Chapter 2

I don't know how long I hovered there, staring at that slice of apple pie.

Time doesn't mean much when you're dead.

I watched the edges curl and darken. Watched flies lay their eggs in the filling. Watched white mold bloom across the cheap paper plate like a slow-motion time-lapse of decay.

Then, on the afternoon the pie finally collapsed into rot, the front door slammed open.

Evelyn and Laura were back from Disney.

Matching Mickey Mouse ears, arms overflowing with oversized plush toys, laughter flooding the house like water rushing into a tomb.

Not once did either of them glance up at the closed door on the second floor.

Not once did they notice the smell—something far worse than moldy pie—creeping through the walls.

I drifted back upstairs. To what was left of me.

Three days had not been kind to my body.

Livid purple blotches mottled my arms and neck. My eyes had begun to collapse inward, sinking into their sockets like punctured grapes.

But the worst part was the smell. Sweet and rancid all at once, like meat fermenting in a sealed garbage bin at the height of August.

I tried to pull the yellowed bedsheet over myself. But my translucent fingers passed through the fabric again and again.

All I could do was watch. A helpless spectator to my own decomposition.

Eventually, the liquefied tissue and blackened blood found the path of least resistance.

It seeped along the slanted floorboards, crept beneath the door, and pooled in a glistening film across the hallway.

Laura's patent leather shoes came skipping down the corridor.

Then a thick, wet slap as her feet shot out from under her.

"AHHH—!"

Evelyn's frantic footsteps followed within seconds.

I floated through the door and saw Laura splayed on the hallway floor, her white lace dress smeared with that dark liquid from my room.

"Oh my God, Laura! Where does it hurt?" Evelyn dropped to her knees and pulled the girl into her arms.

Laura knew exactly what to do. She'd had years of practice. Her face crumpled on cue, one finger jabbing toward my bedroom door:

"Riley did it! Mommy, she splashed water on the floor on purpose! She ruined my new dress! My head hurts!"

Evelyn's face went hard. She stood slowly—and the smell hit her. Her hand flew to her nose.

"What the hell is that?"

Eyes locked on the gap beneath my door, she took a step back. "She's not just playing dead in there—she's hoarding rotten garbage and dumping it in the hallway? That's sick."

The front door opened. George walked in, loosening his tie.

"What now?" Flat. Tired. "One day. Can we have ONE day—"

"Ask your precious Riley." Evelyn pointed at the stain on the floor. "Locking herself in wasn't enough. Now she's pouring filth under the door at Laura."

Something ignited behind George's eyes.

He crossed the hallway in three strides and drove his foot into my door.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

I flinched upward, pressing myself against the ceiling. Squeezed my eyes shut.

No one knew my body was slumped directly behind that door.

Each kick slammed the heavy wood into my bloated, discolored face—shoving, compressing, deforming what was already barely recognizable.

"Open this door, Riley! Get out here and apologize RIGHT NOW!" Veins stood out on his neck. "We raised you and this is how you repay us? You ungrateful little—"

The door held. The dead bolt I'd locked three days ago kept the world out, and my ruined body absorbed every blow in silence.

"George. George." Evelyn caught his arm. "You're going to break your foot. Let's take Laura to the ER. Then dinner—that steakhouse she likes."

She glanced at the door. "As for the thing rotting in there..."

She leaned close to the wood, her voice arctic: "Riley. You'd better pray that by the time we get back, whatever's dead in there is gone and this hallway is spotless. Otherwise—I'll show you what a REAL punishment looks like."

Their footsteps receded. The front door slammed. Engine, gravel, then—nothing. Suffocating silence.

I hovered in the hallway, staring at the space where they'd stood.

This wasn't new. None of it. Laura had been doing this since she could talk.

Every broken vase, every spilled drink, every scratch on Evelyn's car—redirected with a pointed finger. And it always pointed at me.

Evelyn loved to call herself a "perfectly fair" mother.

"Since neither of you will own up to it, we'll pull from the jar." That was her solution. Every single time.

On the mantelpiece sat Evelyn's proudest parenting invention: the Fair Jar.

A ceramic pot filled with wooden sticks in two colors—red for innocent, black for guilty. Whoever drew black got punished. Locked in the basement. Belt across the thighs. No dinner for two days.

For fourteen years, every single draw, the black stick ended up in my hand.

I used to think it was God's curse. That I'd been born under some malicious star no prayer could ever move.

Something pulled me downstairs. Not gravity. Something older, colder. A need that had outlived my body.

I passed through the floor into the empty living room. Afternoon light slanted through the curtains.

And there it sat on the mantelpiece, exactly where it always had. The Fair Jar. Evelyn's little shrine to justice.

I stared at it.

Then I reached out both hands and poured every shred of will into that single motion.

My fingers passed through the ceramic. Again. And again. Nothing.

Then a cold draft swept through the room, rattling the curtains—and the jar tipped.

Crack.

It shattered against the tile, wooden sticks scattering across the blood-red carpet.

I hovered there, looking down at the truth. And I felt something worse than dying.

Every single stick on that crimson carpet—all fifteen of them—was black.