Tiredly, she shook her head at me. Like she was saying no to the apology and no to me and no to the broken mug and the puddle of cold coffee and everything else in the world. “Go to your room, Leah. Just go to your room.”

I nodded and turned to head off down the hall. But I only got about halfway to my room before I stopped and looked back at my mom. She was sitting with her head in her hands now. She wasn’t crying. She was frozen.

And I couldn’t do it, couldn’t slip away and let the room go silent. Couldn’t pretend things were fine when they weren’t at all. “Mom,” I called out. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair for you guys to only be my parents when you’re mad at me, but be ghosts the rest of the time.”

“What?” She lifted her head from her hands. There were tears in her eyes. “What did you just say to me? I want you to repeat that.”

“I . . .” I couldn’t stand the look on her face. It made my stomach ache. “I forget. I mean, I don’t know.”

“No,” she said coldly. “I don’t think you do know. Now go straight to your room.”

“Okay,” I said. And this time I did. I walked straight to my room and crawled into bed, fully dressed. I closed my eyes and disappeared.

In the Junk Drawer

When I woke up a few hours later, I didn’t quite remember everything that had happened. Maybe it was just too much for me, the crazy night with Jasper, followed by the fight with Mom and Dad. It felt like my brain had overloaded.

Then I looked down and realized I was still wearing my dirty clothes from the day before, and . . . bit by bit, memories began to wash over me. I lay still, sprawled and staring, trying to recall everything, to fit it all together. I thought about Jasper, back in the Vine Realm. Had she slept? She must have. If she was awake now, she was probably wondering what my parents had done to me. She was probably waiting for me to turn up. I wondered how long it would be before she came knocking on my bedroom window.

In the hallway beyond my door, I could hear Mom pacing in her ratty slippers. Every once in a while, she’d shuffle my way, stand outside the door to my room for a minute, as though she wanted to knock. But then she’d shuffle away again. I felt like I should call out to her, but I wasn’t sure what I could say that wouldn’t make things worse. I definitely didn’t know how to fix us. We were broken. Our family was cracked all the way through, like Mom’s dumb coffee mug.