Maya laughed. She couldn’t help herself. She laughed for an entire minute before she finally got control of herself again. “Well, you know what, Dad? I would love to talk to Mom about this. There is literally nothing that I would love to do more right now than talk to Mom, but you know what? I can’t, because she can’t talk to anyone. And then it’s Family Day, right? Where we all go up to rehab and pretend that everything is fine?”
Lauren sat silent next to her, and Maya couldn’t help but wonder if she agreed with her.
“We are not going to pretend that everything’s fine—” her dad said.
“Really? Because this family is really good at doing just that.”
Her dad took a deep breath and pushed himself away from the table. “I need a moment, girls,” he said, then got up and left the room.
“What the hell is your problem?” Lauren hissed at her as soon as they were alone. “Seriously? You think Dad doesn’t feel bad enough right now?”
“Oh, really? You think? Why don’t you go text Claire about it? I’m sure your new BFF would love to chat with you.”
“Oh my God. Would you just get over yourself, My? I texted her because I was worried about you. You’re good with Claire. I actually like you when you’re with Claire.” Now Lauren was standing up from the table. “Would you quit acting like this whole family is trying to persecute you? You’re not the only one who had to dig wine bottles out of Mom’s closet, you know? You’re not the one who found her bleeding to death on the floor. But you’re the one who gets to have your little foot-stompy temper tantrum whenever someone does something that you don’t like. Well, too bad. I know you like to think that you’ve got this whole new family that you can just run away to, but you’ve still got a family here, too.”
“Oh, yeah, Laur?” Maya said, and now she was standing up, too. “Tell me something. When Mom and Dad said they were getting divorced, did you wonder if they would still want you?”
“What are you talking about?” Lauren shouted.
“Did you ever have to look at the pictures on that staircase and think, Do they hate me for ruining their perfect family? Am I the reason for all of this? Me and my freak existence? Let me guess, the answer to all of that is no. So don’t try to make me feel bad for trying to find my space in this world, okay? Because you’ve never had to worry about yours!”
Now Lauren was crying in that terrible way she always did, but Maya was already turning on her heel and running upstairs.
She couldn’t get far enough away, though. Not from herself. There weren’t enough stairs in the world for that.
Maya couldn’t sleep that night.
All she kept seeing when she closed her eyes was Grace’s face when Adam called her a slut, Joaquin’s face as he described Natalie falling to the floor, Lauren’s face when Maya had mentioned the pictures on the staircase. All of them made her stomach feel empty, like it was a pit that could never be filled, no matter how many good thoughts she had to replace the bad ones.
At two o’clock in the morning, she gave up and went downstairs.
Lauren was there, angrily twisting Oreos open and scraping out the cream filling into a bowl. Maya stopped when she saw her, about to turn around, but Lauren saw her, too.
For a few seconds, neither of them moved.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Lauren finally said.
“Me either,” Maya replied. She hadn’t realized how tired Lauren had looked lately, but she guessed that now would be a bad time to bring that fact up. “I’ll leave you alone.”
“I’m just going to throw this cream out,” Lauren said. “You might as well eat it.”
Maya paused, then turned back around and sat down at the kitchen island, across from Lauren. “I mean, you’re the weirdo who won’t eat chocolate,” Lauren added, scraping another cookie into the bowl.
“You’re the weirdo who eats chocolate,” Maya said grumpily. It was two o’clock in the morning, after all. “It tastes like sweet dirt.”
Lauren just scoffed and pushed the bowl toward her. They sat across from each other for a full minute in silence before Lauren finally broke it.
“Do you really hate those pictures on the stairs?”
“I don’t hate them,” Maya said. “I just hate that it’s so obvious that I don’t look like