Billy’s poisoning my family.

Smiling. Always smiling. Acting like he’s such a nice guy.

My eyes fall on the small pile of salt and pepper packets I picked up when I went through the buffet line. I intended to sprinkle the salt over my pork and rice bowl.

But instead I grab a pepper packet.

I tear open a corner.

And dump the entire contents into Billy’s glass of iced tea.

For a second I just stare at it, the clumps of pepper whirling in the glass, sinking, disseminating through the tea like it’s meant to be there.

Then I stand up, shocked by what I’ve done and eager to get away from the scene of the crime. I cross to the dessert table and grab a tiny chilled plate. I pretend to be taking my time considering which flavor of haupia—those tiny gelatinous cubes that are everywhere in Hawaii—would be tastier: coconut or strawberry. I take a strawberry one. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Billy. He’s still turned to Marjorie, still talking, still smiling.

Any second now, I think.

I swivel so that my back is to him. I don’t even want to be looking in his direction when it happens.

I wait for him to start coughing.

Will it hurt him, I wonder? It will be a surprise, obviously, and there’s the possibility that he’ll gasp and inhale the pepper somehow, and that can’t be good for his lungs. But that can’t be too bad, considering that the cops use pepper spray on people all the time and it never seems to do permanent damage. It won’t really hurt him.

Will it?

I do a quick search on my phone. All I can find are sites listing the health benefits of pepper. Eating it, but also drinking it. Apparently it’s a thing to drink hot water with pepper in it.

So I am actually helping Billy to flush his body of toxins.

If he drinks it.

I dare a glance over my shoulder at the table again. Billy is still there.

Still talking.

But his glass is gone.

I look around, but I don’t see it. The only glasses on the table are my water, my mom’s empty glass with a lemon in the bottom, and Marjorie’s, which she is currently holding in her hand, waving it around as she talks. In front of Billy: nothing.

It’s like I hallucinated the entire thing.

It’s probably for the best. Some part of me still wants to make Billy suffer, even just a little bit, but it’s a juvenile part. What is wrong in my life will not be fixed by Billy drinking some pepper in his tea. I know that. But still—