The Silver Heart

11

Eventually, halfway through my book, I got hungry. Or I got bored; I've never really been able to distinguish between the two states.

I couldn't hear the piano anymore. And when I got downstairs I couldn't see Liss anywhere. Maybe she was gone. Maybe she'd never been there in the first place. Maybe I'd only imagined her.

It was then that I saw the cheese, still all over Mom's nice tile.

Dang it.

"Liss?" I called.

No response.

I sighed and went to get a rag and dampen it in the sink. Within a couple of minutes I'd managed to get most of the cheese off the floor. Then I pulled out bread and peanut butter for a sandwich. The counter was oddly slippery. The peanut butter jar felt suspiciously light. And when I pulled the lid off, there was practically nothing left.

I gritted my teeth. "LISS!"

Again no response. So I marched down to the basement to find my double lounging on the couch and playing on the Xbox. She looked up at me with the same bored indifference I used when Dad was upset at me.

"You heard me call you," I said sharply. "There's no way you didn't."

Liss shrugged. "What's up?"

"What's up? You used an absolutely insane amount of peanut butter!"

She laughed. "You use the same amount all the time. And anyways, I opened a new jar."

I glared at her. "No wonder the counter's oily. You must have splashed it everywhere. And you opened a new jar but put the old one back in the fridge?"

Liss looked back at the TV screen and unpaused her game. "As if you've got a right to be upset about any of this."

I opened my mouth soundlessly, but couldn't think of anything to say. So I turned around and stormed back upstairs.

She was infuriating. No wonder my family thought I was hard to live with.

Live with... hadn't Grandma said that I needed to learn to live with myself?

I sat down at the kitchen table with a plain piece of bread and started to think. If my situation was anything like the ones I read about all the time in my fantasy books, then I'd probably been cursed somehow. The person who had cursed me had to be Grandma. It was probably some sort of Beauty and the Beast type situation. Maybe I needed to learn about how terrible of a daughter and sister I was so that I could be free.

Yes! That was it. I just had to learn how to live with Liss. I had to clean up after myself and be polite and all that. If I was, then hopefully that would break this bizarre curse and I could go back to my normal, pathetic life.

I considered calling Grandma to ask her about the solution I'd come up with. However, I soon realized this was a ridiculous idea. Grandma had already made it clear that she wasn't going to interfere with my house arrest. I had to figure things out by myself.

I'd be nice to this pest if it killed me.