I feel a little like I’m falling. Maybe it’s my mild concussion. I pull my legs up and hug them to my chest.

Abandoned.

I’ve locked that word away. Buried it under the floorboards of my dad’s Beverly Hills home along with everything else from my previous life. I keep it away. I keep myself isolated. I don’t use the internet. I don’t see them. I don’t hear about them. I don’t talk about them.

But my mother told my little sister that I wasn’t real. That’s worse than what I’ve done.

I stare at Siri. Siri’s staring at the floor. She can barely look at me.

I haven’t heard from Mom in fourteen years. I shouldn’t care about anything she does. Why am I having, like, an allergic reaction to this information? Why does it feel like my insides are fissuring?

“I need some air,” Siri tells the floor.

I shake my head and fumble off the couch. “No, if anyone needs air, it’s me. I’m the one who just learned they’re fucking imaginary.”

“You curse too much,” Siri snaps.

“Jamie, be careful, slow movements,” Terry says.

I wave her off, shove open the door, and shuffle out into the night.

It’s cold without a sweatshirt, but I need the chill right now. My senses feel dull and foggy. I’ve been in and out of sleep all day, and it’s left me feeling completely disoriented. It must be at least eight because the sun has set. It’s still bright enough that I can follow the path that leads through the forest to the lake.

I stumble off the trail where the canoe cabin hugs the water and clamber up to it. The wood is freezing against my fingers as I shove a pseudo-canoe off the wall. There’s a muffled boom as it smashes into the dirt. I step into the grounded boat and slump down onto the plank, hugging my arms across my chest.

Moonlight dances across the lake in a calm silver path.

I don’t even know what my mother looks like now, because I’ve boycotted social media my entire life. In my mind she’s a snapshot, frozen at twenty-seven, staring down at me, her mouth tight, her bun tighter. When I close my eyes, I can see her long, straight, dark brown hair. The way it would curl as one giant piece at night when she took out her bobby pins and tucked us into bed. Siri and I have her hair and her eyes.

She erased me.

I pull an oar off the side of the cabin and return to my spot in the boat. I row lightly into the ground, digging up the soft dirt.

I’m a skeleton in my mother’s closet. And Terry knows about it.

“Canoe thief.”