Cora picks at the edge of her blue paisley comforter. I feel like I should put my arm around her, but I’m afraid I’m the last thing Cora needs today.

The reminder of what she lost.

“You’re still her mother.”

Cora sighs.

“It’s been more than a year, Ava. Twelve months without her and I still wake up sometimes in the morning and forget. And when I remember, it’s like I lose her all over again and—”

She cuts herself off for a second.

“I’m tired of losing her. I’m just—tired.”

She laughs weakly.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

I shake my head. I want to tell her I get it, that I wake up sometimes from a bad dream and make it halfway down the hallway, heading for the warmth and safety of my mom’s bed, before reality hits: I live in a world where my parents don’t exist. Without fail, the weight crushes me every time like it’s the first time.

I want to tell Cora that, but I can’t quite get the words to go. Like if I say it out loud, I’ll never be able to stuff it back in again. Instead, I give her an awkward side hug along with the same empty words people used to offer me: “I’m here if you need anything.”

I reclose her door behind me.

I take out my math textbook on my bed and try to concentrate on the figures on the page rather than on Sara’s dolls, which I swear are staring at me more aggressively than usual. I listen to Mom’s deodorant message, my eyes shut tight, savoring the singsongy way she says “Call me ba-ack.” But even that doesn’t settle me the way it usually does.

After the third time listening to it in my pink/blue room, trying to ignore Barbie’s stink eye, I can’t sit anymore. So I head to the kitchen and line up eggs and oil and a nearly expired Funfetti cake mix Sara and I kept stashed in the back of the pantry for sleepover bake-a-thons, although we’d always end up just eating the batter on spatulas until we got sick.

I make an enormous mess in the process, thanks to my clumsy left hand, but I manage to make a decent cake, and only clatter a mixing bowl on the floor once. When it’s done, I ice the cake with rainbow-chip frosting just like Sara would have, lick a spatula in her honor, and then stick in sixteen candles.

As I plunge the last one into the cake, it hits me.

The candles represent years.

Years lived.

I’ve just made the most depressing cake in the history of baked goods.