1
Prologue
The pill bottle rattles like teeth chattering.
I’m sitting at the kitchen table, pencil moving through quadratic equations, when Mom’s voice cuts through the blue glow of the television. “Baby, can you get me the white ones?”
Math is easy. Counting pills is not.
The faucet drips—tap, tap, tap—a metronome I’ve learned to tune out. Dad’s work boots slump by the door, crusted with mud and something sharper, chemical. The smell makes my throat close if I breathe too deep, so I don’t.
I push back from the table. My brother Axel is already at the counter, rummaging through the drawer where we keep the takeout menus and broken pens and things we pretend are organized. He’s sixteen, broad-shouldered from varsity practice, but his hands move with the carefulness of someone defusing a bomb.
“Which one?” he asks, not looking at me.
There are two orange bottles on the counter. Similar but not the same. One has our local pharmacy label—CVS, the pharmacist who knows our names. The other has a clinic name I don’t recognize, some town two hours south. The cap is sticky under my fingers when I pick it up. Syrup, maybe. Or spilled soda.
“The white ones,” I repeat, reading the label even though the corner is torn, even though the dosage is smudged.
From the couch, Dad barks, “Hurry up,” without standing, without even turning his head from the screen.
I fill a glass with tap water. The pipes groan. Everything in this house makes noise except the things that should—like apologies, likeI love you, likewe need help.
Mom’s hand trembles when I bring her the water. Her nails are chewed raw at the edges. “Just one,” she says. Then, softer, almost like she’s asking herself, “Maybe two.”
Axel hesitates. I watch him make a choice, or maybe I watch him surrender to a choice already made. He hands her the bottle—or she points, and he obeys. Later, I won’t be sure which. Later, that uncertainty will hollow me out.
She palms more than two. I see it. The pills disappear into her mouth, and one slips from her fingers, clattering to the linoleum. It rolls, spiraling under the stove.
I kneel. The floor is cold against my knees, gritty with crumbs and dust. My fingers search the darkness beneath the appliance, and I find the pill. But there’s another one already there, wedged against the baseboard. Old. Dust-covered.
Not the first time.
I close my fist around both pills, slip them into my pocket, and return to my homework.
Mom settles back into the couch cushions. Dad’s eyes never leave the screen. Axel opens the fridge, stares inside like the answer to something might be hiding behind the milk.
I write numbers. X equals negative b plus or minus the square root. The pencil scratches across paper. Minutes pass. Five, maybe ten. The house breathes its normal broken rhythm.
Then Mom makes a sound.
Not words. Just a soft exhale, like air leaking from a tire.
I look up. Her head has tilted to the side, chin against her shoulder. Her mouth is open. Her hand has gone slack, fingers curled like she’s holding something invisible.
“Mom?”
Nothing.
“Mom.”
Axel turns from the fridge. The milk carton is still in his hand.
I cross the room in three steps. Her skin is warm but wrong—clammy, like she’s been outside in the rain. Her chest rises and falls, but the rhythm is off. Too slow. Too shallow.
“Mom, wake up.”
I shake her shoulder. Her head lolls. Her eyes are half-open, pupils pinpricks, staring at nothing.
