“When you did this, when you lied and cheated and scammed, did you for one single second think about what was going to happen to me when this all came crashing down? How this would ruin my life too? I’ve done every single thing right. Gave you a million silly awards for you to brag about. I’m fluent in Mandarin, for God’s sake, even though I really wanted to focus on Spanish. I was on track to run for president of the school next year, but nope, not going to happen. Now I’m lucky when I can get through the afternoon without getting bodychecked by some idiot who got rejected from SCC.” Isla, my robot sister, who’s always so self-contained and practical, who puts her head down and follows the bread crumbs her teachers leave for her until the early hours of every morning, shouts while tears stream down her cheeks. “I know what you’re going to say. This isn’t about you, Isla. You’re not the one who might go to prison. Why do you have to make everything about you, Isla? But you know what? I’m part of this family too, even if no one else seems to notice.”

My mom looks at Isla and her mouth hangs open. Isla looks back at her, waiting for something—an apology, a hug, an explanation. Anything. They’ve had blowups before, obviously. No mother and daughter, especially ones as stubborn as these two, make it through the teen years without their fair share of screaming matches. But usually they fight over silly things—a tone of voice, Isla’s rejection of all things vegetable, Isla not getting enough sleep—and they recover quickly.

My mom picks up Fluffernutter, places him back in her lap. She leans her head back against the couch and says nothing. But instead of grabbing her end of the argument so they can shake it out in all its epic glory, she stays there, too still. I think about Isla and me as kids, how we’d squeeze our eyes shut and put our fingers in our ears and say “lalalalala” when we didn’t want to hear what the other was saying.

“Isl,” I say, and then she turns to me, eyes ablaze. A feral animal stuck in a trap. As if she’s realizing that no matter how much a stink she raises, she’s never getting out of this family.

Isla is strong and smart and will be fine, by every definition of the word, and this, it turns out, might be the thing that unravels her. Because I know we’ll continue to take her competence for granted, we’ll continue to take comfort in the fact that she doesn’t need us, we’ll continue to allow her to never be satisfied with something as small as fine.