Driving somewhere was the other option, but any kind of road trip with Kelli always felt like an ordeal. She would nag you about how long it took the traffic lights to change from red to green the entire trip, complain about her knee, and ten minutes in she would usually have to go to the bathroom.

In short, staying put was easier. That’s what I remembered about my upbringing too, my life with Irene and Kelli. It always seemed easier to stay home. So easy, it got to the point where I couldn’t stand to be there another minute.

And so it hit me that morning, around the time I was getting breakfast together. It blossomed to life in my gut, insistent and rude, like a menstrual cramp too early in the month. I hate this house. I hated, I realized, the white-glare fluorescent lighting in the kitchen and I hated the cream-coloured, spill-­something-on-me-I-dare-you carpet in the living room and I hated the “guest” bathroom in the hallway with its teeny-tiny hand-towels trimmed with eyelet that were too delicate and pristine to actually sully with grimy hands and I hated the deck with the barbecue that had sat unused till Trevor and here I will stop and tell you why that was.

Because on the occasion of my eighteenth birthday, when we used it and my boyfriend almost burned his face off, we were barbecuing because I had insisted. I had insisted on a lot of things in relation to that day. My mother had innocently asked what I wanted for my eighteenth birthday and I’d launched into a litany that went something like: I want to be able to pretend for at least one day that we are normal human beings. I want to have my friends over to the house. I want us to barbecue hamburgers and hot dogs. I want you to take Kelli downstairs in front of the TV and keep her there. I don’t want you to bring her upstairs to meet everyone and get her to shake everyone’s fucking hand the way you always do, she doesn’t have to shake everyone’s hand, she doesn’t have to meet everybody, Kelli’s happy one way or the other, you’re the one who wants that, I don’t want it, my friends don’t want it, and Kelli doesn’t want it. I want to have a thing that is for me, just this once. I am turning eighteen. I don’t want to share it. I don’t want to be considerate. I don’t want to include her. I don’t want to be the girl with the retarded sister, ok, for just this one day please.

I maybe didn’t say it exactly like that, in fact I’m certain I would never have uttered that final sentence, but that final sentence was entirely the gist of whatever my selfish teenage monologue consisted of and Irene got that message loud and clear.

My mother refused to come upstairs and show us how the barbecue worked. She insisted that poor banished Kelli needed to be kept company in the rec room and heaven forbid anyone should contaminate my sacred, sister-free celebration.