Martha Lee is tired when she returns from her shift at the nursing home.

Her worn, purple scrubs smell faintly of vomit and cleaning supplies, and there’s a dark stain on the left leg that hadn’t been there this morning. When Clover hears the latch on the door unlock, she pours her boiling water and pasta mix into the colander in the sink, then sets the pot back on the sauce-splattered stove top and rushes to the living room.

“Mama,” she greets warmly, and her mother slips out of her off-white shoes. “Dinner’s almost ready. How was work?”

Martha’s face is tired, too, more wrinkled than Clover remembers from her childhood, and yet she pulls the corners of her lips into a tired smile. “Hey there, baby girl. Same old, same old. Mrs. You-Know-Who has been giving me trouble again, but I’ve worked there longer than she’s lived there so she can't fool me.” Her mother chuckles. “But she forgets that. Part of the reason she’s there, truth be told.”

Martha Lee is beautiful even with her wrinkles and soiled clothing. She’s always worked hard, and raising Clover by herself only made her work even harder. Clover knows how hard it was for her mother to lose her husband.

“She’ll come around. I made you some coffee. Would you like some?”

“My god, Clover,” Martha laughs, “how did you know I was craving some of that? I swear, you can read my mind.”

Martha sips at her coffee while Clover adds a few final touches to the tomato sauce on the stove, and soon they huddle around the coffee table in front of their old television set, setting the channel to a popular game show and slurping up their noodles.

Prince’s mother made pan-fried pork chops with a kale and strawberry salad, and even managed to sneak in a slice of blueberry pie for dessert. He ate a while ago, and has since been talking and laughing with Rosario and Felix. Felix’s mother had been overjoyed to give him permission to spend the night, and the longer they are around him, the more open he becomes. Felix is still quiet, but he’s witty and sharp, and downright hilarious.

Clover wishes she could be there. All she has to eat tonight is this pasta, and while she’s made it as tasty as she can, there’s a hole in her stomach that it seems nothing can fill. Far, far away, Felix smugly tells Rosario that when he ran from the haunted house he looked like a matador running from an angry bull. Clover swallows her laughter.

“...Prince?”

She looks toward her mother, the ghost of a grin on her lips. “Yeah?”

Martha’s expression is stony, and realization washes over Clover like ice sliding down her spine. Her mother licks her lips, her face twisting in pain. “You’re Prince?”

Clover doesn’t know what to say; she feels like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “Mama,” she begins casually, but her mind and heart are racing. “What are you talking about?”

Martha's eyes darken with relief, and yet there’s a gleam of uncertainty. “You responded to me calling you that name,” she whispers.

“You caught me off guard,” Clover argues, fighting to keep her voice cheerful. It rings false. “I was daydreaming, is all. Why would you even call me that?”

Martha's eyes drop to her bowl of red slop. “Doctor Horadi suggested I try to reach out to Princeton to see if it would garner a response,” she admits, and Clover feels a pinprick of rage in the pit of her empty stomach.

“Horadi told you to do that?” she asks. “When did you even speak to her? What about doctor-patient confidentiality?”

“Because you’re still a minor, I have a legal right to hear about your sessions,” Martha defends.

“A right? You have a right to know what’s going on in my head?” Clover snaps. “Jesus, mama, you and Horadi really think I’m crazy, don’t you? You really think I have a split personality or something! You think I’m some kind of a psychopath!”

“We know something is wrong, Clover!” her mother cries. “You pretend everything is fine, but you space out all the time, sometimes for over an hour, and your expression changes, your attitude changes, you  change.”

“That’s just me, mama,” Clover bursts, hitting a hand to her chest. “That’s just who I am. I’m a daydreamer! I have a hard time focusing! I wish you’d stop treating me like I’m a freak.”

She’s channeling him, because it’s easier to yell at her mother when she acts like Princeton, who no one cares is outgoing and harsh with his words. It’s easy to be him, because he doesn’t have a care in the world.

Martha's jaw tightens. “Clover Lee,” she beings, voice low, “I give a damn about you; you’re my daughter and my only family in the whole world. This person you’ve become isn’t my baby girl. It’s someone mean and nasty, someone unkind. It’s like you’re someone else. It’s like you’re Princeton Moss.”

Something inside her breaks, and when she rises to her feet, her bowl of now-cold spaghetti spills all over the carpet. It’ll probably stain. “You don’t know anything about Princeton!” she erupts. “You don’t know how he lives or what he’s like or who he is! You don’t know the first thing about him! About us!”

The pause is brief, shocked. “Clover,” Martha breathes.

Clover stalks toward the front door, picking up her shoes to put them on, but the soles she’s tried so hard to fix fall right out, the old and mangled tape dirty and crushed atop it. Clover throws her shoes against the wall and slams the front door behind her, making her way down the sidewalk barefoot.

Loose gravel and chunks of sharp asphalt cut into her skin, but she ignores them, furiously wiping the sting of tears from her blurry eyes.