No Longer Their Backup Plan

1: 1

After my grandmother died, I was brought back to the city.

My mother patted my shoulder. You're the older sister. Don't take everything so much to heart.

I nodded and took the words seriously.

Chloe Whitman had her own walk-in closet, Dylan Whitman had a room lined with his model figures, and I had a small bed pushed together from spare pieces.

I didn't mind. Compared to the hardships I'd known out in the country, this was nothing.

Not until the day I came home for summer break, standing at the door of the new place, did I learn they'd already switched to a smart lock. No one had thought to tell me.

My phone was dead. I waited from dusk into the dead of night.

They finally came back, shopping bags in hand, chattering about how good dinner had been, how great the movie was.

My father bent over the system, frowning. "Permanent slots are full."

My mother didn't seem to care. "Just send her a temporary code. She won't be staying more than a few days anyway."

Dylan leaned against the doorframe, grinning. "Sis, it's not that we won't register you. It's that Chestnut's got a permanent slot too. Mom says he's here every day, so he counts as a fixed member."

In that moment, I understood all of it.

I wasn't a resident of this house. I was a guest, allowed inside now and then.

That night, I finished filling out the classified project application.

If I was only someone passing through on a temporary code, then when the time ran out, I should see myself out.

The sensor light had just come on when my father bent his head to open the lock app. "How many days are you staying this time? A temporary code only opens for seven days at a stretch. When it runs out, say so yourself."

My mother pulled my hand over to register a fingerprint.

She tried three fingers on my right hand. The lock didn't respond to any of them.

She frowned. "Why is it always this much trouble with you? Chloe and Dylan each got it on the first try."

I looked down at my own hand.

As a child I'd lived with my grandmother in a seaside town, drying fish, mending nets, hauling crates.

Later, back in this house, it was always dishes and mopping and cleaning up the kitchen.

Sea wind and cleaning solution together had worn my fingertips hard, the ridges gone shallow.

"What are you spacing out for?" My father was getting impatient. "If it won't register, no one's going to be around to open the door for you later. Don't come complaining then that you can't get in."

I pulled a tissue, wiped the sweat from my palm, and pressed down again.

A few seconds later the lock finally chimed. "Temporary resident registered."

Temporary resident.

My father put his phone away and went into the living room.

The coffee table was covered in shopping bags. Coffee beans for clients, scented candles for coworkers, keepsake trinkets for relatives.

Nothing for me.

I asked, "Where did you all go?"

No one answered.

Chloe was leaning against Mom's shoulder, scrolling through photos, smiling sweetly. "Mom, look at this one. Don't the four of us look like a magazine cover?"

My father leaned in for a look. "That one's good. Chlo always knows how to find the angle."

Without me, they'd taken a family portrait too.

Dylan was crouched down unclasping Chestnut's collar. He looked up and grinned at me. "Sis, don't lose that temporary code. The chip in Chestnut's collar works better than you do. He just taps the door and he's in."

Before I could say anything, my mother waved a hand. "Go wash up first. You reek of sweat. Don't drag all that messy habit from out there straight into the house the second you're back."

I'd stood a whole evening in a hallway with no air conditioning, the back of my shirt soaked through long ago.

But not one of them asked if I was hot, or hungry. They only minded the smell on me.

I turned and went to the bathroom.

The person in the mirror had hair plastered to the side of her face, as ragged as a stray.

My phone buzzed just then. A message from Professor Fry.

"Once you're on the team, it's full lockdown the whole time. Your family situation, have you worked it all out?"

I stared at the screen for a few seconds, then wrote back. "Don't worry, Professor. I'll take care of it."

There wasn't really anything to work out.

When someone irrelevant leaves, and when, was never going to be something anyone cared about.

2: 2

I went back to my room for a pair of pajamas, and the moment I pushed the door open, I almost thought I'd walked into the wrong room.

A dozen storage boxes were stacked on the floor, and the foot of the bed was buried under Dylan's model parts.

The shelf that used to hold my award certificates and my textbooks now held Chloe's perfume and jewelry boxes.

I stood there a few seconds, then turned and went to the living room. "Where's my stuff?"

Mom didn't even look up.

"The useless stuff I threw out. Your brother and sister have too much, so I put it in your room for now. You're barely home a few times a year. It'd just sit empty otherwise."

"Then where do I sleep?"

Dad was lounging on the couch, looking at his phone, his tone flat. "Just move the boxes into the storage room. You have to ask about a little thing like that?"

I carried the boxes into the storage room, trip after trip.

There was still more than half the space empty in there, and yet they'd insisted on taking my bed.

By the time I'd cleared out enough room to stand, the back of my shirt was soaked through.

