Half-Month Cruise Took the Dog, Not Me; I Quit This Family

1: 1

My parents said this year was a fire-and-water year, that being around water would bring wealth and smooth sailing through life.

So they used my scholarship money to book a family cruise, half a month at sea, five spots total.

While I was packing, Mom put a hand out to stop me. We're one spot short. You'll have to sit this one out.

I gave a bitter smile. "Mom, Dad, plus me and my sister and brother, that's exactly five people, isn't it?"

My sister threw her luggage down. "If Lucky can't go, then I'm not going either."

My brother looked at me with disgust. "Lucky's a golden retriever, a water dog. He loves the water more than anything. You're really going to fight a dog for a spot?"

Dad pressed a hundred-dollar bill into my hand. "Lucky is your sister's emotional support dog. He can't be away from her. Just stay home and amuse yourself for a few days. Stop comparing yourself to your sister over everything."

Mom wrapped an arm around my sulking sister, Dad talked down my angry brother, and the four of them and the dog left me nothing but their backs.

A few minutes later, my brother posted something pointed on social media:

No annoying tagalong is such a relief~ What a beautiful trip.

The house was empty. Just me.

Five chairs in the living room. Mom's and Dad's, my sister's and brother's, and Lucky's.

Every meal, I stood off to the side. Even reaching in for a bite of food got me a look for being in the way.

I opened the chat and replied to my academic advisor, the one who'd been urging me to go abroad for a classified research program.

Five years, sealed off from everything. Perfect. I wouldn't be in their sight.

1:

I didn't take the hundred. I let it drift down beside Lucky's bag of freeze-dried treats.

A memory flashed through my head, my sister cradling Lucky and cooing to a classmate on the phone:

"Right, Lucky's the whole family's darling. A two-hundred-gram bag of freeze-dried treats costs two hundred dollars. Imported beef, all of it. His food alone runs a few hundred a day."

I looked right, at the shoe rack by the door.

Packed with my brother's Nike AJs and every kind of sneaker, lined up neat and spotless.

Mom, Dad, and my sister each had their own dedicated shoe cabinet.

Only mine sat alone at the door. A single pair of slippers, and a pair of canvas shoes with the soles worn through.

The slippers had been chewed up by Lucky. Only half was left.

That had blown up into a huge fight.

Except I wasn't the one who started it. My sister came at me, swung the half slipper, and slapped it across my face.

"Deidre Fox! Did you do this on purpose? If Lucky eats your slipper and gets sick, I will end you!"

Cupping my stinging, burning cheek, I tried to explain.

"I already left the slippers by the door. You opened it to grab a delivery and didn't shut it, that's how Lucky got hold of it. And even though it broke into two pieces, they fit back together, so he probably didn't actually swallow any"

Before I could finish, Mom reached over and pinched hard at the soft flesh at my waist.

"Talking back to your sister again? When you're wrong, you apologize, plain and simple. No excuses!"

My brother pulled a face at me too. "Shame on you, Dee. Little liar."

Under my parents' pressure, I lowered my head and apologized to my sister.

Then she demanded I bow and apologize to Lucky.

Eyes stinging, I looked at my parents. Neither of them said a word.

The moment I bent over, I saw the canvas shoes on my feet, washed pale.

My sister had bought them a size too big by mistake three years ago.

When Mom handed them to me, her tone was pure charity. "Your sister's feet are so small, only a size six. Here, you wear them."

Mom never once realized that I, a good bit shorter than my sister, wore a size five and a half.

But I said nothing. Because the moment I said something, I'd be left with nothing.

Hard to imagine, in a household pulling in a million a year, that I lived this wretchedly.

The reason was simple. I was the second child. The cream stuck between two cookies.

2: 2

After Mom gave birth to me, Vanessa suddenly developed an anxiety disorder.

She was terrified our parents wouldn't want her.

She cried and threw fits all day long.

So Mom and Dad made a point of ignoring me, to prove to Vanessa.

That even with me around, not an ounce of their love would be split away from her.

After Tyler was born, my parents told me to look after him because he was little.

But Vanessa never had to look after him. She could even boss him around.

Mom and Dad laughed and called it the pecking order of blood.

Yet Tyler was never once afraid of me.

Senior year, when I lived on campus, the laundry I'd hung out on the balcony sat there for two months and nobody brought it in for me.

I mentioned once that Tyler could bring my clothes in, and Mom and Dad's brows knit together in an instant:

"A grown girl like you, and you need your brother to bring in your laundry? Don't you have hands and feet of your own?!"

After hearing that, all I could do was set my clean summer uniform in a ventilated spot indoors.

When I came home the next month, I couldn't find it anywhere.

Vanessa said, without a shred of concern, "You didn't even know to hang it outside. It got all musty and stinking in the house. I have rhinitis, so I had Tyler throw it out."

So when I stepped up to give the speech as the school's model senior student.

I had to stand there under the blazing sun in my winter uniform, the students and teachers below wearing every kind of look, and all I could do was mumble something about running cold.

