Chapter 2

“Tessa, drive Freya to pick up her camera tomorrow.”

Mom put the leftover cake in the fridge as she spoke. I was loading the dishwasher.

“I have a few things to do tomorrow.”

She turned to me.

“Can’t they wait? Your sister finally has some free time. Is it really so much to ask you to go with her?”

Whenever Freya and I had wanted different things, I’d been the one to give in.

A bedroom. The last piece of cake. It made no difference.

Mom never had to convince me. One reminder of everything they’d done for me was enough to make me stop asking.

“She’s getting a camera and several lenses. She can’t carry all that on her own. Drive her there.”

Apparently, that was the reason.

I didn’t know how much Freya could carry. But Mom had never sent her to help when I came home loaded down with bags.

“Okay.” It slipped out before I could stop myself.

The next morning, I drove Freya to the store.

She sat beside me, scrolling through photos on her phone.

“Tessa, what do you think of these pictures from last night?”

She held the screen in front of me. There were our parents helping her put on the necklace. Our relatives gathered around her as she cut the cake.

Everyone was smiling.

I wasn’t in a single picture.

“They’re nice.”

“Is that all you have to say?” She pulled the phone back, annoyed. “Everything’s ‘fine’ or ‘okay.’ Whatever. Talking to you is so boring.”

I stared at the red light and said nothing.

Had she forgotten what happened when I wanted a say? I could lose my home.

At the store, Freya tried several lenses before choosing a twenty-four-hundred-dollar camera kit.

At checkout, she glanced at her phone and frowned.

“My card’s almost maxed out. Can you cover fifteen hundred? I’ll pay you back when we get home.”

“I don’t have much left in my account.”

“I said I’d pay you back. I’ll cover the rest myself, okay?”

The sales assistant waited with the card reader, trying to keep a polite smile.

I took out my card.

Freya paid the remaining nine hundred and picked up the bag. She was already taking pictures of her new camera.

“I’ll send you the money later.”

The pictures were on her social media account almost at once.

The caption read: YOLO.

When we got home, my aunt was still chatting with Mom in the living room.

I went to the kitchen for a glass of water and heard her ask, “Has Tessa lost more weight? Is she busy at the institute?”

“She’s always been like that. Never much of an appetite.” Mom kept peeling her orange.

“You should check on her, too. Freya isn’t your only daughter.”

Mom smiled and shook her head.

“They’re different. Freya’s always needed more attention. When she was little, she’d cry herself hoarse if you didn’t comfort her.”

“Tessa can look after herself. We never have to worry about her.”

So because I didn’t make her worry, I didn’t need her care.

Only the child who cried got their love.

My aunt started to say something else, but Mom changed the subject.

“Where did you order those vitamins? Freya hasn’t been sleeping well. I’d like to get her some.”

I went to my room, shut the door, and opened my flight confirmation.

Two thirty, the day after tomorrow.

Ten hours in the air, and I’d be in a pack where the sun didn’t rise in the depths of winter. Even the air would be different.

I checked my bank account again.

Freya hadn’t paid me back.

In our messages, I found the car insurance payment she’d asked me to cover a few months earlier.

She hadn’t repaid that either.

That evening, my aunt brought over boxes of butter-baked lobster tails from a restaurant.

Mom served everyone, then passed right over my plate.

“Tessa doesn’t like seafood,” she told my aunt.

I looked at my potatoes and salad and gave a bitter smile.

I loved lobster.

Freya was the one who couldn’t eat much of it. It gave her a rash.

At some point, Mom had started confusing what I liked with what Freya couldn’t have.

Or perhaps she hadn’t confused anything. She just needed an excuse to leave me out so there’d be enough lobster for everyone else.

“Mom, I eat lobster.”

She stared at me as though I’d said something unbelievable.

“You eat seafood? Didn’t it make you throw up when you were little?”

“That was Freya.”

The conversation stopped for a moment.

Freya looked up at me with an odd expression.

“All right, I forgot.” Looking embarrassed, Mom pushed her own plate toward me. “Here. You can have mine. Happy now?”

As though I’d insisted on taking her dinner away.

I pushed the plate back.

“You have it. I’m not hungry.”

As I got up, I heard Mom complain behind me.

“See? I offer it to her, and she won’t eat it. I don’t know what she wants.”

Freya gave a little laugh.

“That’s just how she is. Leave her alone.”

I shut my bedroom door.

Don’t worry. In two days, you won’t have to bother with me anymore.