Free Breakaway by Kat Spears

vomit.”
    I chuckled at that. “Good night, Lorraine.”
    â€œDrop dead,” she groaned as she turned and let herself into the house.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    When I got home that night, I was hungry and went to see if there was anything worth eating in the fridge. Mom’s attention to domestic duties was erratic at best lately and I didn’t expect to find much in the way of groceries. Sometimes Aunt Gladys would stop by with a casserole or something, which was what I’d hoped to find, but didn’t. As I pulled the milk carton out of the fridge one of Sylvia’s bottles of insulin toppled over and rolled off the shelf and onto the floor. The small vial didn’t break and I picked it up and rolled it between my thumb and forefinger while I studied the label. After a minute I gathered up the vials from the shelf and dumped them all in the trash. I was sick of seeing it. Sick of the daily reminder of Sylvia.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Mom’s voice at the door made me jump.
    She was leaning against the doorjamb as if it were all that was holding her up, her robe tied loosely and her hair matted on one side and sticking out in several places. Every time I saw her, she seemed to look more tired, more disheveled.
    â€œLooking for something to eat,” I said.
    â€œWhat was that you threw away?”
    â€œAll of that leftover insulin.”
    â€œWho told you that you could throw it away?” she asked, her voice high and tight.
    â€œNo one told me,” I said. “I just did it.”
    She pushed me out of the way and snatched up the trash can. I watched her, mildly surprised, as she dug around to find all the bottles I had just tossed.
    She lined them up on the counter and dropped the trash can back at my feet. “In the future don’t throw away things that don’t belong to you,” she said, glowering at me.
    â€œMa, what the hell do we need insulin for? Sylvia’s dead.”
    She slapped me hard across the face, and her body shuddered as her eyes filled with angry tears. “Don’t talk about your sister like that.”
    â€œLike what?” I asked, ignoring the sting of my face. It was the second time in one night I had been slapped on the same cheek, and Raine, completely uninvited, wandered through my mind. “All I said was she’s dead. What’s wrong with that?”
    â€œHow can you be so heartless, Jason? You act as if you don’t even care about Sylvia. About anyone.”
    â€œHow would you know what I care about?” I asked her. “We barely even talk to each other.”
    â€œYou’re just like your father,” she hissed as she pushed her hair back from the wetness of her cheeks.
    She always did that. Threw the fact that I was just like my dad in my face, like it was the worst insult she could lob at me. I knew I looked a lot like him, because people who knew him always said that, said I looked just like him when he was my age. But if my mom really knew me, she would know I spent most of my time trying not to be anything like him.
    I didn’t say it to her, didn’t want to keep the argument going, but when Sylvia died, it was like losing the only family I’d ever had. She wasn’t even my full sister, but she was more family to me than my mom or dad had ever been. Sylvia was the only person who understood Mom’s crazy, the only person I could really talk to about anything like that. But usually I didn’t have to talk, didn’t have to tell her what she already knew.
    I walked out of the kitchen and left Mom to have one of her breakdowns on her own. They were starting to get on my nerves. She wasn’t the only person who’d lost something, but the way she acted it was like she was the only one who had a right to be upset about Sylvia.

CHAPTER TWELVE
    Once a week Arturo made us all hit the weight room in the gym to do strength training. The rest of the week he had us doing