“I can’t believe you’re just going toleave.”
Millie sighs. “What do you expect me to do?”
“STAY!” she snaps, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Like it’s theeasiest. They stand there on the front path of their dead parents’ house, scowling at each other.
Millie is twenty-seven to Freya’s nineteen, and those eight years might as well be a chasm. It’s not just the age, or the fact that in Millie’s mind, Freya will always be a little kid, a smaller, dark-haired carbon copy trailing in her wake, one hand on her favorite teddy and the other on Millie’s sleeve.
It’s that sometime before Freya hit double digits, their parentschanged. Not like, they got older and a little more lenient. More like they’d been body-snatched. While Millie grew up going to church four days a week and being told she couldn’t read fantasy novels because that washow the devil gets in, Freya’s adolescence either coincided with or brought about some tectonic shift within the Mitchell house, something Millie would obviously have been grateful for if she hadn’t alreadyleft. Instead, she came home from college that first Christmas and found a house lit up with lights, a tree with presents underneath and Santa ornaments, even though Santa had been banned her entire childhood because he took the Christ out of Christmas.
But her parents had had some kind of falling-out with their church (a church she had been begging them to leave for years), had broken free and taken Freya with them, but left Millie behind.
She’d stood dumbfounded in the living room, tears sparkling in her eyes, not because it was beautiful, which it was, but because it wasn’tfair. It felt like some kind of punishment, like they were saying Freya deserved something Millie didn’t. And when she called them out on it, her dad accused her of being dramatic, and her mom told her she was being selfish. Freya was oblivious, humming “Jingle Bells”—not even “Drummer Boy, or “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” or any of the ones Millie had been forced to sing—and Millie spent the whole holiday putting on a smile, and pretending to be happy instead of hurt, pretending this was the life she had instead of the one she’d always wanted, now given to someone else.
And she tried not to turn that anger on her sister. To keep it focused on Mom and Dad. But it was hard.
When Millie turned thirteen, she was given a purity ring and told to keep her knees together when she sat. When Freya turned thirteen, they let her have a sleepover at the nearby roller rink. With boys. And every time Millie so much as brought up the absurd disparity, her parents acted like she was blowing her own past out of proportion, misremembering her life, and she couldn’t take feeling gaslit every second she was home, so she stopped coming. Three years, without a visit.
And it was awful.
And it was easier.
And then they went anddied, and she didn’t really have a choice.
So she’s here, but she can’t get her little sister to understand.
They may be at the same funeral, but they’re not mourning the same people. Freya doesn’t get why Millie doesn’t love them, and Millie doesn’t get how Freya can. Freya doesn’t remember Millie’s parents, and Millie doesn’t recognize Freya’s.
“I have to go,” she says, keeping her voice steady. “I’m on deadline.”
Freya throws up her hands. “Oh, forgive me for thinking Mom and Dad are more important than dragon porn.”
Millie rolls her eyes. “There are no dragons in this one, and it’s notporn,” she hisses. “There are a few very tasteful fade-to-blacks, which you’d know if you ever read—”
“Ihave,” snipes Freya. “And you know what I think?”
“I guess you’re going to tell me.”
“I think you’re better than that.”
“You used to like my stories.”
“When I was a kid! But I grew up. And you should, too.”
Millie flinches. She used to sit on the edge of Freya’s bed and make up fairy tales. And sure, most people grew out of that, went to parties, had a life. But if she’d done that, she wouldn’t have gotten an agent before she was old enough to drink. Wouldn’t have sold a book—even if it wasn’t the kind she’d thought she wanted to write.
“You could be really good, Mill,” says Freya, which is about as backhanded as a compliment can be. She must have learned that from their mom. “Instead, you’re dumbing yourself down. On the page,andoff. You think I haven’t seen those videos you make? And the voice you put on, like you’re still in high school.”
The arrows hit their mark—she doesn’t know a single writer whowantsto spend every waking hour shilling for readers, trying to be shiny enough to catch their attention in ten-second chunks, putting in a hundred thousand words of work only to be told they’re not doing enough, but it’s the way it is. Millie grits her teeth and tries not to let it show.
“Yeah, well,” she growls, “who do you think is going to pay for you, now that Mom and Dad are gone? I am. With those books. So if I were you, I’d stop shitting on my life, and let me get on with my work.”
Freya flinches, as if slapped.
Millie wants to pull her close, to tell her everything will be okay.
But saying it won’t make it so.
And she still has three thousand words to write.
