Chapter 4

The family didn't get home until after 2 a.m. I was in my room, pretending to be asleep, but I heard the front door open and close with a defeated thud. I heard my mother's quiet sobbing. I heard my father's heavy, angry footsteps pacing in the living room.

But the loudest sound was Sarah' s voice, sharp and venomous, cutting through the silence.

"This is all Lily's fault!"

I didn't even flinch. I had been waiting for it. In their world, nothing was ever Sarah' s fault.

"If she had been there," Sarah continued, her voice rising, "her negative, skeptical energy wouldn't have been focused on us from afar! She jinxed it! She probably performed some kind of black magic ritual at her stupid office to make the card get declined!"

It was so absurd, so completely detached from reality, that it was almost funny.

"Sarah, that's ridiculous," my father mumbled, his voice hoarse with exhaustion and shame. It was the weakest defense I had ever heard him mount.

"Is it?" Sarah shot back. "She's always been jealous of me! She can't stand that I have a gift and she's just... ordinary. She wants me to fail! She wants us all to die in the apocalypse so she can have the house to herself!"

My mother' s sobbing intensified. "Don't say that, Sarah. She's your sister."

"She is not my sister!" Sarah shrieked. "She is a saboteur! A snake in our midst!"

I heard her stomp down the hallway and pound on my door. "I know you're in there! I know you can hear me! You think you're so smart, don't you? Well, you won't ruin this for us! I won't let you!"

I rolled over in my bed and pulled the pillow over my head. Last time, I would have opened the door. I would have screamed back, defended myself, listed all the ways she was the one who was selfish and destructive. It would have devolved into a massive, house-shaking fight that ended with my parents ordering me to apologize to Sarah.

This time, I gave her nothing. My silence was a locked door, a wall she couldn't penetrate. Her rage, denied its target, had nowhere to go. It was like watching a fire burn itself out for lack of oxygen.

After a few more minutes of furious pounding and muffled curses, she gave up and stomped back to the living room.

I could hear their low, murmuring voices. Sarah was weaving her narrative, painting me as the villain of her story. She was turning my responsible choice to work, my financial prudence, into acts of malicious sabotage. And I knew my parents, desperate to absolve themselves and their golden child of any blame for the night's humiliation, would eagerly accept her version of events.

The next morning, the proof was in my mother's eyes. When I came into the kitchen for coffee, she wouldn't look at me. She moved around the room with a rigid posture, her lips pressed into a thin, disappointed line. She placed a cup of coffee in front of my father and Sarah, but not me. It was a petty, juvenile gesture, but the message was clear. I was being shunned.

I just poured my own cup and leaned against the counter, sipping it slowly. My detachment was a shield. Their coldness couldn't hurt me anymore because I was no longer seeking their warmth.

Sarah, however, was on a roll. The humiliation of the previous night had only fueled her fanaticism. She marched into the living room and grabbed the real estate agent's card from the coffee table.

"That's it," she announced. "We're not waiting for the house to sell on the market. That takes too long. Dad, you're calling that 'We Buy Ugly Houses' company today. The one with the billboard on the highway. We need the cash now. We have to buy the bunker before the prices skyrocket."

My father looked horrified. "Sarah, no. Those companies... they give you a fraction of the market value. We'd lose over a hundred thousand dollars."

"Money is an illusion!" she screamed, her face turning red. "A hundred thousand dollars is nothing compared to our lives! Are you trying to get us all killed over a few pieces of paper?"

"It's not just paper, it's our entire life's savings!" he shot back, a spark of his old self returning. "It's your mother's security! It's..."

"It's MINE!" Sarah roared, and the word hung in the air, vibrating with a terrifying, absolute narcissism. "The prophecy was given to ME! The responsibility to save this family is MINE! And I need the resources to do it! You will call that number, or I will walk out that door right now and you can all fend for yourselves when the swarm comes!"

She stood there, chest heaving, her eyes blazing with a wild, unhinged fire. My mother looked at my father, her face pleading. She was terrified of Sarah leaving, terrified of being abandoned to face this imaginary threat alone.

My father' s shoulders slumped. The fight went out of him completely. He looked old and tired and utterly broken.

He took the card from Sarah' s hand. "Okay," he whispered. "I'll call."

I watched him shuffle over to the phone, a condemned man walking to his own execution. And I finished my coffee, feeling nothing at all.