When I arrived home, I dragged my suitcase up the stairs, letting it hit each step so everyone would know I was there. When I reached the top step, I paused, waiting for my brother or someone to come, to say hello, we missed you. I dragged my suitcase, letting the wheels catch on every fiber of the rug and checking behind me. I pulled it down the hall to my room and placed it at the foot of my bed. From there, I caught sight of a slip of paper resting on my pillow. It had been ripped out of a school notebook. Welcome home, it said. I missed your quiet chaos. Don’t let them get to you. I smiled. My little brother hadn’t forgotten that I was coming home. I wondered where he was.

I folded it and put it in my pocket. Now, I had to deal with my parents.

“I’m home,” I said, hoping that all I would hear back was an echo.

“Here.” It was my mother’s way of summoning. Like marco polo without any of the fun parts.

I walked towards the kitchen, where her voice had reverberated from. She had seated herself at the head of the table with a cup of tea that looked like it could burn a gloved hand. She sipped from it.

“How were your finals?”

I avoided my father’s seat, the one across from my mother’s, and sat beside it. “They were hard but I think I did okay. I won’t know my grades until I get back for the semester.”

She took another sip, divining whether I was telling the truth. “Why did you have so much trouble with school this semester? You’ve always been better than that.”

“I had a lot going on. It was a big change…I don’t know. I stumbled. I promise it will be okay next semester.”

“Your father is very unhappy with the way you treated us when we visited.”

“I wouldn’t call it visiting,” I said.

She went silent, sipping her tea and letting her eyes roam, touching each corner of the room but never letting them rest on me.

“You look awful,” she said. “You haven’t been sleeping or eating right. You’re gaining weight.”

The reflex to hide myself was still present, even after several months of being away from her. If I could transform into an animal, I would turn into a groundhog and slip into my burrow whenever I felt her critical eye turn upon me. I would un-sew myself from my shadow so she wouldn’t even be able to see that. I’m sure she would have something critical to say about its amorphous shape, or how dark it is, practically Goth. No, she would not even being able to see my shadow. I would snuggle into my burrow and hide until she tired of looking for a verbal punching bag.

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I touched the note in my pocket and let my brother’s advice spill through me, brushing my nerves to calm them down, setting the dial on my blood pressure down a few notches. “Must have been all those college cafeteria meals. They’re big on meat covered in cheese.”

My mother’s eyes flashed. “If you actually cared, you’d have cooked for yourself. Don’t give me these excuses.”

I tried telepathy and sent a mental message to my brother to please, for the love of anything, come home. He didn’t respond because I was neither a groundhog, nor telepathic. I was just a sitter and I was going to sit here and listen to this until my mother was interrupted. If it was my brother, the situation would get better. If it was my father, it would get much, much worse.

I didn’t have to wait long. Heavy footsteps started up the stairs. A briefcase banging on the wall. I wished I was standing in front of a herd of elephants instead of waiting for my father to ascend the stairs.

When he arrived in the kitchen, he looked from my mother to me. “Why didn’t you tell us that girl was in your room?”

“Why did you invade my privacy and break into my room unannounced?” I asked. I knew I wasn’t getting out unscathed so I figured I might as well express myself.

He put his briefcase down with force. I wondered if he had a laptop in there.

“They told us you were squandering the opportunity we were giving you. Is there a boy involved?”

I breathed in, smelling the lavender spray my mother covered everything with, covered everything so nothing could be exposed. Everything was perfect. I wanted my own spray, a spray of sulfur, so everyone who entered would know that there were rotten eggs here. I was thankful that no one could read my mind. I basked in the fact that my brain was my own, but I took too long and silence after a question was not something my father tolerated.

“Go to your room! I’ll tell you when you can come out!”

I stood up, an old reflex, hardened by years of practice. I went to my room and sat on my bed. I closed and locked my door. My father’s anger was always sudden and unexpected but he had some ticks, like sending us to our rooms for hours before he cooled down. I had brought home supersized boxes of Clif bars, which I now proceeded to hide in various nooks and crannies around my room. I put some at the bottom of my old stuffed animal chest, some in my sock drawer, under my bed and some behind my favorite books. I stored some in the electrical panel hidden in my closet. I hoped they would be enough to last me through the whole break. But even if they weren’t, they were enough for right now.

I unpacked and read a magical fantasy book to pass the time. I had read these books from my childhood over and over again because they were the only source of entertainment in my room. I had my phone now too. I was almost glad that I was locked in my room, because I didn’t have to interact with my mother and father when they were angry. Perhaps I could find a way to spend my entire vacation, protected, in my room.

A note slipped under my door made of the same notebook paper I had found on my bed earlier. Hi! It said. I missed you. How long do you have to be in there for? I flipped it over and wrote, I missed you too. You know the drill. I passed the paper under the door again and heard it rustling. Do you need anything? The paper said when it got back. I’ll be okay, I wrote.

“See you when you’re out of the slammer,” he whispered.

I smiled and rested my head against the door. I imagined him walking away. I knew he would dispose of the paper with a hidden lighter, so our parents wouldn’t find it. He was so much better at it than I ever was. He was a toreador with a red cape, distracting. He could make things up in an instant, circumventing punishment with well-woven stories. I used silence as a shield, but it was easily shattered into shards by a verbal attack.