Collared by Professor Valentino

After pressing the acceptance button, I wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes.

Deep down, a small part of me was still hoping someone would notice.

I wanted Mom to ask why I was staring at my phone. I wanted Ryan to look away from Sophie’s curtains long enough to see that something was wrong. More than anything, I wanted Ethan to come out of her bedroom and ask why I looked like I was about to cry.

No one did.

Ethan emerged from Sophie’s room with sweat shining across his forehead.

I watched him for a few seconds before calling his name.

“Ethan, you’ve been working all afternoon. Come sit down for a while.”

I hated how hopeful I sounded.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, but his eyes had already shifted toward Sophie’s doorway.

“In a minute. Her curtain rod is crooked, and it’ll bother her if I leave it that way.”

He set down the bottle and walked past me without looking at me once.

I remained on the box, listening to him ask Sophie to stand back while he adjusted the rod.

Three years.

I had loved Ethan for three years, and he had never taken this much care with anything that belonged to me.

On the day I moved into my college dorm, I had five heavy boxes and a room on the sixth floor of a building without an elevator.

Ethan had promised he would help.

An hour before I arrived, he texted that something urgent had come up.

I carried every box upstairs alone.

That evening, I opened Sophie’s social media page.

She had posted photographs from an amusement park.

Ethan stood beside her in every picture.

When Ethan called later, I still told him it was fine.

I had been saying it was fine for three years.

Mom leaned out of the kitchen before I could stop remembering.

“Nora, are you going to sit there all day? Go help Sophie put the new sheets on her bed. The bedding set is beside her door.”

I looked toward the hallway.

My belongings were stacked near the corner in several battered boxes.

No one had carried them or asked where they belonged.

“Mom,” I asked, “where am I supposed to put my things?”

She followed my gaze, then pointed toward a narrow door beside the laundry area.

“Clear out the storage closet and stay there for now.”

For a moment, I thought I had misunderstood.

“The storage closet?”

“It’s only temporary.” Her tone sharpened when she saw my expression. “You’ve slept there before. Don’t act as though we’re making you sleep outside.”

I had slept there before.

It happened when Sophie first came to live with us.

Ryan had been a child when he slipped from the riverbank. Sophie’s father, Daniel Carter, had gone into the water after him. Ryan survived, but Daniel was swept away by the current.

Mom had been the person who asked Daniel to come to the park that day, and she had carried that guilt ever since.

When Sophie entered our house, pale and silent in a dress that was too large for her, Mom held her for an entire afternoon.

“This is your home now,” she promised through her tears. “No one will ever make you feel unwanted.”

Then she turned to me.

“Sophie just lost her father. Give her your room for a few days.”

I had been thirteen.

Those few days became an entire year.

Every time I asked when I could return, Mom looked at me as though I had hurt a grieving child.

Eventually, I stopped asking.

Now, ten years later, they were doing it again.

Mom had already decided the storage closet was enough for me because anything better would be wasted on someone expected to leave.

I picked up my pillow and folded blanket.

As I passed Sophie’s room, I saw Ethan standing on a chair while she held the curtain rod steady. Ryan stood beside them, laughing as she tried to choose between two shades of pink.

The three of them looked like a family arranging the room of someone they loved.

None of them noticed me walking toward a closet with my bedding in my arms.

The room was barely forty square feet, crowded with mop buckets, cleaning supplies, and broken household items.

There was no window.

A bare bulb hung from the ceiling, buzzing overhead.

Mom appeared behind me carrying an old yoga mat.

“Put this on the floor for now.”

I stared at it.

“Is there a folding bed?”

“We’ve spent enough money on this move, Nora.”

From Sophie’s room came the sound of Ryan asking whether she wanted fairy lights above her bed.

Mom heard it too, but her expression did not change.

She handed me the mat and walked away.

Ten days, I reminded myself.

I only had to survive ten more days.