I shrugged.
“Avery.”
“Pretty bad.”
She stared at me for another second, then lowered her voice. “Are you pregnant?”
I laughed so hard it turned into a cough. “Definitely not.”
“Ulcer?”
“Maybe.”
“Have you gone to a doctor?”
“Urgent care twice.”
“And?”
“Stress, acid reflux, maybe gastritis. They gave me meds.”
Jess made a face. “Are they helping?”
“No.”
She reached for my wrist. “You’re shaky.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are literally the least convincing liar I know.”
I wanted to tell her everything. That sometimes the sight of the dinner table made my chest tighten. That Marianne watched me eat with a focus that felt too intense for concern. That my father had started rolling his eyes whenever I got up from meals. That I had begun keeping crackers in my backpack because I trusted gas station food more than my own kitchen.
But saying it out loud would have forced me to hear how insane it sounded.
So I smiled and said, “I just need winter break.”
Jess didn’t look convinced, but the rush started and the conversation got swallowed by latte orders and pastry warmers.
Three days before Christmas, I vomited blood for the first time.
Not a lot. Not some dramatic movie-scene flood. Just enough bright red streaked through the sink to turn my legs numb. I had made it halfway through Marianne’s baked salmon before that familiar twisting started. I barely reached the downstairs bathroom.
I stared at the sink for a full minute, my ears ringing.
Then I opened the door and called for Dad.
He was in the den watching a bowl game with the volume too high. Marianne was in the kitchen rinsing dishes.
“Dad,” I said. “I threw up blood.”
He muted the TV but didn’t get up. “How much?”
“I don’t know. Enough.”
Marianne appeared in the hallway, hands still wet from the sink. “Blood?”
I nodded.
She went very still for half a second. So still I almost missed it.
Dad rubbed his forehead. “You probably tore something throwing up.”
“I think I need to go to the hospital.”
He looked irritated, not scared. Irritated, like I had interrupted something important. “At nine-thirty at night? For some streaks in the sink?”
“There was blood.”
Marianne moved before he did. She grabbed paper towels, disappeared into the bathroom, and called out, “It’s not that much, Glenn.”
I stared at her.
How did she know without seeing it first?
Dad stood, walked past me into the bathroom, then came back out already shaking his head. “It’s just irritation. You’ve been puking so much you probably broke a little blood vessel.”
“I haven’t been puking because I want to.”
“For God’s sake, Avery, nobody said that.”
“I’m scared.”
“You’re making this bigger than it is.”
Then came the sentence I still hear in my sleep sometimes.
“Stop being dramatic.”
There are words that end relationships even if nobody leaves the room. That was one of them.
I went upstairs and cried in the shower with the water running so nobody would hear.
Christmas morning, Marianne gave me a cashmere scarf and a bottle of vitamins “for energy.” Dad gave me a gas card and told me to “get your act together before spring semester.” We ate cinnamon rolls. I took two bites and spent the next hour dry heaving.
By New Year’s, I had nosebleeds twice a week and bruises blooming dark across my skin like fingerprints from some invisible hand. I was exhausted all the time. My gums bled when I brushed my teeth. I started getting short of breath walking up the stairs.
