I pretend to be asleep when Mom pushes open my door a crack and whispers my name. She waits a beat and I focus my breathing to seem natural—long and slow breaths. REM sleep and all that. Mom is smart enough to know if I’m faking.

Finally, she whispers, “Goodbye, honey. I love you.”

My door softly clicks closed. I hear her walk down to Cece’s room where she probably whispers the same thing before padding back up the hallway and into the living room.

I exhale and open my eyes, staring at the glow-in-the-dark star stickers on my ceiling. They are a decade old and still glow like crazy every time I turn off the lights. In Cece’s old house, she has the same set of stickers, but hers are all over her walls, not the ceiling. Grandma gave them to us for Christmas one year and we put them up in each other’s rooms together. Back then, when her parents were alive and she was just my chubby cousin with no problems, we got along better. But there’s a big difference between seven-year-olds and teenagers. Now she’s a stranger to me. I see her every day, but I don’t get her at all.

I take a deep breath and roll over to my side, anxious to fall back asleep. It’s four in the morning on the first full day of summer break and I get to sleep as late as I want. For once in my life there will be no parentals banging on my door telling me to get up and find something productive to do with my day.

Only now I’m feeling like shit for ignoring my mom. I know it’s a crap thing to do because I should get up and hug my parents goodbye and tell them to have a safe trip. But I pretended to sleep to avoid having a laundry list of rules and expectations dished out so early in the morning. I already know them all by heart, but it doesn’t stop Mom from reciting them every time she leaves as if I’m some bad kid. As if I’ve ever broken any of her rules.

But I should have sucked it up, sat up in bed and told her I loved her too.

Five years ago, Cece’s parents went out for a date night and died a few minutes later, before they’d even arrived at the restaurant. Eighteen wheeler with a drunk driver at the helm. In their little smart car, they had no chance.

I bolt out of bed and run to my window. “Mom!”

The taillights of Dad’s truck cast a red shadow over the bushes near our mailbox. I watch them for a few seconds but then they’re gone. Guilt nags at me, and I go back to my bed and grab my phone and text my parents that I love them and I’m sorry I missed them.

Mom texts back right away. Love you too, sweetheart. Remember to follow the meal chart and don’t leave the house if you don’t have to! 9pm curfew! xoxo

I roll my eyes and drop back into bed. I’m not a scientist or anything, but it might be physically impossible for my mother to say something nice without adding a reminder to it. Rules and order, that is my life.

I really think she’s freaking out for nothing. Cece and I are almost legal adults. According to the state of Texas, we’re old enough to commit a crime and be tried as adults. Yet we can’t leave the house without texting my mother before and after an excursion? Cece hasn’t had a bad episode in months. It seems like the doctors finally got her under a cocktail of prescription drugs that do the trick. For a while there, she and I were bickering and arguing constantly. But now she just keeps to herself, so I do the same.

My cousin and I aren’t the little kids we used to be. We’re not friends anymore. I’m not sure what we are, not since she started having episodes and I had to step up and fill the shoes of caretaker when my mom isn’t around. I think she maybe resents me for it, but I resent her, too.

There was a time where Mom wasn’t obsessively controlling with every little thing in my life. Cece is the reason my mom is so dutifully mechanical about rules and structure. She’s the reason my life is one planned week after another, filled with constant text message check ins. Graduation is only a year away, and then I will be free, living alone at a college as far away as I can get.

I close my eyes and start to drift off again, only to be startled awake by a swift knock at my door. Cece is a professional knocker. She knocks with force and precision like I’m a lowly factory worker and she’s my boss. I nearly jump out of my skin when the sound bangs through my room and then I pull the pillow over my head and yell, “What?”

“Can I come in?”

“If it makes you stop knocking.”

I don’t take the pillow off my face until I feel her weight sink down at the foot of my bed. Cece’s hair is still in that long side braid, although now it’s messy from sleeping on it. She wears a set of matching thermal Christmas pajamas. Right in the middle of June. I know they’re just pajamas, but my holiday themed clothing items stay tucked away until it’s the appropriate holiday. I can already hear Mom’s voice in my head now. “Cece, dear, why would you wear something that’s so out of season?”

Mom always asks questions like that, an insult in the form of a genuinely concerned question.

I rub my forehead with my thumb and forefinger. “What’s going on?”

Her eyes are bright even in the dim light of my bedroom. Her round cheeks widen as she grins at me. “Aunt Carol and Uncle Kenneth are gone.”

“I heard.”

She scoots back a few inches on my bed, making the mattress wobble under her weight. “We should go to my house today.”

I yawn. “What?”

“My old house.”

I sit up on my elbows, blinking away the last bits of sleep from my subconscious. Cece’s brows crinkle as she watches me, doing that weird thing where I guess she’s trying to figure out what I’ll say before I say it. I roll my eyes. “Mom said we’ll start cleaning out your old house when they get back.”

“I don’t want to clean it out today. I just want to go visit.”

“Why?”

We haven’t been there in years. I remember my dad making two trips with a rented box van to pick up Cece and Thomas’ things from their bedrooms when they moved in with us. Cece shared my room and Thomas got the guest bedroom. A few weeks after Thomas was pronounced dead, Cece took over all of his things, making them her own. Mom once told me when we were alone that the therapist didn’t think it would be healthy to let Cece go back to the home that holds so many painful memories for her. Mom’s already freaked out about the four of us going to clean it out and have a garage sale. I know for a fact she wouldn’t want us to go alone.

I meet her gaze, and something guilty swells up in my gut. Maybe it’s from letting her ride the school bus yesterday instead of calling her over. “I don’t think that’s—”

“—A good idea,” Cece says, finishing my sentence. She heaves a sigh. “You always say that, Lilah. But what you don’t get is that I came in here and I sat down and I said ‘I want to go to my old house’. I did not say, ‘Do you think it’s a good idea?’” She holds her hands up, fingers splayed, and shakes them in frustration. “You’re always doing that to me.”

I start to say something, but I’ve got nothing. She’s right. But it’s my job to keep her calm and keep her at home. Deflect all of her terrible ideas the second she gets them. “How about we head to the donut place at the end of the road?” I say. Deflect. “They have the best coffee and it’s only like a mile of driving so Mom can’t bitch about us taking the car.”

Cece flattens her lips. They’re pale pink and always look like she’s wearing lip gloss, even though she rarely does. “I just want to see my house by myself. Before Aunt Carol comes with me and ruins the whole experience with her stupid psycho-babble.”

I can’t help but smile. “Let’s hold hands and talk about our feelings,” I say in my mom’s pretend soothing voice.

“Cece, what is something positive you can gain from this painful experience?” she says, also mocking Mom’s voice.

She grins and I start laughing.

“I love Aunt Carol, but damn,” Cece says, shaking her head. “Sometimes I think she’s more screwed in the head than I am.”

My smile softens and I look down at my comforter, purple and teal and in the pattern Cece helped me pick out years ago on one of her good days. I know where she’s coming from, and I know how frustrating it can be to be around my mother. I don’t even have to deal with a mental illness like Cece does so all my experiences are easier than hers.

“Fine,” I say, gazing across the room. In all my years on this planet, this one will be marked forever as the first time I went against my mother’s strict rules. “We’ll go.”

Cece squeals and clasps her hands together in front of her chest. I notice every one of her fingernails is pained a different color. “Thank you,” she says, biting on her lower lip. “I won’t—you won’t regret this.”

“It’s fine,” I say as a nervous twinge pierces my heart. This is so not a good idea. “But we’re waiting until the sun comes up.”