She leaned closer. “Make me.”
I should have walked away. I should have swallowed it the way I swallowed everything. But the truth is, by fifteen, my throat was raw from swallowing. My ribs were tired of being the cage for all the words I didn’t get to say. And the thing April understood—better than my parents, better than anyone—was how to find the one nerve that would make me react.
She stepped into my space and whispered, soft enough that my parents in the living room couldn’t hear, “You’re nothing. You’re the mistake they keep forgetting to throw away.”
I don’t remember moving. I remember the flash of her eyes widening, the quick tilt of her body as she lost balance, the sound of her shoulder tapping the kitchen counter. It wasn’t even a shove, not really. It was me lifting my arms instinctively, a reflex, a flinch, my body trying to create space.
But April stumbled perfectly.