I'd barely sat down to catch my breath when Dad frowned. "Why haven't you gone to shower yet?"

"Someone's in there right now."

"Your brother and sister both know how to manage their timing. You're the only one who always drags it to the very end."

I didn't bother explaining. I just unscrewed my water bottle and drank a few gulps.

Almost another hour passed before the bathroom was finally free.

The room was thick with damp heat. The second I shut the door, Mom knocked twice from outside. "Wash yourself properly. Don't be a slob like you were as a kid."

The water came down over my head, and I closed my eyes, and suddenly I remembered the year I first came back to this house.

Back then Chloe always showered first, and by my turn the hot water was almost gone.

There was one family dinner where my aunt laughed and said I hadn't washed behind my ears.

Mom's face darkened right there, and she said I'd grown up with Grandma and hadn't even learned the most basic habits of keeping clean.

The truth was Grandma was just old and couldn't manage it all.

And Mom was no different.

She was busy tending to my brother and sister; she had no time to teach me how to keep myself looking presentable.

After that, every time I showered I scrubbed my skin red, terrified of hearing "You're filthy" one more time.

But all these years, she never once saw it.

When I came out, Dad lowered his voice to warn me. "They're all asleep. Don't blow-dry your hair, it's loud."

I nodded, drying my hair a bit at a time with the towel, then sat down at the desk and opened my laptop.

The application page Professor Fry had sent was still open, the deadline listed at the very bottom. Tonight.

I looked at it for a few seconds, then clicked submit.

Early the next morning, I handed over the printed informed-consent form.

Dad was watching the news and didn't even lift an eyelid. "Go find your mom."

Mom was checking Dylan's homework, going over even a single mental-math problem carefully.

I set the paper down beside her hand. She only glanced at the signature line, picked up the pen, and signed.

I asked, "Aren't you going to read it?"

She put the pen down, her tone offhand. "What big thing could you possibly have going on."

Chloe was off to the side recording a voice message, and Dylan wasn't up yet.

No one knew that in two weeks I would be gone.

And even if they had known, they probably wouldn't have reacted any differently.

3: 3

Late on the weekend evening, the table had just been set when a few of the aunts and uncles who often came around showed up.

I was at the island slicing watermelon when I heard Dad in the living room introducing Chloe and Dylan.

"You two really know how to raise kids."

Someone said it with a laugh.

"Your younger daughter's studying design, so stylish too, and your son already won a robotics competition. Nothing to worry about with those two."

Dad played modest, but the pride leaked through anyway.

"They're not that great. The oldest never listens. We told her to stay in-state, but she insisted on running off to Northport to study some kind of signal analysis in the ocean. Sounds shaky to me. No idea what she'll even do with it after."

I study marine acoustics.

My professor says we give the deep sea a kind of "checkup," helping people avoid earthquakes and tsunamis, and we can take part in exploration and development too.

In Dad's mouth it came out as one line. "No idea what she'll do with it."

Over dinner, one of the aunts asked about allowances. "My daughter's going away for school next year too. How much a month is reasonable?"

I'd just opened my mouth when Mom answered for me.

She laid a piece of fish on Chloe's plate first. "A girl out on her own can't be scraping by. Our Chloe gets forty-eight hundred a month. Clothes, makeup, going out with friends, it all costs money, and I wire her a little extra now and then too."

Chloe drew out her words with a laugh. "Mom, you still haven't gotten me that new camera."

"I will. We'll go look in a couple days."

Mom patted the back of her hand, her eyes soft with doting.

As for me, five hundred a month, and my phone was Dad's old hand-me-down, the battery swollen, the charging cable ready to snap the second you touched it.

Because the family had two college students to support, and Dylan's coding classes to pay for.

I was the older sister. I was supposed to be sensible.

The aunt praised Chloe for surely landing a scholarship.

Mom jumped right in. "She's been driven since she was little. Not like my oldest, quiet, never made a sound, never brought home any award worth mentioning."

I lowered my head, picked the imitation crab out of my bowl, and set it under the table.

Chestnut trotted over wagging his tail and ate it in one bite.

To this day Mom still hadn't registered that shellfish breaks me out in a rash.

As for the national award certificate in my suitcase, there was no point taking it out.

After the guests had all gone, I cleared the table, washed the dishes, mopped the floor, and only then walked over to the couch.

Dad was half-reclined, sleeping off the drink, while Chloe and Dylan were curled up on the rug playing games, loud enough to give anyone a headache.

I said, "Dad, the temporary access code is about to expire."

He grunted, dug out his phone, his face impatient.

