They Valued a Guinea Pig More Than Me, So I Left Chapter 05
I heard my mom laugh.
Not a real laugh. A cold, nasty sneer.
“Elara. Getting brave now? You think that’s a threat?”
My dad and sister both frowned, the same look of disgust on their faces.
My mom was about to say something else when Aria screamed, “Oh no—Pixie feels warm!”
My parents rushed over. “Let’s take her back to the hospital!”
The door slammed shut in my face.
Not one of them looked at me again.
I stood there for two seconds. Then I went upstairs and packed my bag.
It was below freezing outside. Wind cut right through my jacket. I pulled my collar up and dragged my beat-up suitcase down the street. I didn’t look back.
…
I moved back into the dorm.
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. For the first time in twenty years, I heard silence.
Strangely, I didn’t feel lonely. Life got easier.
No more cleaning up after everyone. No more fetching packages. No more trying to fit into a world that was never mine.
Fifteen days passed.
My brother called.
I heard his keyboard clacking in the background. “Go walk Max,” he said.
I said, “I’m not home.”
He paused. “Weren’t you just in your room?”
“I moved out. Walk your own dog.” I hung up.
He didn’t call back.
A while later—exactly thirty days after I left—my sister called.
Not to ask how I was. First thing out of her mouth: “Where did you put Pixie’s clothes? I can’t find them.”
I said, “Figure it out yourself. I’m not your maid.”
I hung up.
On day forty-five, my younger brother called.
“I heard you moved out,” he said.
His tone was casual, like he was checking the weather.
I said, “Yeah.”
He paused for one second. “I’m turning your room into a cat room. It’s just empty anyway.”
Not a question. A notification.
“Do whatever you want,” I said.
I felt nothing. Like I was talking to a stranger.
After that, the world went completely silent.
No one called again.
I got a part-time job and started saving money while finishing classes.
I also started a blog. Wrote stuff in my spare time.
No one read it. I didn’t care.
I just wanted one corner of the world that was mine. That was enough.
Six months later, I graduated.
Almost all my local classmates went home. I didn’t.
I walked around the city for days before I found a single room in an old neighborhood—junk everywhere, falling apart, but cheap. Five hundred a month.
The landlady was an old woman who lived alone in the same courtyard.
When I tried to haggle, she looked me up and down for a long time. Finally, with a face like it hurt her, she knocked off fifty bucks.
Condition: I clean the whole courtyard.
I gritted my teeth and said yes. I was broke. I didn’t have a choice.
Move-in day was my birthday.
I filled up buckets of water and scrubbed that little room inside and out.
Then I bought myself a small cake and stuck a candle in it.
My phone buzzed on the table. News alerts popped up—all about my dad.
He’d just taken another company public. The photo showed the whole family next to him at the bell ringing. Everyone dressed up, eyes sparkling.
I didn’t click it.
I turned my phone face down, struck a match, and lit the lonely little candle.
The door pushed open.
The landlady stood there holding a bowl of soup. Steam rose off it. A piece of crusty bread sat on the side.
Her face was still cold. “Wash the bowl when you’re done and bring it back.”
Then she turned and walked away, her worn-out flats scuffing on the courtyard stones.
I looked at that bowl of soup. I took a spoonful.
It was so hot it made my eyes water.
That was the first time in my whole life someone had made me birthday soup.