I still passed out on the spot from heatstroke and years of poor nutrition, and they laughed at me for a long time.

The one who led the laughing was my own brother.

He'd just started high school, and he clutched his stomach and pointed at me, doubled over:

"Wearing a winter uniform in the middle of summer. That's my second sister for you. What a moron!"

It was the peak of summer, yet I was shaking all over from cold, or maybe from rage.

All I could do was ask in a trembling voice, "Didn't you throw out my summer uniform?"

He curled his lip, not caring at all. "No summer uniform, so wear a short-sleeved shirt. It's not like the school bans it."

Vanessa and Tyler had run wild for so long that they didn't care about losing conduct points for not wearing the uniform.

But I couldn't afford that.

Because starting in middle school, apart from tuition they never gave me any allowance.

Because Vanessa would say our parents favored me, and because Tyler's grades were bad and he needed tutoring.

Mom and Dad said money was tight at home, and since I wasn't going without food or clothes anyway, they made me walk a mile home every day for meals.

Three years of middle school, with an hour and a half for lunch break, I spent the whole time on the road, my calves aching until they burned, not daring to stop.

Because I was afraid of missing the first afternoon class.

It wasn't just allowance. Even the pads I needed every month for my period, I had to borrow one at a time from the girls in my class.

After long enough, they always looked at me with contempt:

"Borrowing and never paying it back, what kind of borrowing is that? Might as well just have us give them to you for free."

One of the crude boys snickered, "I've got a way to make you not bleed for ten months."

I covered my face and ran home, mortified.

Looking at the blood on me, I walked into Vanessa's room for the first time.

It smelled of luxury perfume, and it was the only large master bedroom in the house, sunlit and airy.

My room had no window. It was the space under the stairs, converted, stuffy and stinking and damp.

When I reached out, my whole body went tense and sweaty, and it took me a long time to steel myself before I took a single pack of pads, terrified Vanessa would find out.

The moment I opened the door, by the worst luck, I ran straight into Vanessa coming home with her friends.

They exchanged a glance and put on faces caught between wanting to laugh and holding it back:

"Nessa, you were right. Your sister really is a compulsive thief."

Even though this was the first time, Vanessa said, with such weariness:

"This sister of mine just loves to compete. She has everything she needs, but she always thinks my things are better. She even steals and wears my underwear. It's so unhygienic."

In that instant, it was as if the very skin had been torn off my face.

When Mom and Dad came home, all they saw was me, red-faced, screaming like a lunatic, ugly with rage.

And Vanessa, eyes swollen, weeping prettily like rain on pear blossoms.

Smack

3: 3

Mom's hand came up without hesitation and slapped me across the face.

"Are you trying to drive me into an early grave? Your sister finally brings friends home to hang out, and you get caught stealing red-handed. You embarrass her, and then you have the nerve to talk back!"

I said it again, word by word: I only took one pack of pads, nothing else.

That set her off. She grabbed a needle and jabbed it into my lips, over and over.

"This is what you get for lying! This is what you get for stealing! This is the price of a lie!"

"Out in the world, nobody's going to coddle you!"

That night I was made to kneel in the living room until I'd cried myself dry.

The next morning my brother pinched his nose at me in disgust.

"Are you stupid, Dee? Your butt's bleeding and you don't even deal with it. What if Lucky ends up eating it? How gross would that be?"

His first reaction was that it was gross.

After that, I never went into my sister's room again.

I never went home again either. Every day I picked up cafeteria shifts serving food.

I earned full scholarships and prize money from every contest I could enter, and that was how I put myself through college.

My thoughts drifted back to the present. I packed the few clothes I owned and got ready to buy a ticket and leave.

Then Mom called out of nowhere.

Maybe there was still a thread of something in me that couldn't let go, because for a second I actually thought she was calling to tell me to book a ticket and come over.

But the first thing out of her mouth was:

"Your sister forgot those sunglasses she paid two thousand eight hundred for. Get a courier to bring them to the airport right now. She needs them for her photos."

"Oh, and your brother's favorite sneakers. While you're home, remember to clean them with the special sneaker cleaner. And wash Lucky's food bowl and water bowl and put them away, or they'll just collect dust."

Mom went on and on for a long time, and not once did she say my name.

Not until I forced a dry little "mm-hmm" out of my parched throat.

Only then did she click her tongue, impatient. "I ask you to do one thing and you drag your feet like this. I really do worry about whether you'll be any help to your sister at work."

I froze. "What do you mean, help my sister?"

Her tone was matter-of-fact. "You've graduated, so obviously you're going to go out and work. You're not thinking of doing a master's, are you? Your sister's boyfriend's company is short on people, so you just go report for duty. We're all family. The pay's only a few thousand, so just don't take it, do them the favor and earn some goodwill. Call it lending a hand."

Dad was right there too, laying out the grand plan. "You're an adult now, widen your horizons a little, think bigger. Don't fixate on those few thousand dollars. Once you've proven yourself, your sister puts in a few words for you, and your brother-in-law can give you anything."

