No one came to pick me up the day I got out of juvie. Nana signed for my release remotely, and Pumpkin pulled up to the gates without a single passenger inside. It was a school day, and I was glad my sisters didn’t miss class for me, but if I was being honest, also a little disappointed. During my six-month incarceration, they’d been living with Nana, and she’d only brought them to visit me twice. We spoke on the phone as often as permitted, but it wasn’t the same as being around their monster-faces and listening to their hectic screams from across the house. I couldn’t wait to have that again.

Pumpkin delivered me home, but it didn’t feel as good to be there as I thought it would. I knew every inch of the place, but somehow, it felt unfamiliar. Like walking up to the house in another dimension, the same in every way but different. Not my own.

The building reminded me of something out of a Dr. Seuss book. Despite being planned and built by computers—like most buildings in our part of the world—it was somehow inexplicably crooked. The faux brick exterior was a muddy red, the door a year-round Christmasy green. The driveway had been scratched into the ground along the right side of the building and led to a grass-scrap of a backyard. There may have once been a small garage, but all I’d ever known was the car-shaped patch of gravel.

A six-staired stoop brought me to the back door. The front practically opened onto the street, so it was safer, and more private, to go around. I didn’t even know if the front door worked anymore; it’d been so long since we used it.

Police tape dangled broken from the doorframe. Someone had been there before me, but obviously not to clean up. The trash cans beside the stoop were still full from six months ago, and a stench hung in the air like a cloud of toxic waste. If it was any indication of what awaited inside, I had some work ahead of me to get everything in order before the girls came home.

I had no idea.

Cheap wheat bran cups littered every surface (including the floor) alongside crumpled napkins, stale chips, pizza crusts, and beer bottles. Shoes of all shapes and sizes had painted the tiles in muddy prints and tracked through the blood stain by the stairs where I’d broken our father’s nose. My immediate fear was that someone had broken in and used the empty house as a party pad while we were gone, but then it occurred to me: the door was locked when I came in. No one had forced their way through. Whoever had done this had access to the house, but this was no teenybopper party, and there’s no way our father would return. Not after what happened.

There was only one possible culprit.

“Dammit, Mia!” I snapped.

A clunk from upstairs answered my call.

“Oh, you’d better not be here!”

Careful not to disturb the black blood splatter on the ground, I jumped the first step and stomped to the second floor. The first bedroom on the right was mine. The one across from it was usually shared by Selena, Sophia, and Camila, but Selena claimed our father’s bedroom after he left. His was the farthest back, beside the bathroom. On the other side of the hall was Mia’s. I threw open the door and stormed inside with more than a few choice words for her.

But she wasn’t there.

Someone had left the window partly open. It looked like a gust of wind blew over a rocking vodka bottle on the floor. Hence, the clunk I’d heard. I picked it up before the last few drops could spill onto the carpet. Not that it would have made much of a difference in the pigsty I found. The damage was even worse than downstairs. Just the smell was enough to make me gag, but the real treat was the sight of cockroaches running under the bed as I came in.

I went downstairs and bundled up a handful of biodegradable garbage bags from under the kitchen sink. It probably wouldn’t be enough. I might even have to go out and buy more. What was Mia thinking? Why would she do something so stupid?

It’d be nice to have a third hand as I got to work in her room: one for the bag, one to throw things in it, and another to cover my nose. Mountains of refuse packed an entire bag so full I could barely tie it shut. Then, a second. I was getting to work on filling a third when my hand came across a shattered piece of bottle under the bed. Only, it wasn’t a shattered piece of bottle.

It was a flute. A pipe used for smoking methamphetamine.

My body froze. I couldn’t move. I could only stare at the glass thing in my hand. Was I even still breathing? I didn’t know. Everything seemed to have stopped. Even time. My mind went blank, and I closed my eyes, hoping I was about to wake up from a horrible dream back in my bunk in juvie.

My joints felt stiff as I returned to reality. I carefully set the little tube on Mia’s mattress and sat down on the floor opposite.

The tell-tale snap of the backdoor closing echoed through the house. Tucking the pipe into my back pocket, I ran into Mia coming up the stairs as I went down. Everything I wanted to say to her came rushing into my mind. My fingernails dug into my palms. I was ready to scream. Ready to tear her limb from limb. But when I confronted her in the stairway, neither of those things happened. 

I immediately, instinctively, with no self-control whatsoever, wrapped her into a hug.

“So,” she uttered into my ear, “you’re back.”

“Yeah, I’m back. Thanks for sending the car.” I was careful not to cause her to lose her balance on the stairs as I backed away. “You’re home early. Skipping class?”

Her dark eyes found the floor, but she didn’t lie. “I thought I might beat you.”

“And do what?”

Toying with her long brown hair, her mouth sealed shut and she didn’t answer.

I lowered my voice. “And do what?”

Her arms crossed over her chest. As usual, she wore a baggy pink sweater she stole from our parents’ closet. Her wardrobe was full of similarly baggy attire to hide the body shape she felt so self-conscious about, but her choice of clothing had always been the only timid thing about her. She wasn’t one to be tight-lipped. Clearly, she knew she was in the wrong. Good. I gave her plenty of time to think of what she wanted to say to me, counted down from twenty in my head, but she didn’t even look up.

“And do what?” I barked so loudly the words were meaningless. “Get back here and clean up? Cause I doubt you’d have time for that. Or was your goal a little simpler? Maybe you just wanted to beat me back so you could hide this.”

I held the pipe between my fingers.

“You went in my room? I can’t believe you!” Her hand shot out to grab it.

I pulled it out of her reach. “Mia—”

She shoved past me and ran up the stairs, but she wasn’t getting away so easily. I held her bedroom door to keep her from slamming it, and she kicked over a bag of garbage instead.

“Mia, what is going on with you?”

“Why do you even care?”

Ignoring that: “Do you have any idea how dangerous this is? Even if it doesn’t kill you, this stuff will still end your life! You’ve seen what happens when you become an addict. For Christ’s sake, Mia! What about your hormone therapy? How do you know this won’t have some kind of interaction with that?”

She rolled her eyes, and I worried they might unscrew from her head. “Don’t be an idiot, Mama. That’s not how it works.”

“How do you know? Are you a doctor? Did you read it on the internet? Must be true then.”

“Shut up!”

“Just tell me why! You’re smarter than this. Or did you suffer a brain injury while I was gone?”

“You mean in juvie?”

“Yes! Which is where you’re going to end up if you don’t straighten out.”

“It’s none of your business! Just give it to me!” She lunged for the pipe again, but there was no point in playing keep-away. I threw it to the ground and shattered it beneath the heel of my shoe. Shards of glass tinkled and glittered from between carpet fibers. Her face turned a bright shade of red.

“I have more!” she screamed. 

“I know. Just like I know you probably have actual meth somewhere in this room too.”

“And what if I do? What are you going to do about it?”

“Mia,” I said her name the way only a parental figure knows how. Wielded at the right moment in battle, it was a secret weapon capable of making anyone crack. A combination of disappointment, anger, and love laced every syllable, and the corners of her eyes went pink. 

She threw herself onto the bed. It screeched under her weight. I sat beside her, coaxing out a second screech, but otherwise not making a sound. I didn’t have to. She already knew everything I was thinking, everything I had to say. A lecture would only shut her down completely. I sat in calm silence, letting her feel whatever she was feeling. The most important thing for me to do was simply be with her.