She leaned closer. “Make me.”
I should have walked away. I should have swallowed it the way I swallowed everything. But the truth is, by fifteen, my throat was raw from swallowing. My ribs were tired of being the cage for all the words I didn’t get to say. And the thing April understood—better than my parents, better than anyone—was how to find the one nerve that would make me react.
She stepped into my space and whispered, soft enough that my parents in the living room couldn’t hear, “You’re nothing. You’re the mistake they keep forgetting to throw away.”
I don’t remember moving. I remember the flash of her eyes widening, the quick tilt of her body as she lost balance, the sound of her shoulder tapping the kitchen counter. It wasn’t even a shove, not really. It was me lifting my arms instinctively, a reflex, a flinch, my body trying to create space.
But April stumbled perfectly.
She fell in a way that looked worse than it was. She knocked over a chair. She screamed at the exact moment my mother walked in. She pressed her palm to her cheek like she’d been hit, even though I hadn’t hit her. She cried like she was bleeding, even though her skin was clean. She made herself small and hurt and innocent, and she pointed at me like I was the monster.
And it worked, because it always worked.
My mother’s mouth tightened into that familiar line. My father’s footsteps came heavy down the hall. April sobbed louder when she heard him, because she knew what it meant. My father didn’t ask questions. He didn’t investigate. He didn’t look at me like a person who might have a reason. He looked at me like an object that had malfunctioned.
“You put your hands on her?” he said, voice low.
“I didn’t—” I started.
