“I didn’t,” I say, quiet as a mouse because she always seems to be angrier when she can hear me.
Mom moves so fast, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me right in front of the TV. Tears burn my eyes from the sting of her nails digging into my skin. If I tell her she’s hurting me, it’ll only be worse.
I think I hear Ella gasp behind us, and the ugly monster inside me turns. It’s dark, and red, and it wants to break things and roar at Ella, Mom, Dad, my dumb teachers who keep telling Mom about what I do at school.
“Do not lie to me,” Mom hisses.
“I’m not lying.” I keep my voice quiet, even though the beast inside me is breathing fire into my stomach. It’s spreading intomy chest, down to the tips of my fingers and toes. Taking over. I think I’m going to explode like those big bombs in the movies. I’m going to crash and burn everything around.
“Sable—”
“It wasn’t fucking me!”
Oh no.
Mom’s hard, bony fingers move to my hair. I scream when the strands are yanked back toward the couch. “That is no language for a seven-year-old to use.”
She lets go. I scramble to sit, clutching the sore spot on my head and blinking hard to stop the tears from falling. My fists shake. The monster in me wants to hit her so, so bad, but I—it feels like I can’t breathe.
Oh no, no, I really can’t breathe.
“It was me,” Ella rushes, hesitating before deciding not to reach out and touch Mom.
Why is she crying? It’s not her that Mom’s mad at.
She didn’t even feel bad that I was getting the blame for what she did until Mom started hurting me. She probably wouldn’t have said anything if the worst thing Mom did was lock me up in my room like she always does.
I swipe my hand over my eyes when a tear breaks free. Everything is buzzing inside me, and I’m overflowing. All I can feel is the dark, blazing, dangerous monster that always gets me into trouble.
“Mom, please, it’s my fault,” Ella begs, standing too far away to stop anything else from happening.
“Get out, Ella, and stop crying,” Mom snaps. “It’s something your sister would do.”
“Mom—”
“Elanor.”
She sucks in a sharp breath. For a second, I think she’s going to keep sticking up for me like my teacher says older siblings should. But then Ella bows her head and backs away. “Okay.”
She leaves.
Of course she does. Ella doesn’t like me even though I tried so, so hard to be like her, but she’s perfect, and smart, and pretty, and everyone at school likes her. She doesn’t sit by herself at lunch and always gets picked to join a team during PE.
Maybe—maybe if I wasn’t so stupid, none of this would be happening to me. I just have to be more like Ella, but Ican’t. Every time I try, it never works.
Angry tears blur my vision as I glare at the door she left through, but they don’t fall.
“Did you know your father cheated on me while I was pregnant with you, Sable?”
My eyes snap up to Mom. She isn’t looking at me. She almost sounds… sad. But I’m not that dumb. Mom is never really sad. She only paints her anger in different colors when she talks to me.
I don’t like this story.
She’s never told me more than that, but the last time she said it, she sent me to live with Ah Ma for a whole month, and I came back covered in big bruises that took forever to go away because she’s so much stricter than Mom and has a stick that really hurts.
“It was the first time—as far as I could tell,” she keeps going, looking lost as she stares at the wall above my head. “He met a woman at a bar, and I smelled her all over him when he got home.”
I frown, gripping my shirt so she doesn’t see my hands tremble. Something bad is going to happen. I can feel it.
