The Scapegoat's Ruin

Eight years since I cut my mother out of my life, and she walks into the bakery where I work.

She's here to buy a cake for my little sister. I'm the girl behind the counter.

For a moment neither of us says anything. Then she does, in a voice I can't name.

You left your father and me, and this is what you made of yourself?

Her eyes are red. Whatever's behind them, I can't read it.

I don't answer. I box up her order and hold it out.

She stares at the cake. Doesn't take it.

So I press it into her hands, turn, and call the next customer.

She follows me down the counter.

"You really have nothing to say to me? I'm your mother."

I stop. I look at her, and I don't understand the question.

What is there to say?

She's the one who told me to stop calling her Mom.

And I stopped being the girl who wanted one a long time ago.

Chapter One

The shop smelled like warm sugar. The other customers had gone quiet, every one of them turned toward us now, and the air had that thick, secondhand-embarrassment weight to it.

Then my father walked in and broke it.

"Is Bri's cake ready yet?"

He saw me. His eyes went wide. Fifty years old and his face crumpled right there in front of everyone, and he reached for my hand.

"Vivian. All these years, why didn't you call? Your mom and I have missed you. You have no idea how much."

I stepped back out of reach. Kept my voice level.

"If you don't need anything, please don't hold up my line. I have other customers waiting."

Something I said turned my mother's face to stone.

She was a breath from laying into me when her phone rang. I caught the name on the screen. Brielle.

She turned her back to take it.

"Mom, why isn't my cake here yet?"

"Soon, baby. Just hold on for me."

She hung up and slid right back into the old rhythm, like no time had passed at all.

"You know how your sister is about her sweets. Grown and still a child about it. Not like you, you were always so"

"Enough."

She stopped. Whatever came next died in her throat.

The old me never did that. The old me used to dig up things to say to her, anything at all, just to earn one more second of her looking at me. Even when the look was a scolding.

I met her startled eyes.

"I'm working," I said. "I don't have time to catch up. So could you both please leave and let me do my job?"

She opened her mouth again. My father caught her arm. He smiled at me, wide and warm.

"You go on, sweetheart. We'll come find you later."

"Don't." One word, no room in it. "And don't let Brielle know you came looking for me. You wouldn't want to set off one of her episodes."

The color dropped out of both their faces.

Brielle called again. Then again. Each ring more impatient than the last.

In the end they left, looking back the whole way to the door, something working behind their eyes that I chose not to study.

The door swung shut.

I stood there with the bag handle twisted around my fingers, my knuckles gone white, and the smell of sugar I lived in all day turned sharp in my throat.

Chapter Two

The manager didn't get back until noon, both arms loaded with supply runs.

I went to help her carry it in. She waved me off.

"You've been on your feet all morning. Go eat. And mind that back of yours, I've got this."

I stopped, and there it was. The ache low in my spine. I'd been too busy to notice all morning, and now that I had, it sharpened into something with edges.

An old injury. The kind that aches before rain. I'd carried it so long I forgot it was there most days.

Once she'd put everything away, she found me in the corner, staring at nothing. She came over smiling.

"What's the matter, Viv?"

I came back to myself and made my face do something like a smile.

"Nothing."

Marisol slid in beside her. "Nothing, my foot. That couple this morning, were they giving you a hard time? I watched your whole face change from the back room."

The manager's head snapped up. "What couple?"

"No idea. They looked familiar, though."

The manager couldn't sit on her curiosity. She pulled up the security feed on her phone, scrubbed back, and the second my mother's face filled the screen she yelped.

"Shut up. That's Professor Vance. I've seen her interviews. She's a huge deal in education, and her husband's that psychologist, the parenting guy from TV. They're both massive."

She kept going. "People say they adore their girls. The younger one turned out perfect, supposedly."

"Younger one?" Marisol leaned in. "What about the older one?"

The manager shook her head. Didn't know. She looked back at me, and the confusion settled into her face.

"Viv. Do you know them? Because the way they came in here, they came for you."

I looked at the two of them.

"I'm the older one," I said.

The disgrace who bullied her sick little sister. The monster they swore had tried to take her away.

Their mouths fell open. Nothing came out.

But they kept asking, and somewhere in the asking it came out of me, the way you tell a story that happened to someone else.

Once, I had parents who loved me.

They raised me like something out of a storybook. I said I wanted to see snow at the top of the world, and they pulled me out of school and flew me north overnight to stand in it.

I said I hated being alone, and my father walked away from his own university chair to take work near home, just to be there more. My mother could be three time zones out and she'd still catch the last red-eye home, so she could be the one to put me to bed.

Even after my sister came, none of it thinned.

Brielle was a sickly baby. She'd spike fevers in the dead of night and cry for hours. My parents would get her down, and then, scared I'd feel forgotten, they'd creep into my room after and curl around me until I slept.

I tried to make myself easy. I trailed my sister everywhere, carried her little backpack, stepped in front of the kids who were mean to her, split every handful of candy down the middle.

