‘Come! It’s just a small one, but it’ll be so fun. Mum’s leaving the house by some miracle, so we have free rein. Even of the hot tub, probably. As long as she doesn’t find out. Come on, Alice, I know you don’t like doing stuff with actual people, but live a little, yeah?’

Live a little. It gets harder to breathe.

She rolls over on the bed and whines and my throat is clotting with truths. Like how I spent my own birthday last month in this bed wearing a black funeral dress, watching my parents eat my birthday cake on my behalf, because I can’t have gluten, or dairy, or sugar, or carbs, without crashing with a migraine.

Cecelia knows I’m Ill. She was there when I stopped going to school. She sees the empty pill boxes and the motor on my bed. But I keep having to remind myself that the reason she keeps asking me to do these things, like I have a choice, is because she doesn’t know just how bad things are. She sees the good parts, where I’m sitting up in bed and able to hold a conversation. She hears my lies, telling her all the things I can only really dream of doing.

She doesn’t know. And I can’t tell her. I need her too much.

So I take a deep breath. Swallow the words down. Pretend that her hand gripping my wrist is Mum’s.

I am safe. I am happy. I am alive.

I look at the crease forming above her nose. ‘Sounds fun! Who else will be there?’

She takes a breath, before covering it with a smile and launching into a million-miles-a-minute monologue about all the people that have already said yes, who she’ll need to keep apart and who might misuse the hot tub.

And I hope she noticed that I didn’t actually say yes. That might make the inevitable last-minute excuse I’ll give her a little more forgivable.

18

Alice

Welcome back to Stream Cast, Alice

Users online:

Users offline:

Connect to a channel to start watching.

I sit, staring at the Stream Cast login screen for a while.

Usually I’d choose the streamer who’s been online the longest. It only seemed fair to me, seeing as they’d taken the time to show me the world for so long.

The thumbnail by Hana’s name is ripped with lines of colour, meaning that she’s having signal issues again. And Living in short one-minute bursts and freezes is too distracting to really enjoy.