I didn't know what to say. Luckily Mom was in a rush to get my sister's photos taken, and she urged me on, offhand:

"Anyway, just remember everything I said. Don't bother us unless it's something important."

Two beeps, and the call cut off.

I stared at the darkened screen, then slowly dug out my sister's sunglasses and booked a courier.

Then I washed my brother's shoes and Lucky's food bowl and water bowl and set them all neatly away.

Counting up the past twenty-odd years, I decided this would be the last thing I ever did for them.

4: 4

Dr. Whitman told me my record was strong enough that graduate tuition and housing would be waived outright, and that I'd even collect a few thousand a month in research stipends.

But this year's tuition still had to be paid in full up front, refunded three months later.

Lucky for me, I still had ten thousand left in scholarship moneyenough to cover it.

Except when I went to pay, the balance came up short. I checked my texts and found a charge of nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine, posted at nine o'clock the night before.

The only people who knew my password were my family.

Swallowing my anger and my nerves, I called my mother.

"Where's the money from my account?"

Vanessa snatched the phone, impatient.

"I couldn't stand sleeping in economy, so I used it to upgrade the cabin. What's there to fuss about?"

"If I hadn't given the okay for Mom and Dad to have a second kid, you'd never even have been born."

Any time I showed the slightest displeasure, Vanessa trotted out that line.

The truth was, when our parents went for a second baby they were determined to have a son, and they'd have done it whether Vanessa agreed or not.

I didn't waste time on a pointless fight. I kept my voice as gentle as I could.

"This money matters a lot to me. I need it for tuition. Put Mom and Dad on and have them wire me ten thousand."

Beside her, Tyler sneered. "I'm already a senior. What are you still studying for, what tuition? If you want money, just say so. You're just sour that we're out here having fun, aren't you?"

"Looks like you forgot how much it hurt when Mom stabbed your mouth with a needle for lying. All day long, all you do is fight for attention and try to one-up us."

My head went to static, and by the time it cleared,

I'd already hung up.

In the end I took out a ten-thousand loan and paid the tuition. It only cost a few hundred in interest, and I could clear it in three months.

The moment I sat down on the plane, the stone pressing on my chest just vanished.

I took a few deep breaths before I could close my eyes.

The flight attendant woke me gently, no shouting, no shoving.

A few of the senior members and Dr. Whitman were waiting at the gate, every one of them beaming.

They tucked me into the middle of the group, warm as anything.

"Finally, a new junior! Our team hasn't gotten anyone new in two years!"

They walked me to a bright, spacious single room.

Full sun, not a trace of damp or mildew.

I stared at the clean white walls, hardly able to believe it. "This whole room is just mine?"

Ivy Carter didn't mock me. She grinned and slung an arm around my neck. "Of course it's all yours. Unless you want to bunk with mefair warning, I snore."

I slept badly that night. I heard thunder and heavy rain.

By the time I got my slippers on and rushed out, the room next door had already gathered my laundry and handed it over. "I brought yours in. Not even a little damp."

I took the clothes and thanked her softly, ducking my head to hide the red rimming my eyes.

The dining hall was big too, and I got to sit and eat with them.

Reaching in for a dish didn't get me scolded for being in the wayinstead, they pushed the plates toward me.

My mother had said that out in the world no one would coddle me.

But here everyone was coddling me. I was going to get spoiled.

It wasn't until more than ten days later that Vanessa called.

"We'll play a few more days and then head back. Remember to get the house cleanespecially my room. It's been empty so long it's bound to have gathered dust."

Tyler cut in, laughing. "You'd really let her into your room, big sis? She'll swipe your stuff again."

Hearing him, I felt no anger at all. Not a ripple inside me.

Vanessa made an annoyed sound, her tone turning heavy. "Fine, forget it, stay out of my room. Just call in a cleaning service and keep an eye on them."

I cut her off.

"I'm not home. Clean it yourselves when you get back, or hire someone yourselves."

Vanessa froze for a couple of seconds, then went cold.

"What's that supposed to mean? I can't order you around anymore, is that it?!"

Tyler chimed in, irritated. "So we went out without youbig deal. You've been sulking half a month and still not over it. Think you're some pampered heiress?"

Behind me, Ivy called my name. "Come on. Didn't we say we'd get in the water this year? I'll teach you to swim."

I gave a short "mm" and hung up.

Seconds later my parents called, one after another, several times.

I didn't pick up any of them.

After a while my mother sent a message.

You wanted me to send money just to go play, didn't you? Did you sign up for a trip or for swimming?

If you're gone, who's watching the house? Never mind, I can't control you anyway. Do whatever you want.

I stared at those two messages for a long time, then let out a cold laugh.

When had they ever controlled me?

In a few days, all they'd find was an empty house, with no sign of me left anywhere in it.

I followed Ivy's cuesbreathe in, hold, breathe out.

And I swam forward just like that, like a little fish that had left home.