1: 1

The tenth year of my family's punishment, and I was still invisible in that house.

When my acceptance letter from the university arrived, I stood in the living room holding it for a long time.

My mother was picking out a necklace for my older sister. My father was busy ordering a new computer for my younger brother.

Nobody looked up.

I asked again, quietly. "The school needs confirmation paperwork. Could you help me look it over?"

My father turned up the volume on the TV. My mother got up to slice fruit for my sister.

I called out to each of them in turn. Still no one answered.

In the end I carried the letter back to my room and opened it alone.

Outside the door, my mother was still reminding them.

"Don't go soft just because she got into college."

"She was stealing money at eight years old. If we don't fix that for good, there's no telling what she'll turn into."

I leaned against the door and let the tears fall, one after another.

When I opened the window, all at once I wanted to go back to the day I was eight.

If I could do it over, I'd sweep that hallway forever before I'd take those five dollars.

But there was no going back.

So I turned around and stepped off the eighteenth floor.

This time, I finally didn't have to wait for them to answer.

1

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die, every happy moment of it passing by.

But the first scene I saw was the year I turned eight.

That fall, the class bought workbooks together.

Fifteen dollars each.

When the teacher read my name, I lowered my head and said I hadn't bought one.

The whole class turned to look at me.

The teacher frowned and shoved a broom into my hands.

"No workbook, no sitting here."

"Go sweep the hallway. You wouldn't follow the lesson anyway."

After that, every math class, I swept the hallway.

No one knew what it cost me to walk out of that room, step by step.

I had to pass through the sneering eyes of forty-eight classmates.

And carefully dodge the teacher's impatient looks.

Through the window I stole glances at my classmates bent over their problems.

Some laughed and called me the janitor.

Others swept eraser shavings onto the floor on purpose, so I'd have to come clean them up.

I didn't dare tell my mother.

My sister had a dance competition coming, my brother had just signed up for soccer, and every day at home was about how there wasn't enough money.

To buy a workbook, I started doing other kids' homework.

Fifty cents a page.

I lay under my blanket writing until midnight every night, and in half a month I'd saved ten dollars.

Five short.

That night, I worked up the nerve to go to my mother.

"Could you lend me five dollars?"

"When I have money someday, I'll pay you back, I promise."

She waved my hand away, annoyed.

"Your sister needs a new dress, your brother needs sneakers. Where's the spare money for you to waste?"

But a few minutes later she sent my sister five thousand dollars.

Because my sister had her eye on a new necklace.

I stared at the wallet my mother had left on the table, and stood there a long time.

In the end, I took five dollars out of it.

The next day, I finally bought the workbook.

I held it against my chest, unwilling to bend even a corner.

And on the first page I wrote my name, one careful stroke at a time.

But after school, my sister saw the workbook and asked, offhand,

"Didn't Mom say she wasn't giving you money?"

That night, my father called me into the living room.

The moment I admitted I'd taken the money, he raised his hand and slapped me.

Then, right in front of me, he tore that brand-new workbook to shreds.

The pages scattered across the floor.

My name was still on them, freshly written.

My mother called my sister and brother in front of her and announced that from that day on, no one in the family was allowed to speak to me.

"It ends when she's truly changed. Not before."

I thought all I had to do was admit I was wrong.

That night I knelt in the living room and wrote three pages of apology.

Over and over, I wrote that I was wrong.

That I would never steal again.

But the next day, the apology went in the trash.

No one told me when the punishment would end.

At first, I chased after them every day, apologizing.

When my mother cooked, I stood in the kitchen doorway calling to her.

When my father came home from work, I fetched his slippers.

When my sister and brother watched TV, I sat beside them, begging them to acknowledge me just once.

But they never spoke.

They wouldn't even let their eyes land on me.

The year I ran a high fever, I was burning so badly I could barely stand.

I felt my way along the wall into the living room and called for my mother a dozen times.

She was sitting right there on the couch, and all she did was pick up the remote and turn up the TV.

In the end, in my slippers, I walked to the community clinic alone.

The next day, though, my mother sighed to the relatives.

"This child has too much going on in her head."

"She'll even fake being sick, just to force us to pay attention to her."

After that, the relatives started ignoring me too.

On holidays, when I greeted them, they acted like they hadn't heard.

If someone brought something valuable to the house, they'd deliberately hold their bag tighter.

Others counted the money in their wallets right in front of me.

One time, Aunt Deborah couldn't find her gold ring.

Everyone looked at me at once.

My mother didn't ask a single question. She just turned out my pockets and dug through my backpack.

The relatives sat on the couch, watching with those half-smiles.

As if they were all waiting to see when this little thief would finally slip up.

In the end, the ring turned up inside Aunt Deborah's own glove.

She patted her chest and laughed. "Would you look at my memory."

No one apologized to me.

My mother just threw my ransacked backpack down at my feet and reminded my sister and brother, "Put your things away from now on."

Little by little, even the kids my age learned to steer clear of me.

They'd split candy and play games right in front of me.

If I came near, they scattered at once.

"Can't talk to a thief."

"She'll steal your stuff."

All I could do was retreat to my room, again and again.

