No. More like those atomic sour candies that we all dare each other over to see how long we can keep them in our mouths before spitting them out. That’s what it feels like. A hundred of those burning a hole in my stomach.

I struggle to breathe. Why does my chest hurt so bad?

“Jase,” Nathaniel murmurs as he stands next to me and shakes his head. A warning for me to be quiet.

But I don’t look at my brother. I don’t respond. Our dad is standing in the middle of the room. His hands are on his hips, and he has a weird expression on his face like when the lawnmower broke, and he wasn’t sure if he should fix it or take it to the dump.

And the two of us are standing side by side, barely breathing as if the slightest movement will make him turn his attention toward us.

“It’s not that easy, Maggie,” he says to our mom. Her eyes are glassy and red from crying. “I have a new wife and a new family. I can’t just . . . take both of them.”

She says something I can’t hear. It’s a whisper that has Nathaniel jolting and me looking around to see what I missed.

“Per the court order, we each get one,” my dad says.

Mom’s eyes flicker over to us and then back to him almost as if she didn’t see us. She nods slowly, her voice unemotional and empty when she speaks. “It has said that for the last three years, and yet I’ve had both, so don’t give me any of that play by the rules shit now.”

“This is inconvenient at best,” he says so softly it’s barely audible. No doubt he didn’t want us to hear it.

He never wants us to hear it anymore. Not since he got his new wife and had his two new kids and a life Nathaniel and I wish we had.

“You’re not separating us,” I say, stomping my feet for emphasis and throwing Nathaniel’s warning that we’re supposed to be quiet out the window. “You can’t take me and leave him here. You don’t know . . .” how bad it gets here. The last five words scream in my head but never make a sound in the room.

I can’t say that in front of Mom.

I can’t let her know how bad she gets when she doesn’t even know it herself.

But he knows, doesn’t he? He lived here so how can he not know?

“I don’t know what?” Dad asks, squatting down and turning his attention on me for the first time since the initial stuttered hug and ruffle of my hair. “That you’re a handful? That you act out in school constantly? I get the calls from the office too, Jase. Believe me.”