Chapter 5: The Bedroom Already Repainted
I didn't call ahead to the house phone. I texted Chloe just after nine on Tuesday morning.
I was parked across the street in Ethan's old Civic, watching to make sure Mom's silver RAV4 was gone from the driveway. It was. The sheer curtains in the dining room were still drawn exactly the way they'd been that night.
Are you home? I need my birth certificate and some clothes. I won't be long.
She answered a minute later. Yeah. Mom left for work at 7:30. Door's unlocked.
I didn't move right away. I sat there with my hands on my knees and stared at the front steps where I'd left four days earlier with a duffel that didn't zip all the way shut. Then I got out and crossed the street. The key was still under the fake rock like nothing had happened, but I didn't need it.
The front door wasn't locked. Chloe stood just inside the entry in sweatpants and that light tweed jacket hanging over her arm like she hadn't decided where to put it yet. Her hair was pulled back and her face did this quick, tight thing when she saw me — eyes dropping to my shoes, then back up.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey," I said. I slipped past her and my sneakers squeaked on the hardwood. "I told Ethan I'd be ten minutes."
"She's at the office until four," Chloe said, too fast. "I didn't know you were coming until — I mean, I didn't —"
"I know."
The house smelled the same, lemon cleaner and coffee, but it felt off, like someone had been rearranging furniture while I was gone. I stopped at the archway to the dining room without meaning to.
The dark wood table was still set from that night. The cut crystal water glass sat exactly where it had been in front of Mom's chair, a hard ring of water underneath it. Next to it, the white porcelain teacup on its saucer, the tea dried to a thin brown skin at the bottom. The plates hadn't been cleared either, crumbs caught in the seams of the wood. No one had touched it.
"She told me not to wash them," Chloe said quietly behind me. "She said leave it."
I stared at the glass. For a second I could hear her voice again in that room, clear as if she were still leaning forward. Either give up your bedroom to your younger sister, or pack your things and get out of here.
"Why?" I asked.
Chloe shrugged, her shoulders coming up to her ears. "I don't know. She just said leave it."
I left the dining room and went down the short hall to my bedroom. The door was open three inches. I pushed it with two fingers.
Half my room was gone.
My desk was still there but the drawers were pulled out and empty, my posters stripped off the wall leaving faded rectangles and little tack holes. My closet door was wide open and my side of it was bare, hangers pushed to one end. On the bed where my quilt used to be were three open cardboard boxes, and folded over the desk chair was Chloe's light tweed jacket, the same one she'd been wearing that night at the table while Mom was still mid-sentence. There was a stack of her folded sweaters on the floor, a vanity mirror propped against the wall, a string of photos she’d taped above where my headboard had been.
She'd already started moving in.
I stood in the doorway breathing through my nose. My hands were empty and I had to consciously keep them at my sides.
"I didn't ask her to do it this fast," Chloe said from behind me. Her voice was small.
I didn't turn around. "When did she tell you you could have it?"
A pause. I heard her shift her weight. "Last week. Before — before dinner. She said you weren't using the space right and I needed a real room for senior year. For photos and when people come over."
I finally looked at her. Her eyes were down, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. The guilt was all over her in micro-expressions — the quick blink, the way she couldn't hold my gaze for more than a second.
"For image?" I said.
She swallowed. "She said colleges look at that stuff. That it matters what your background looks like on video calls. And my room faces the street and gets the truck noise."
It wasn't an apology. It wasn't a defense either. It was just what Diane had told her, repeated word for word.
"Did you want it?" I asked.
Chloe's eyes filled, but she didn't cry. She shook her head once, sharp. "Not like this. I told her you’d be pissed. She said you'd get over it or you'd leave. She said you always make a choice that makes it easier for everyone."
That was Diane's line. Neat, clean, like she was the reasonable one.
I stepped around the boxes and knelt by my dresser. The bottom drawer still had my winter clothes shoved in, and underneath them the small fireproof folder I kept my documents in. I pulled it out and checked inside. Birth certificate, social security card, my vaccination record. All there. I put the folder in my backpack and started folding the rest — two sweaters, jeans, socks — mechanically, not looking at Chloe's boxes perched on my mattress.
"I'm not going to fight you for it," I said, zipping the backpack. My voice sounded even, which surprised me.
"I know," Chloe said. She took a step into the room but stopped at the edge of the rug, like there was a line. "Maya — do you want me to move my stuff back? I can tell her I don't want it."
I stood and slung the bag over one shoulder. The room already didn't feel like mine. The paint on the far wall had a fresh roller mark where someone had patched a scuff.
"It wouldn't matter," I said. "She already repainted in her head."
May you like
I walked past her, out of the room, past the dining table with that glass and that teacup still sitting there like evidence. At the front door I paused with my hand on the knob. Chloe stayed standing in the hallway, holding her jacket, not following me all the way out.
I pulled the door shut behind me and didn't look back at the window.
