Leaning against the doorframe, suffocating in the oppressive July heat, was me. Maya.
While Chloe wore a silk robe that slipped easily off her unblemished shoulders, I was entombed in a heavy, oversized gray fleece hoodie and thick, dark sweatpants. It was nearly a hundred degrees outside, the California summer baking the pavement into a shimmering mirage, yet I stood there dressed for a blizzard. I was sweating, a slow, agonizing prickle that stung against the hyper-sensitive, damaged nerve endings covering ninety percent of my torso, but I didn’t dare roll up my sleeves.
“It’s our eighteenth birthday, Maya,” Chloe snapped, turning away from the mirror. She tossed the tiny, neon scrap of spandex directly at my chest. “A milestone. All my friends are coming. The entire senior class. Half the football team. And I am not letting you ruin my aesthetic by sitting in the corner looking like a depressed monk.”
I caught the bikini. The rough synthetic fabric felt like sandpaper against my trembling palms. I looked down at it, my throat tightening with a familiar, suffocating panic.
“Chloe, you know I don’t swim,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper, trying desperately to de-escalate the venom in her eyes. “I’ll just wear a sundress. I’ll stay out of the way, I promise—”
“No!” Chloe interrupted, her voice cracking with a deep, irrational, long-festering hatred. She stepped toward me, her perfectly manicured finger pointing directly at my face. “You always do this! You always act like some fragile, broken little bird so Mom and Dad will coddle you and ignore me! You’ve weaponized this ‘mystery illness’ of yours for our entire lives.”
