“Annnng.” Lucila is shaking like a doll, not able to wake up, even though she’s making noises.
“Wake up, I SAID!” Mom screams in her face.
Luci’s eyes blink open. “Mom?”
“Get up! Get up!”
Luci keeps blinking at her. She’s trying to wake up.
“Luci,” I whisper.
She focuses on me.
“Go sleep in your sister’s bed,” mom says to Luci. “I need to run to the store and get her more medicine. She’s not feeling good. And she cut herself after she broke the snow globes, and she needs bandages.”
I broke the snow globes? I’m sure she did it, but now I’m questioning if I did or not…
“Okay,” Luci says, but she sounds like she did when she was talking in her sleep.
“Fuck it!” Mom lets her go and Luci falls to the bed, bouncing a little. “Get back in your bed!” Mom points at mine.
I do.
“Close your eyes.”
I do. Tears run down my cheeks, forced out with how tight I’m closing them.
My head and foot are burning me so bad.
“Now go to fucking sleep, you little troublemaker.”
I can’t, but I don’t open my eyes.
I hear Mom’s cries echoing in the house. It’s a scary sound, like someone died. Or that dead person is coming back to haunt me.
Maybe she’s afraid dad will hurt her. She said he did.
He killed her spirit, whatever that means, but it doesn’t sound good.
Behind my eyes, all I see is a beautiful songbird trapped in a filthy cage, and it makes it hard for me to breathe. I’d been feeling like that, my chest feeling weird when I take a breath, but it’s getting worse.
“Push over, Ava,” my sister’s sleepy voice comes at me.
I think I’m dreaming until I force my eyes open and see her standing next to my bed, holding her pillow. She’s swaying, and her eyes are not entirely open. I don’t even know if she hears mom crying like that. I push over all the way to the wall, so happy to have something solid at my back and my sister in front of me.
I don’t realize how bad I’m shaking until my sister’s strong arm comes around me.
“It’s okay,” she whispers, kissing my forehead. “I don’t feel good either. We probably caught something at school.”
Dad is killing mom, I want to say, but instead, I keep silent, my heart in my throat, my breaths hurting as I imagine the doors to my own cage clicking into place.
Because everyone always says I look just like my mom, and one day, I know someone is going to kill my spirit too.
THIRTY
AVA
The room waspitch black when I opened my eyes.
