CHAPTER ONE: You’re A Winner!
Triggers. That’s what Dr. Higgman calls them, those deadly details scattered about Kendry’s world. When Kendry stumbles upon one of her triggers, they don’t explode. They skid across the floor, beep their countdown, and then hiss out clouds of rage.
Sunday’s trigger was Doris and the television remote: the way Doris tapped it against her knee; the way she held it to her chin; the way she flicked through the channels with her nubby thumb.
Yesterday’s trigger was Doris at the dinner table: the way she chewed her sleeve; the way she gnawed at her nails; the way she sat across from Kendry, groveling and hollow-cheeked, un-eating as always.
Trip. Skid. Hiss.
Sunday. The remote control yanked from Doris’s hand and chucked out of the second-floor window. Wires and plastic splayed on the sidewalk like suicide.
Monday. The plates snatched from the kitchen table and flung across the room. Noodles oozing down the wall like magma.
Today’s trigger? The calendar.
Kendry spies it, newly hung over the mantle. The calendar is Doris’s attempt at sprucing up, at hiding the fact of the recently-pawned clock and television. The calendar, a freebee from Doris’s former job, hangs from a yellow pushpin. A stallion gallops across the top half of the calendar. Below the stallion, a caption written in frilly script reads You’re a Winner!
The calendar reminds Kendry that today is Tuesday.
Kendry hates Tuesdays. She hates doing what she has to do.
And here comes Doris, on top of it all, wobbling in high heels, her shoes clicking like gunfire on the stone floors. Doris dusts dustless tables and folds folded towels. Through all of her flustering and blustering, Doris straightens her wrinkled pants suite, smoothes her raging hair, and smiles her cashier-at-gunpoint smile.
Kendry sits in the living room with her thumbs stuck in her ears. She shakes her legs (Click. Clack. Click. Clack.) She bites her bottom lip. (You’re a winner!) She grinds her teeth and gathers explosive strength.
Doris clacks across the room and sits next to Kendry.
“What?” Kendry bites off the t in what, makes it scissor sharp.
“Kendry?” Doris reaches to stroke Kendry’s hair. “Kendry? Baby?”
“Doris, stop.” Kendry swats Doris’s hand away. “And don’t even attempt to apologize. I’m sick to death of it.”
“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t call me that?”
“It’s your name, isn’t it?” Kendry says. She throws her book bag over her shoulder and marches to the door. The tartan skirt of her school uniform gathers under her bag and rides up on her thighs.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Kendry says.
Doris stays seated.
“Mother,” Kendry’s eyes blaze. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I have a meeting.” Doris sucks air through her teeth and scrunches her face as if bracing against a douse of water. “You’ll have to–”
“Take the train again,” Kendry says, “like I’m some plebian? Whatever Doris. Whatever.”
END OF PREVIEW