When she got older, my parents kept it even. Matching rooms, right down to the curtains. Same clothes, same shoes, same books. Two of everything, always.

Everyone said it. Of course those two raised perfect kids. They had it all under control, right down to the parenting.

I thought we'd stay happy like that forever.

Until Brielle turned eight.

Chapter Three

The year she turned eight, my parents took her in for a checkup. They came home gray-faced.

My mother called me over, her eyes rimmed red, and smoothed my hair.

"Vivian. Your sister isn't strong. From now on, you'll give way to her. All right?"

My father nodded along. "She can't take much. You're the big sister. You look after her."

I didn't know yet what "isn't strong" was going to mean. I only knew I was supposed to take care of my sister, so I nodded hard.

"I will."

I had no idea those two words were the start of me giving, and giving, and giving.

My room became her sunroom, because Bri needed more light.

My piano, the thing I loved most in the world, went down to the storage room, because the sound might disturb her rest. I stood in the doorway while two men carried it out, and I pressed my hand flat to the keys one last time before it was gone. The next time I saw it, there was a film of dust on the lid.

Even the study set I asked for on my birthday, they waved off. They'd buy Bri's imported supplements first, they said. My gift could come later.

Later never came.

Across the counter, Marisol's jaw had gone tight.

"Weak or not, they don't get to do that to you. What happened to no favorites?"

The manager shook her head, furious. "And your sister? How did she treat you?"

Me?

With my parents lined up like that, Bri only ever took more.

Give her an inch, she took the whole mile.

She knocked a full glass of milk across my homework on purpose, then turned and cried to our parents that I'd shoved her, that I'd made her spill it. The tears came on cue. They believed her before the milk had finished dripping off the page.

She snuck spicy food, made herself sick, and told them I'd given it to her.

At first my parents would at least ask me about it. After enough times, they stopped asking. I was the difficult one. I was the one bullying my sick little sister. That became the truth of our house.

The thing is, it was the easier truth to hold. The quiet daughter who never made a scene, against the loud one who did. To believe me, they'd have had to believe they'd raised something monstrous. So they didn't.

"Vivian, you're the older one. What is so hard about giving way?"

"Bri isn't well. Can't you be the bigger person and stop setting her off?"

I'd try to explain. Every time, before I could get it out, Bri's crying would cut across me, and my parents would frown and tell me to be quiet, then gather her up and murmur to her, and leave me standing there like something extra in the room.

After a while I was almost invisible at home.

Give way to your sister. It was the thing I heard most in my own house.

I still remember her birthday. My parents had laid out a whole table of her favorite desserts. I'd brought out a picture book I'd been saving up for, my present to her.

She loved it. She grabbed my hand and said she wanted to play hide-and-seek.

My whole chest lifted. Finally, I thought. Maybe she was done fighting me.

Then she was just gone. I looked for her the entire day. I never found her.

When my parents realized, they went out of their minds.

My mother crossed the room and dug her fingers into my shoulders, hard enough to make my eyes water, and she would not let go.

"Vivian. Where is she?"

"I don't know. She wanted to play hide-and-seek. I looked all day and I couldn't find her."

I told her the truth, exactly as it happened. She didn't believe a word of it. She slapped me, and again, and again, every one with her whole arm behind it.

My ears rang. She dragged me into the room and threw me down.

The crack came from my own back, clear as anything in the quiet. The pain took the air right out of me.

I had never heard a sound like that come out of a person. It took me a second to understand it had come out of me.

She locked the door from the outside.

"Ungrateful. After everything. You were jealous of her, weren't you. You couldn't stand us loving her, so you hid her away. If she isn't found tonight, don't you dare come out for food or water."

My father stood in the hall the whole time.

He watched, and he never said a word.

Chapter Four

That night I lay on the floor. The pain crowded out the hunger, at least for a while.

When my mind started to go soft at the edges, I heard her voice.

"Mommy, she said she was going to get rid of me, so you'd only love her. I was so scared. I ran as hard as I could to get back to you."

Through the gap under the door, I watched my mother gather Bri into her arms.

"Baby. Do you know how scared I was? I thought I might never see you again. It's all right now. It's all right. I'll deal with your sister later."

My father's eyes were red too. Shaken to the core.

I tried to call out. I tried to explain. But the harder I reached for it, the tighter my throat pulled, and the words came apart in my mouth.

Their voices went on out there, soft and endless.

"Our poor girl."

"We'll never let her near you again."

Then the door, and they were gone, and they took Bri with them and left me locked in.

The night went deep. The room kept getting colder.

The small of my back throbbed, worse and worse. My stomach growled at nothing. The dark slid in at the corners of my eyes.

Something in me still wants to live. I drag my hand toward the handle. Every inch feels like my spine coming apart. I watch the thread of light under the door go thin, and thinner.

I don't know how long it lasts.

Then everything goes.

I came to because my parents were screaming