Free As Night Falls by Jenny Milchman

beside her. Nicholas was fast asleep already, his small body slumped over on the seat like a dead thing.
    On the way home, Barbara stopped by Dr. Benedict’s office, grateful when she entered the cool chambers. She’d left Nicholas in the car, rolling down a window to make sure the little boy would have enough air. Last time Nicholas had been here, the nasty nurse kept trying to get him to stop touching things, which had been a burden on the little boy’s creative, curious spirit.
    The nurse led Barbara back to an examining room.
    “You seem a little calmer today, Mrs. Burgess,” the nurse said as they walked. “No child with you?”
    “No,” Barbara replied.
See what all your bossing did,
she added in her head.
Now you don’t get to see Nicholas.
“No child.”
    Barbara got up on the table, paper sheet crinkling beneath her.
    “Well,” the nurse said, smiling as she readied the things for the test. “I suppose we’re going to see about that.”
    The double meaning hit Barbara, and the nurse recoiled a bit when Barbara lifted her gaze and met hers. The needle snagged before plunging deeply into Barbara’s arm, but Barbara refused to give the nurse the satisfaction of wincing.
    She tried to read the result in the inscrutable stream of blood that rose inside the syringe.

CHAPTER FOUR
    I vy lay on her bed in her darkening room, scrolling through updates on Facebook, and madly posting comments in the hopes that someone would respond. She wanted to talk and the sad truth was that she had a better chance of doing so with somebody ten or twenty or forty miles away than with her mom or dad, who were in the same house.
    She had gotten one text from Melissa— at dereks game cant talk u kno the rule —which was true, Ivy did know, though she’d forgotten that Melissa’s brother had a game tonight. After that she texted a few other people—friends who didn’t quite click or get her the way Melissa did—but two of them didn’t even reply. Which was part of what Ivy was talking about.
    Darcy did text back, but when Ivy suggested she come over to work on their world history study guide, due tomorrow, or their algebra two problem set, also due, Darcy wrote: cant get the car my parents say weathers coming in
    bummer Ivy typed, then dropped her phone onto the bed.
    On the floor below, Mackie let out a snuffle.
    Ivy extended her hand. Mac didn’t jump onto the bed—he hadn’t done that in almost a year; Ivy could remember the exact last time—but tonight he also failed to give her fingers a lick. Ivy felt a clamp in her chest that was familiar. The clamp took hold whenever she saw Mackie these days, or even thought about him. Her dog that she kind of sort of named and couldn’t remember a day of her life without. McLean was his whole name, which they’d had to keep because after they brought him home from the shelter, only hearing his name yelled really loud would make him come. But after a long, long, long time, Ivy had started to say Mac, then Mackie, until those started to work, too.
    Mac thumped his tail in slumber. It didn’t have the heft it once had, when Mackie could make her floorboards shake with doggie enthusiasm.
    He wasn’t the dog he used to be.
    Ivy knew it, even if her mother would never admit it in a million years. Which, as with everything else bad in her life, meant that Ivy was alone.
    Her mom didn’t do too well with
bad
.
    She had called her mom a liar, but even as she said the word, Ivy knew she’d never be able to explain it. Even if her mother asked, which of course she wouldn’t. Ivy was starting to understand something about her mom, and it put so much space between them that she wondered how she would ever feel close to her again.
    Ivy kicked her legs with all the vigor Mackie lacked, scattering papers at the bottom of her bed. She had been planning to do her study guide, and the problem set, too. She didn’t know why she’d said different during the fight. The non-fight. Like