"Got it, I'll renew it another week. Why have you been sitting at home this whole time instead of going out to find a part-time job?"

I didn't answer.

His brow furrowed again. "You're a grown woman. You should be thinking about pulling some weight for this family, not shut up at home waiting to be kept."

I stood there a moment, then turned and put my water glass back in the sideboard.

Early the next morning, I'd just come out of my room when Dad rubbed his temples and called me over. "I had too much to drink last night, came on a little strong. I'm not trying to kick you out."

I nodded. "I know."

I knew it wasn't a drunken slip.

And I knew, too, that deep down he'd always wanted me to take the hint, to move out on my own, so he wouldn't have to be the bad guy.

4: 4

The day before I left, my mother did something she rarely did and came to me on her own. "Let's go to the mall this afternoon. You come too. Those few pieces you have are all worn out, so I'll pick up a couple of new ones for you while we're there."

I froze for a second, then followed her out the door.

At the mall, Chloe headed straight for the new-arrivals section, and Dylan hung on our father, dragging him off to look at game consoles.

My mother steered me to the clearance area, and I stood there sorting through a rack of markdowns by myself.

Professor Fry had reminded us a couple of days earlier that the temperature at the training site dropped sharply at night, and told us to bring a windbreaker.

I dug around for a long time before I found a dark gray shell jacket, the right size, thick fabric.

My mother glanced at the price tag and her brow creased at once. "Three hundred-something for this? It's the middle of summer, when are you even going to wear it?"

She pulled out a white T-shirt and pushed it into my hands.

"This one's fine. Forty-nine. Simple and clean. We can ring it up with Chloe's dress and hit the discount threshold too."

The air-conditioning in the mall was cranked high, and holding that thin T-shirt, all I felt was the cold creeping into my fingertips.

Halfway through, Dylan whined that he was thirsty and reached straight into my bag. "Sis, give me some money first, I'll go get drinks."

Both my hands were full of bags, and I couldn't stop him in time.

He slid my wallet out and ran off.

When he came back he had four cups of iced fruit tea in his hands, and, as usual, none of them was for me.

Chloe took hers and said with a laugh, "Our little brother really knows how to take care of people now."

I looked down at my empty palm and said nothing.

At dinner, when my mother ordered, she got all the sweet dishes Chloe liked and the fried food Dylan loved.

When it came to me, she just asked in passing, "Anything's fine with you, right?"

Before I could answer, she'd already called the server over to put the order in.

After dinner I wanted to run to the convenience store next door for a rice ball to tide me over, since I hadn't eaten enough at the table.

When I opened my wallet, the stack of cash inside was gone.

Nine hundred dollars. I'd saved it up last semester organizing data for the lab, plus a part-time job at a coffee shop.

My fingers went still, and I looked up at Dylan.

He immediately shrank behind our mother.

"Did you take my money?"

Her face darkened at once. "What are you yelling for? He's your little brother. So what if he takes a little of your money?"

I kept my eyes on Dylan. "Give it back."

His mouth twisted and he burst into tears right there. "I bought a limited-edition figure. Mom never lets me get one, so I just took a little."

"A little?" My voice had gone quiet. "That was nine hundred."

My father's face went dark too. "Serena, that's enough. Over a bit of money, you drive your little brother to tears in public. How do you think that makes us look?"

Chloe was busy soothing Dylan, my mother had him shielded completely, and my father just pulled him in close.

The light came down over them as they gathered together, like a complete family portrait.

Only I was standing on the outside.

In the end my father threw out one line. "Think hard about what kind of sister you've been."

Then he took them and drove off in the car.

My phone had died long ago, and I didn't have a cent on me, so all I could do was walk back along the road under the overpass.

The night wind carried the damp, my soles were rubbed raw and burning, and after a while even the pain went numb.

When the security guard saw me come back in the middle of the night, he blinked. "Serena, you walked all the way home?"

I said, "Yeah. It's fine."

The road ahead, anyway, was probably one I'd have to walk on my own.

When it was almost dawn, I dragged my suitcase out the door.

The living room was quiet. Only Chestnut heard the noise, climbed out of his bed, and followed me to the entryway to nuzzle at my pant leg.

I crouched down and rubbed his ears. "This time I'm really going."

He tipped his head up to look at me, tail wagging softly.

At ten in the morning, I met up with the project team at the entrance of the research institute.

Before we handed in our phones, the team leader told everyone to send one last message home.

I glanced down. In the family chat, my mother had just sent two lines.

"The temporary code expires today."

"If you want it renewed, apologize to your brother first."

I looked at them for a few seconds, then pressed the screen dark and shut the phone off.

The access was charity to begin with. I could do without it.