Chapter 3
Zoey's POV
I finished the ramen and went back to my room.
Packing took eleven minutes. I know because I watched the clock.
I dragged my suitcase out from under the bed—an old, beat-up Samsonite with a busted zipper pull I'd fixed with a safety pin two years ago. I'd asked for a new one the Christmas I was fifteen.
Daniel had gotten Grace a matching luggage set that year. Pink. Hard shell. Four pieces. It still sat in her closet, mostly unused, because she always made Daniel carry her bags.
I opened mine and started filling it.
Three pairs of jeans. Four T-shirts. Two hoodies, both faded. A bra I needed to replace but hadn't. Socks. The black dress from the thrift store I'd worn to eighth-grade graduation—the one I'd bought with babysitting money, because no one else was going to buy it.
That was it. That was eighteen years.
I laid my documents on top: birth certificate, Social Security card, my passport—still crinkly and new, never stamped. And the Harvard letter, folded once, the crest embossed at the top.
Fully Funded.
I zipped the suitcase. Still room left in it. An entire half, hollow and empty.
I looked around the room. Bare walls. A desk with a wobbly leg I'd propped up with a folded notebook for three years. A window that faced the neighbor's stucco wall. No posters, no photos, no string lights.
I'd stopped trying to make it feel like mine around age twelve.
Grace's room had a gallery wall, a vanity with Hollywood bulbs, and a walk-in closet you could get lost in. She'd redecorated it twice.
I felt nothing looking at this room. Not sad, not sentimental. Just done.
I turned off the light and went to bed.
They got home past midnight.
I heard the front door, then voices—loose and laughing, Grace's giggle threading through all of it. Daniel's big party laugh, the kind he saved for people he wanted to impress. Heels clicking down the hall.
No one stopped at my door.
I lay in the dark and listened to the apartment go quiet. The old, childish part of me—the part that used to sit outside their bedroom door on Christmas morning, waiting to be noticed—still listened.
Nothing.
Breakfast the next morning was a circus.
Here was the thing: for the past month, Daniel and Melissa had been living under the same roof again. A ceasefire, brokered entirely for Grace's sake.
Grace had asked for "one last family summer" before college, and somehow—impossibly—those two people who had once screamed themselves raw in a courtroom agreed to share an apartment for eight weeks.
They still couldn't stand each other. But they could hold it together long enough to give Grace whatever she wanted.
They were already at the table when I came out. Daniel scrolling his phone. Melissa in her silk robe. Grace in fresh pajamas, hair still damp from the shower, mid-story about the party last night.
"—and then Marcus just loses it. He's like, no way, that is not happening—" Grace laughed.
"Oh, he is such a mess," Melissa said fondly, buttering her toast.
"I know, right? Mom, can we stop on Melrose before we leave? I want a new top for the drive up."
"Whatever you want, baby."
I sat down at the far end of the table and reached for the orange juice. Nobody looked up. Nobody said good morning.
I was furniture.
"You bought her a car," I said flatly. "I turned eighteen yesterday, too, by the way."
The table went quiet.
"Oh my god." Grace dropped her fork with a clatter and smacked both hands against her cheeks. "Oh no. Oh no no no. Zoey. I am so sorry. It's just—with the party and finals and everything, my brain is literally mush right now."
She was already digging through her purse, talking the whole time.
"Okay, okay, wait. I got you something. I was saving it. Honestly." She pulled out something small and dangled it between two fingers—a little brown bear on a metal ring. Disney. Bought at the gift shop, judging by the tag still looped through it.
"See? I picked this out for you at Disney. Isn't it cute? You love it, right?"
She held it out to me, grinning. Still holding her fork in her other hand.
I didn't reach for it.
I looked at Daniel instead.
Daniel cleared his throat.
"Right, yeah. Happy birthday, Zo." He set his phone face-down, glanced at Melissa, then back at me. "So what do you want? We were thinking, uh—didn't you used to be into that singer? Troye Sivan? We could grab you tickets. Good seats."
Didn't you used to be into.
Past tense.
When I was thirteen, I stood in this kitchen and cried for forty dollars.
There was a concert at the Forum. A singer I was obsessed with—poster above my bed, the whole thing. A friend whose mom would drive us both. All I needed was one ticket. Forty dollars.
Daniel had looked up from his cereal and said, We're a little tight right now, Zoey. You know how it is.
Two weeks later, he bought Grace new tennis equipment. The expensive set—the one she'd been crying about. He never mentioned the concert again.
I was thirteen. I thought tight meant something. I thought if I was patient enough, my turn would come.
It never did.
"I'm good," I said. "I don't need anything."
