Chapter One

She runs out of the room crying.

Let me start over.

My mom runs out of the room crying.

Um, let me start over.

My mom gets up from the couch, lets out a little gaspy sob, the kind that lets you know someone is crying even when they aren’t doing the big boo-hoo routine. She wipes her eyes, violently, like she’s going to fling the teardrops away, pushes her hair back from her tear-streaked face, looks at my father, looks at me, and then she exits the room.

My dad glares at me like I’m the Antichrist and gets up to follow her. Leaving me there on the couch holding my Christmas stocking, wearing my dorkariffic red pajamas, surrounded by wrapping paper and crisp white boxes with carefully folded sweaters in tissue paper.

The door doesn’t even slam. It makes a little dink-dink sound. Then it’s quiet except for the blam, blam, blam of the television as Miracle Child test-drives his new video game. Blam, blam, blam, ka-pow!

The key is still in my hand. I imagine throwing it across the room, breaking a window with the force of my rage and disappointment. I imagine letting it drop from my nerveless dead fingers with an anticlimactic clink as it hits the glass coffee table. I picture the guilt as my parents lean over my coffin and see that I am still clutching the key in a death grip, my fist wrapped around it, my fingernails painted to match the plush purple velour of the lining.

I am the one who should be crying. I am the one who should be running out of the room, with people chasing me and trying to console me. I am not a terrible ungrateful little bitch. Usually. In this case, I got set up.

Let me sta