Chapter 3

Chapter 3: No More Cleanups

Over the next two weeks, my life settled into a quiet rhythm.

The price of that peace was total invisibility in that house. No one called me for dinner. I would go to the kitchen, find the pots scraped clean, and settle for the crusty burnt rice at the bottom. Brenda would sit on the sofa watching TV, not even glancing at me. Vanessa would blast music in her room, gossiping loudly on the phone. She left her bag in the middle of the hallway and her shoes scattered everywhere.

I used to be the one to clean all of this up. In my past life, my first chore after school was always to tidy Vanessa’s room, wash her uniforms, and check her homework. I had been their unpaid maid. Now, I did nothing.

I stepped over Vanessa’s shoes. I walked around her bag. Vanessa ran up to me, screeching, ‘Avery! I have a project due tomorrow and I haven’t drawn the poster! Help me―’

‘Do it yourself.’

‘But I don’t know how―’

‘Then learn,’ I said, moving past her with my textbooks. ‘I learned on my own.’

Vanessa stood there, looking like someone had just pulled a clump of her hair out. She had never been rejected by me before. In her mind, it was my duty to sacrifice everything for her―it was just how the world worked. Now, her world was falling apart.

She ran to Brenda to tattle. That night, Brenda pounded on my door. ‘Avery, get out here! Your sister hasn't finished her project. You want her to get in trouble?’

I opened the door, pen still in hand, unfinished math problems spread across the desk.

‘Brenda, she can do her own homework. I have no obligation.’

‘No obligation?’ Brenda’s voice went up an octave. ‘You eat my food and sleep in my house, and you say you have no obligation? It wouldn't kill you to do a little favor for your sister―’

‘She isn't my sister,’ I interrupted, my voice quiet but sharper than a blade. ‘My father had no other children. He only had me.’

Brenda’s face flushed a deep, ugly red. She raised her hand, but it hung in the air, never landing. My eyes told her that if she struck me, the consequences would be more than she could handle.

She slammed the door and left.

I went back to my desk. The sound of my pen on the paper remained steady and calm.

A week later, Vanessa’s luck ran out.

She was caught plagiarizing―she had copied an English essay directly from the internet, name and all. Her teacher was so furious she slapped the paper onto the lectern. ‘Vanessa, do you think I am blind?’

Vanessa was hauled into the office. When she came out, her eyes were red―not from crying, but from panic. She cornered me, using the same old script: ‘Avery, you have to tell the teacher―’

‘Tell them what?’

‘Just tell them… tell them you wrote it for me! Tell them you did it without me knowing―that way I won’t get a disciplinary mark!’

She spoke with such breathless entitlement, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

I looked at her and laughed.

‘Vanessa,’ I said. ‘Did you really think I was just stupid all those years?’