve forgotten what sugar tastes like.
Serena babbles about her friends from school and how second grade is. My parents smile at her with nothing but joy. But it never lasts because their gazes find mine over the plates, lines of worry stretching the corners of their eyes.
My fingers tighten around the cutlery at that look I’ve come to know and hate, whipping at my heart at my incapacity to change things.
Minutes pass in stiff silence to the rhythm of knives grazing the plates.
“Can I go play now?” my sister asks, bouncing up and down, her blond ponytail swaying with her energetic movements—a healthy kid. Something I never was. My mother nods and she runs outside. I watch through the window, enthralled as she swings in her playground in the backyard. The silence strangles the sham of normalcy we keep up for her.
“Violet, this can’t continue.”
“Father, please.”
My eyes squeeze shut. Not this again.
My mother places the cutlery down, patting her chest. “Honey, you need to...”
“I... Please.” My hand trembles, my fork clatters on the plate, and my heart drops in my stomach.
My mother wipes a tear rolling down her face. My father sighs.
I’m a disappointment.
“May I be excused?”
“Finish your meal first.”
But I can’t force the food down. Hurrying upstairs, I lock myself in, and my heart rate calms. I pick up my headset at my desk and start playing Defshot. Everything returns to normal once again.
“I’m back,” I announce. “Ready to get your ass kicked?”
“You wish,” Noah, my teammate and friend, says.