But then my mother would tell the relatives I was naturally gloomy, that I didn't like to talk and had no manners.

First they forbade me to speak.

Then they used my silence as proof that something was wrong with me from birth.

For ten years, I did all the housework, ranked first every single year, and never once touched anything that wasn't mine.

I always believed that if I was obedient enough, one day they'd end the punishment.

Until I was eighteen, holding my acceptance letter from the university, calling out every one of their names.

And still they didn't answer.

The wind roared past my ears.

And I finally understood.

Those ten years of silence were never about the five dollars.

Those five dollars had only given them a reason to feel justified in not loving me.

In the ten years they looked straight through me, I imagined my own death more times than I could count.

I pictured myself with my wrists cut open, and my mother holding me, crying, telling me she'd forgiven me long ago.

I pictured my father finding my note and finally regretting the workbook he'd torn apart.

Maybe my sister and brother would kneel at my bedside, calling my name over and over, begging me to open my eyes.

I even let myself hope, in the lowest part of me, to see them sobbing.

I wanted death to prove that I mattered in this family too.

At the very least, after I was gone, they would have to see me once.

The instant my body hit the ground, I felt no pain.

Only a kind of release.

My soul drifted up out of it, light as nothing, passed through eighteen floors, and came home again.

In the living room, the TV was still playing.

My mother was fastening the necklace she'd just picked out around my sister's neck, and my father was comparing two computers for my brother.

The sound of the fall must have carried up somehow.

My father shouted toward my room, annoyed.

"Keep it down in there!"

I stood frozen where I was.

It was the first time in ten years he'd said a word to me.

Before, even knowing he was scolding me, I would have run out happy.

I'd have poured him tea, washed fruit for my brother, and carefully smoothed things over with everyone.

"I'm sorry. I'll be quieter from now on."

As long as they answered me.

Even if they cursed at me, at least I'd feel like I wasn't just a patch of empty air anymore.

But this time, no one came out of the room.

My father seemed to sense something off too, and glanced back.

"Why's she so quiet?"

Even at that one question, my heart gave a jump on its own.

But my mother only sneered.

"Gets into that university and thinks she's grown wings."

"Not answering on purpose, trying to make us break the rule first."

My sister touched the new necklace at her throat and said, offhand,

"Patricia's the best at playing the victim."

"The fevers, the birthdays before this, didn't she always pull this same trick?"

My brother laughed along.

"See who caves and talks to her first."

A few short sentences, and the hope that had just started up in me was ground to nothing.

So they hadn't realized I was dead.

They only thought I was working an angle again.

Half an hour later, my mother started making dinner.

She stood in the kitchen doorway and looked toward my room out of habit.

All these years, the washing, the chopping, the scrubbing of pots, all of it was mine.

But today, no one came to help her.

She waited a while, her face darkening.

"Gets into that university and won't even do the chores anymore."

Still no answer.

My mother finally walked to my door and shoved it open.

The room was empty.

The window stood open, the curtain lifting high in the wind.

The acceptance letter lay by the bed, my tears still on it.

3: 3

3

Her mother glanced over, but she didn't walk to the window.

"She must have slipped out at some point."

"Nobody is to go looking for her."

"She doesn't have a single friend, and she doesn't have any money on her. When she gets hungry, she'll come back on her own."

Her father didn't object.

Her younger brother only asked one thing: "So who's doing the dishes tonight?"

Her older sister looked toward my cramped little bedroom.

"She's about to move into the dorms anyway. Let me use this room for my clothes from now on."

Her mother nodded.

"Fine by me. Saves her coming back and piling junk everywhere."

They didn't even wait for me to come home before they started clearing out my room.

My brother packed my old books into a cardboard box.

My sister took one look at my shabby clothes, didn't even bother to sort through them, and dumped them straight into a garbage bag.

From the very back of the desk, my father dug out a tin box.

Inside were all the notes I'd written to them over ten years.

*Punishment, day three: Mom, I really know I was wrong. Can you give me a hug?*

*Punishment, day one hundred and eighty: Dad, I came in first today. Can you just look at it once?*

*Punishment, year four: Mom, my fever's up to a hundred and two. I'm a little scared.*

*Punishment, year ten: I got into the university. Can we be a family again?*

My sister flipped through a few of them and laughed out loud.

"How does she milk it this hard?"

For a second my mother's face went stiff.

But she recovered fast, snatched the tin box away, and tipped every note inside into the trash can.

"Stop reading those."

"She wrote all that just to guilt us into going soft."

I lunged for them, desperate to gather the pages back up.

But my hand passed through them, again and again.

I couldn't hold on to anything.

All I could do was watch my brother toss an empty drink bottle in on top, pressing down every apology that had never once been answered.

I used to think that if I just died, they would be sorry.

That they'd cradle my things and cry, that they'd remember how I once trailed after them, begging them to look at me just once.

But my death didn't even interrupt them picking out a computer and a necklace.

They were still talking about how selfish I was, how scheming, how I never knew my place.

They'd already started dividing up the room I left behind.

So it turned out death didn't end my pain.

It only made me see it clearly.

There really was no one in this world who loved me.

And in that moment, a sharp, urgent knock came at the door.

"Excuse me, is it your child who fell?"