“Baby sister? How old do you think I am?”

“You’re thirteen, or thereabout.”

I exhale, shocked. “I was thirteen. Seven years ago.”

“What? You’re not twenty.”

“I sure am.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Christ.” He mutters something sweary about the passage of time, and I roll my eyes.

“Now that I’ve caught you up with the rotations of Earth around the sun, goodbye.” I make to hang up, but—

“No, not goodbye.” His speech is short. Authoritarian. It’s painfully obvious that he’s used to people doing as he says, no questions asked. “Tell me why the hell you’re crying, so we can establish that it’s just a load of inconsequential shite, and I can hang up the call with a clean soul.”

What a piece of shit. “Okay, first of all, your soul has never been anything but coal smeared. I bet you burned ants with magnifying lenses when you were a toddler, back during the Protestant Reformation.”

“That is patently libelous, and I do not deserve—”

“Secondly, I do not see why I should be wasting my time on you, an absolute no one in my life who clearly thinks I still play with Polly Pockets despite the fact that I’ve been registered to vote for two dozen fucking moons. Dude, I barely know you, and what I’m discovering is not flattering. So forgive me if I don’t share my life story and tell you that my boyfriend of over a year dumped me last week for a girl who not only happens to be my best friend’s cousin, but also my roommate. And yesterday, when I came back from the gym, the three of them were waiting to give me some kind of makeshift intervention and tell me that it would be infinitely selfish and evil of me to stand between their whirlwind, star-crossed romance. And since they were ganging up on me, I got so angry that I forgot to do my stupid breathing exercises, I forgot the counting, too, and then I yelled that they could go at it on every surface of our apartment for all I cared, and that I wished them a life full of painful, pus-infected STDs. And this m-morning when I woke up they were there, in the kitchen, watching a panel show, making out under my cupboard, where I put my emotional-support Tunnock’s wafers, and they t-told me that I should be ashamed of my behavior last n-night, that they are afraid of my anger and of my d-disproportionate reactions, that I am the one at fault for being aggressive, and I couldn’t s-stand it anymore so I ran out of the d-door and now I never ever want to fucking g-go back.” The last part comes out as a weepy, babbling, maniacal screech. I can tell from the way passersby turn my way, and from the fact that Conor Harkness, clearly not one to ever shut up, has fallen quiet.

I bury my face into my legs again, wishing to become one with the roots of the cherry tree under which I sit. Now, I tell myself, would be a good time to end this call.