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Autor: Crescent Star
The front door opened downstairs.

Hope surged through me, and I drifted out on instinct.

Mom was back.

She hurried into the living room alone.

"Mom..." I went toward her without thinking.

But she walked straight through my body.

I stood there stunned for a moment, then followed her to the coffee table.

She picked up the car keys she'd forgotten and looked up at my closed door.

Like a child who had done something wrong, I rushed to explain, "Mom, I didn't mean to get blood on the rug.

"I hit my head so hard. The bleeding won't stop.

"I'm sorry. I'm already dead, so I won't be a problem for you anymore..."

But she couldn't hear a word of it.

Mom stopped at the foot of the stairs and let out a heavy sigh.

"Millie, do you have any idea how disappointed I was just now?

"You've been honest since you were little. You never cheated. And today you rigged a coin toss just for a steak.

"If you wanted it, you could have just told me. Why did you have to pull a cheap trick like that?"

I stared at her in stunned silence.

But I did tell her.

I said I wanted the steak. That's why she took the coin out.

Mom pinched the bridge of her nose, went into the kitchen, and set a Hawaiian pizza wrapped in foil on the dining table.

"That's the celebration present I ordered for you. Come out and eat when you get hungry.

"That coin is the one rule that keeps this family fair. You broke it. Was I supposed to let that go?

"When you've reflected on what you did and admitted your mistake, we'll talk about prep school.

"Your father and I want what's best for you. What parent would ever hurt their own child?"

She said it all to the empty upstairs, then turned and left.

As the front door closed, one question came to me.

If she could simply buy me a pizza, why did a steak have to be decided by a coin toss?

I crouched on the dining table and looked at that pizza.

So Mom did still remember that I liked Hawaiian pizza.

I'd thought her head had been full of Chloe's favorite black truffle pasta for years.

Happy, I reached out to peel back the foil.

But my hand went through the box again and again, and I couldn't touch a thing.

"I just want one bite..."

Right then, our golden retriever, Buddy, nosed his way in through the back door, which hadn't shut all the way.

Chloe usually kept him to herself.

If I so much as petted him, Mom would say I was taking Chloe's pet from her.

Buddy caught the smell, planted his front paws on the table, and knocked the pizza box to the floor.

The fragrant pizza slid out onto the floor.

He lowered his head and wolfed it down.

"Don't eat that...

"That's the one Mom left for me."

I stood in front of Buddy, uselessly, and he couldn't see me at all.

All I could do was watch the last scrap of my mother's care disappear into a dog's stomach.

The sky slowly went dark.

A car engine shut off outside.

My parents came in through the front door with my sister, talking and laughing.

Chloe was carrying an expensive limited-edition Barbie, her cheeks flushed with happiness.

"Mom, the lobster was so good today. Can we go again next time?"

Mom stroked her hair gently.

"Of course. As long as our Chloe behaves and wins the toss, Mommy will take you again."

Dad took off his coat and glanced upstairs.

"Millie still hasn't come out?

"That girl has a stubborn streak."

Mom walked into the dining room, saw the empty pizza box and the crumbs all over the floor, and her face went hard.

"So she polished off the whole pizza.

"And threw the box on the floor. Is that supposed to be some kind of silent protest against me?

"If she's willing to swap the coin and cheat today, she'll be stealing tomorrow. If we don't discipline her now, she'll go down the wrong path!"

I shook my head as hard as I could.

It wasn't me.

Buddy ate the pizza.

I didn't get a single bite.

Dad put an arm around Mom's shoulders and sighed.

"Let it go. She's just eaten up with jealousy.

"You've poured everything you had into that girl, and she doesn't appreciate any of it.

"Leave her in there. A few missed meals and she'll learn."

Nobody realized I was already dead upstairs.

Nobody asked whether I'd been injured when Mom kicked me into the room.

They sat down on the couch and watched TV as though they were the perfect happy family.
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  • The Wrong Side of the Coin   9

    Early the next morning, a sanitation worker found what was left of my sister's body in the garbage.Her palm was still clenched tight around that gold coin.An officer pried her stiff fingers apart.The coin dropped into the muddy water.The side facing up was unmistakably the number.It was the first time she had ever tossed my side of the coin for anyone but herself.But there was no one left to honor the result.Even after Chloe died, I still couldn't leave.I went back to the house that had been empty for a long time.The grass in the yard had grown high.The water in the pool had turned cloudy.Even Mom's favorite roses had all withered and died.In the backyard I found Buddy.He was skin and bone, lying in front of the closed door, whimpering weakly.After Dad died, there was nobody left to feed him.When Chloe left, she never once thought about the pet she had kept from me for years.I wanted to open the door for him. I wanted to get the dog food out of the kitchen.But my hand

