Salmonella

Chapter 7

🫧Seven🫧

The girls storm into the house, quenching silence in a giant fist. They're bickering about Terra's date whiskerfishing her. Apparently he showed up uglier than the photos in his dating app profile. Please. As if they aren't completely fake themselves.

Gigi teases her and giggles loudly. Terra screeches. I dig my nails into my pillow, wishing it were their scalps in my hands instead and I could rip all their hair out.

"No more boys for meee," sings Gigi, voice growing louder.

"Ditto, kiddo." Terra is about to say something else, but then they pass by my room and fall silent. I curse myself for not shutting my door.

"Oh," I hear Terra say. "Hey, Salmon—"

"I don't wanna talk." I bury my head deeper, wishing my pillow were a giant hole I could crawl into and disappear.

"Why not?" comes her unceasing voice. I can hear that sickly smirk right through it.

I bolt upright, snapping my neck in the process of looking at them. "I just don't wanna talk! Get out!" I try punting a pillow at them, but the indoor currents aren't on very high, so it doesn't float very far and just grazes them. The girls laugh. "It's not like you listen to me anyway."

"Aw, don't be like that." Terra pouts. "We try to. We've been nice to you all this time."

"By making fun of me?" I cry. "By making me wear things I don't want?"

Gigi's brows knit together. "We were just taking you shopping..."

"Yeah, just to body-shame me and tell me to get surgery!"

"And we let you eat out with us..."

"What generous sisters you are, allowing me to eat in the same general area as you."

"You know, maybe you're just too sensitive," says Gigi. I stare at her. "Lots of people don't even pay attention to their little siblings. But we always make a point of checking in with you."

"And you'd still do that if Mom hadn't told you to?"

Terra clenches her jaw. Oh, did I strike a nerve?

"You know why we have to look out for you," she snaps, poking a finger at me. "If you weren't so careless and clumsy and daydreamy all the time, maybe we wouldn't be your constant babysitters and we could focus on our own lives. But who cares. You can stay this way, keep being stupid, and actually die this time, like you would have done that day."

I stare at the floor. Like you would have done that day hangs heavy in the room, shocking all three of us, it seems. The place seems to darken, probably with stingrays passing by outside and obscuring the usual light streaming underwater. It squeezes the house, clenches it tightly, trapping our bodies together in this small cell.

"Hey," Gigi whispers, gently ending the deafening silence, but she's not talking to me. No, even after I get told to die, she's still not on my side. She never will be. "Let's not mention that. You're stressing yourself. Don't think about that."

I don't realize they've left until nothing but ghosts remain in my bedroom to stare at me. I hear the girls' voices growing faint down the hall.

Terra's: "My head hurts."

Gigi's: "Need a painkiller?"

Terra's: "Yeah. Can you get me one?"

Gigi's: "Yeah."

Terra, Gigi; Terra, Gigi. It always feels like they're the only ones in this family. Only ones that matter, at least. What am I next to them? Why was I brought into existence at all if I don't have any purpose?