Chapter 2: The Dinner They Forgot

The next morning, Mom made me eggs. That almost never happened.

She placed the plate on the kitchen counter while I was packing my lunch. There was toast beside it and a glass of orange juice. For a moment, I wondered whether she had somehow discovered the email I had sent Ms. Ramirez.

Then she smiled as though nothing had happened. "You have a long day ahead. Eat properly."

I sat down, but the food tasted like something I had been offered to keep quiet. My acceptance letter was still folded inside my backpack. I kept checking that it was there, even though I knew it hadn't moved.

They had taken my silence from the night before as an agreement to give up Duke.

Dad entered the kitchen, buttoning his jacket. "We never properly celebrated Sadie's birthday. We'll make it up to her tonight. Come straight to the restaurant after work. We'll call it a family reconciliation dinner."

Sadie immediately raised her hand. "I'll pick the restaurant! Let's go to that Japanese place on Main."

She knew perfectly well I was allergic to raw fish. I had explained it often enough, and once, when we were younger, I had spent an entire evening sick after accidentally eating something contaminated with it.

Mom just smiled, praised her for being so thoughtful, and then texted me the address. I looked at the message and put my phone away.

"Are you coming?" Mom asked.

"You said it was a family dinner."

"Of course it is." She gave me a patient smile. "Don't start another argument, Lena. We are trying to move forward."

I wanted to ask what moving forward meant when no one had even acknowledged what happened at graduation. Instead, I finished my breakfast and left for work.

At the grocery store, the day moved slowly. I stocked shelves, helped customers find items, and cleaned a spill near the dairy aisle. Every time my phone buzzed, I expected another message about the dinner. Nothing came.

At eight that night, I arrived on time. The hostess checked the reservation list three times. There was no reservation under Brooks.

I called Mom.

It was loud on her end. Sadie was laughing, asking someone to take her picture. I could hear glasses clinking and people talking over one another.

"Where are you?" I asked.

Mom let out a little gasp of feigned surprise. "Oh! Sadie suddenly wanted that trendy new steakhouse instead, so we changed locations. We were so busy getting her ready we forgot to tell you."

"Can you come get me?"

"The steaks are already on the table. Just take the bus home."

I stood outside the restaurant, looking through the window at a couple celebrating a birthday. They had brought a small cake and were taking pictures together. I wondered what it felt like to be expected rather than remembered only when someone needed something.

"You could have sent me a message," I said.

"Lena, don't make a scene. We can't keep stopping everything because you feel left out."

She hung up.

As I stood waiting for the bus under an iced-over shelter, Sadie's Instagram updated. In the photo, she was arm in arm with Mom, a table spread with cake and steak before them. Dad and Caleb stood on either side, the four of them pressed close together.

The caption read: My aunt is more of a mother to me than my own mom ever was.

I stared at the picture until the screen dimmed. Then I remembered Sadie's first Christmas at our house.

That year, the only thing I wanted was a telescope. I had saved pictures of the model I liked and shown them to Mom months before Christmas. She had told me to be patient and keep earning my family dollars.

On Christmas morning, my name had been written right there on the box. I had been so excited that I almost tore the wrapping paper in half.

But Sadie just hugged her knees and cried, saying her mother had promised her one, too.

Mom tore the gift tag off right in front of me. "Lena is understanding," she'd said. "She won't fight you over it."

The telescope went into Sadie's room.

And I got five family dollars for the very first time.

I remembered standing in the doorway of her room later that evening, looking at the telescope on her desk. Sadie had been too busy playing with it to notice me. Mom had told me that I should be proud of myself for being generous.

I hadn't been generous. I hadn't even been asked.

So the system had never been a reward. It was just scrap paper they used to shut me up every time they took something from me.

The bus finally arrived. I climbed aboard, found a seat near the back, and watched the restaurant lights disappear behind the fogged window. I didn't call Mom again. I didn't send Sadie a message. I was tired of trying to convince people that I deserved the same consideration they gave everyone else.

I hadn't been home long when they walked in.

Mom saw me sitting in the living room and tossed a takeout box and a stack of family dollars onto the table. "Sadie packed that for you. Who do you think you're making that face at?"

"You never told me you changed restaurants."

She paused, then her expression turned cold. "Couldn't you have confirmed it yourself? Does everything have to revolve around you?"

I looked at the takeout box. It was cold, and the sauce had leaked into one corner. I didn't open it.

Then Mom picked up the new VR headset they had bought and carried it into Sadie's room. Through the wall, I could hear them taking turns shrieking with laughter.

The next day, just after I got off my shift, an ice storm rolled in. The sky had turned a dull gray before sunset, and the wind rattled the store's automatic doors. The manager announced that the buses were running behind schedule, but I thought I could still get home.

The bus stopped halfway home, its service suspended. The driver made all of us get off. I was still four miles from home.

I pushed forward into the wind. Ice pellets stung my face, and soon my chest felt like it was being cinched shut with wire. I pulled out my inhaler and pressed it twice, but it only gave a weak, empty hiss.

I shook it and tried again. Nothing.

I had been meaning to replace it. I had told Mom the prescription was running low, but she had said we would handle it later. Later had become another word I was learning not to trust.

I sent my live location to the family group chat and recorded a voice message.

"Dad, I'm having an asthma attack... the buses stopped running. Can you come get me?"

The wind pushed me toward the road, and I stepped behind a closed bus shelter to get some protection. My fingers were already numb. I tried to take slow breaths, the way the doctor had once taught me, but each breath felt shorter than the one before.

A few minutes later, Caleb replied.

"Cut the drama. Are you really going to ruin Sadie's birthday just for attention?"

I read the message twice. Sadie's birthday had been celebrated the night before. The date was still marked on the family calendar, but the actual dinner had already happened. It didn't matter. In Caleb's mind, anything that interrupted Sadie's happiness had to be my fault.

I called Dad. No answer.

Then I called Mom. The first time, it rang until it went to voicemail. The second time, she declined it outright.

I stared at the screen and suddenly didn't want to call anymore. They had my location. They had heard my voice. They knew I was having trouble breathing.

I typed another message, but my fingers kept hitting the wrong letters. I deleted it and tried again.

"I can't breathe properly. Please come."

No reply came.

The wind stole the air from my lungs. I couldn't get a breath in. The lights of a convenience store down the road blurred. I stumbled toward the entrance, hoping the staff could help, but I was too weak to even push the glass door open.

I leaned against the wall and tried to pull in another breath. My chest tightened harder. My knees began to shake, and the ground seemed to tilt beneath me.

I thought about Duke. About the dorm room I had seen in the scholarship brochure. About a desk beside a window and a campus where no one knew how many family dollars I had saved.

I thought about the Honda, sitting in the driveway while Sadie posed beside it. I thought about the telescope, the dress, the tablet, and every time I had been told that I was capable of understanding.

I didn't want to die on a sidewalk because my family thought I was trying to ruin a birthday.

With numb fingers, I unlocked my phone and dialed 911.

"Emergency services. What is your location?"

"I... can't breathe..."

"Stay with me. Can you tell me where you are?"

I tried to read the street sign, but the letters blurred. I managed to give the operator the name of the convenience store and the nearest intersection.

"Help is on the way. Are you alone?"

I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say that I had always been alone, even when the house was full of people. But my mouth barely worked.

"Yes," I whispered.

The phone slipped from my hand. I heard the operator calling my name, though I hadn't told her much more than my first name. I tried to reach for the device, but my arms no longer seemed to belong to me.

Before I lost consciousness, I heard the faint wail of sirens in the distance.