Chapter 1

I stared numbly at the birthday spread: ginger-glazed pork loin, ginger-roasted duck, ginger scalloped potatoes... even the dessert was ginger panna cotta.

Except for the potatoes, where the ginger lay in visible strips, everything had been minced so fine there was no way to pick it out.

I suddenly remembered my mother asking gently what I wanted for my eighteenth birthday.

I'd thought it was a rare moment of warmth after my parents' divorce.

I'd repeated the same request more than once. "Anything's fine, as long as there's no ginger. I'm allergic to it."

It never occurred to me that this was another obedience test.

Looking at the meal she'd prepared so carefully, I couldn't summon a trace of appetite.

The smell of ginger flooded my nose. Nausea surged up my throat, and I bolted for the bathroom and threw up.

My mother stormed in after me, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and hauled me upright.

"Who gave you permission to throw up? I paid for every bite of that and spent hours cooking it. What right do you have to waste the body I gave you?"

She dragged me back to the living room and picked up the bowl of ginger panna cotta.

"Eat it."

I shook my head desperately.

"I really am allergic, Mom. I'll do whatever you want about everything else. Just don't make me eat ginger..."

She hesitated, set me down, and carried the bowl into the kitchen.

I thought she'd finally believed me, and let myself breathe.

Then she came back with a smaller bowl, packed to the rim with minced ginger. This time there wasn't even any cream.

She looked at me the way you'd look at a child too young to know better.

"Stop being picky. How could anyone be allergic to ginger?

"You just haven't had enough of it. Eat more and you'll learn to like it."

The spoon came toward my mouth.

"Be a good boy and take one bite. Ginger's good for you."

I clenched my teeth shut.

"Eat it, Lucas. Eat."

The spoon tore into my gums. I cried out, and a mouthful of minced ginger went down.

Blood welled up in my mouth, and it hurt less than whatever was tearing open in my chest.

After the divorce, my mother had fallen in love with obedience tests.

From the clothes I wore to the colleges I applied to, everything had to go through her.

As the tests escalated, the way she looked at me kept getting colder. I wasn't her son anymore. I was a machine that was supposed to take orders.

The ginger made me cough until my face was streaked with tears and mucus, and my mother smiled, satisfied.

"See? You can eat it just fine. You really are your father's son. Always putting on a show."

I tried to hold everything in, and two lines of tears got out anyway.

Fat drops splashed across the back of her hand.

She froze, then her face went dark and she seized my chin.

"Didn't I tell you crying isn't allowed? I made this body and I raised it. You don't shed a single tear without my permission.

"You're as heartless as that deadbeat father of yours. Ungrateful little snake."

She looked at the ginger scattered across the floor during my struggle like it broke her heart, then took out her phone and snapped a few pictures.

A notification chimed on my own phone.

She'd photographed the barely touched dishes and the panna cotta sitting in the trash and posted them to the extended-family group chat.

"My son turned eighteen today. I was up at five cooking a whole table of food for him and he wouldn't touch a bite. He begged me for dessert, so I made it, and he threw it in the garbage. What's a mother supposed to do?"

Every reply under it called me an ungrateful little snake.

Once she'd sent it, she turned and looked at me, cold.

"Don't think turning eighteen means you're out from under me. Push back again and I'll post all of it to your class group chat. Once you have a job I'll show up at your office and make a scene, and we'll see how much humiliation you can take."

Her voice was sharp enough to cut, and every word made it harder to breathe.

Worse than that: heat was crawling across my face, and a sharp pain had started twisting through my stomach.

My heart sank. The reaction had started.