  • The Wrong Side of the Coin   8

    Mom was committed to a psychiatric hospital.Dad went to see her once.Through the glass, in a restraint jacket with both hands wrapped in bandages, she sat smiling vacantly at a corner of the wall."Daniel, look. I tossed the number side three hundred times for Millie today."Millie wants steak."Go buy the meat, fresh, not frozen..."Dad covered his face and fled the visiting room in tears.With Mom gone, the house fell apart fast.Dad was so distracted that he made mistake after mistake at work, and in the end the company fired him.He started drinking, and every night he passed out on the couch.Chloe, meanwhile, kept living like a spoiled heiress.She ran up his credit cards on designer clothes and expensive restaurants.That lifestyle ended the day every card was declined.She stormed home and kicked Dad where he lay passed out."Old man, why don't the cards work?"Give me money. I have a classmate's birthday party to go to!"The kick woke him, and he suddenly clutched his chest.

  • The Wrong Side of the Coin   7

    Not many people came to the funeral.Apart from a few neighbors, the most surprising mourner was the principal of the elite prep school.He wore a black suit and carried a white envelope."Mr. Reed, Mrs. Reed, I'm so sorry for your loss."This is Amelia's full scholarship check, along with the essay she wrote for the entrance exam."She earned the highest entrance-exam score in the history of our school."Mom's hands shook as she opened the envelope.The essay was titled "My Dream."The principal read slowly, "Amelia wrote that she dreamed of becoming a pulmonologist."Her younger sister had suffered from severe asthma since childhood, and their mother had exhausted herself caring for her day and night."Amelia wanted to cure her sister so her mother would no longer have to work so hard."The principal paused."At the end, she wrote this—"I may not be lucky enough to win the coin toss, but I believe hard work can change where fate lands."Mom swayed on her feet and dropped straight to

  • The Wrong Side of the Coin   6

    The autopsy results came back a few days later.I had died from a fall and a head injury, and for the moment the police couldn't prove my parents had intended to kill me.In the end they were charged with involuntary manslaughter and felony child abuse, and then released on bail to await trial.When my parents came home holding each other up, they looked as though they had aged ten years overnight.A professional crew had cleaned the room, and the whole house stank of disinfectant.But Mom couldn't shake the feeling that a trace of the stench still lingered beneath the bleach.She sat on the couch, blank, looking at the family portrait on the wall.In the picture, my parents were holding Chloe and beaming.And I was off at the very edge, my face not even all the way in the frame."Daniel, Millie's gone..." Mom's voice was scraped raw."I kicked her."And I'm the one who locked her in."How much pain must she have been in..."She lost so much blood. Why didn't she call for me?"Dad cove

  • The Wrong Side of the Coin   5

    The moment that door came open, it was like an entrance to hell had been unsealed.A stench of blood and rot hit them head-on.Dad was standing in front, and his big frame locked up.The hammer slipped out of his hand and clanged on the floor.A second later he clapped a hand over his mouth, ran into the hallway, and doubled over vomiting.I lay face down beside my desk.My white T-shirt had gone black with blood and fluid and clung to a body that had swollen out of shape.My bare arms and calves were mottled purple-black where the blood had pooled and settled."That's not possible..." Mom had both hands clamped on the door frame.Her nails scraped the wood and peeled back until they bled, but she didn't seem to feel the pain.She walked into the room one step at a time, and she even forced a stiff smile onto her face."Amelia Reed, did you cover yourself in paint to scare me?"You silly girl, going to all this trouble just to make me angry, painting yourself up like that..."Get up no

  • The Wrong Side of the Coin   4

    For them, those three days off were sunshine, sand, and all the seafood they could eat.For me, they were three days of my body swelling, reeking, and rotting a little more with every hour in a stifling room.Of all the times for it, the central air had broken down too.The early summer heat turned that sealed room into an oven.Dark blotches crawled over my skin, and the blood dried into hard black crusts that stuck fast to the expensive rug.On the evening of the third day, the front door finally opened."I got so tan. I must look terrible now!" Chloe whined.Dad came in loaded with bags of local treats, smiling at her with pure indulgence."As long as you had fun. In a few days I'll have your mother take you for a spa day."Mom was about to change out of her shoes when she suddenly covered her nose."What is that smell?"A heavy stench of rot hung in the air.Dad frowned too."Did nobody take out the kitchen trash?""That damn girl," Mom said. "Three days, and she couldn't even take

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