Lawrence digs two fingers into my bowl, scoops out more berries, and slides the juicy clump into his mouth. Grinning, he shows off stained lips and teeth.

I don’t laugh. He’s right: I am angry. I’m infuriated. My anger may be disproportionate to the crime, but it feels righteous. “Lawrence, gross! You’re repulsive.”

Repulsive. The word distracts me. When I was a child, if a word was multisyllabic and sounded grown-up, I repeated it incessantly. He’s repulsive. The word reminds me of something, a movie? A picture? An image seeps in, a flicker of light from below a closed door. A man and a woman on a bed. The woman’s legs are open. Repulsive. The man is standing above her, holding his—He’s so repulsive. My skin twitches. I blink.

“Jesus.” Lawrence’s eyes widen, and I can tell I’ve hurt him. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Stop asking me that!” Fury, erupting as tears, stings my eyes.

“Cassandra.” His voice is strict, paternal. “You’re in a bad mood. That’s clear. But don’t take it out on me. We disagree about the trial. It’s not the end of the world. You’re not a child anymore, Cassie. That girl is gone. You can’t punish me for not giving you what you want. Those days are over.”

A surge of white noise fills my head. My heart starts to race. I lose feeling in my fingers and toes. I know this is true, of course this is true, but when I’m here, in this house, time collapses. I’m thrown back to the past in the present tense; there’s no before and no after.

“What do you mean, gone?”

“You’ve matured.” Lawrence doesn’t realize I’ve left, that I’m split, that I am twenty-three and sixteen, adult and child, woman and girl. “You’ve grown up. Act like it.”

Act like it, act like it echoes in my ears. “What?” I ask, not because I didn’t hear, but because I need him to explain.

“You can’t treat me like shit,” Lawrence says slowly like I’m an idiot.

“I’m not!” I’ll treat you however the fuck I want, I think. “I’m just living my life—at least I’m trying to. But every five minutes, I get called back here. So I race home. Every fucking time. It’s like I’m not a real person; I’m just a doll you can manipulate any way you want.”

My anger centers me. My pulse slows. I’m able to breathe. I return to the now, the real now, as the past now recedes.