My brother called me the family’s most boring person—because I always cried at his pranks. When he mashed gum into my hair, I cried. When he yanked my chair, fracturing my tailbone, I cried for two months flat on my stomach. Mom and Dad brushed it off. “Boys will be boys,” they said. “Learn to take a joke. You’re cold and unloving as an older sister.” So I stopped crying. Even when he piled food onto my plate at dinner, I forced a grateful smile. But he’d mixed in a heavy spoonful of peanut butter. The second I shut my bedroom door, invisible hands crushed my throat. I couldn’t breathe. Angry red hives erupted, burning like fire. I collapsed onto my bed, phone glowing in the dark. My Safari history showed one desperate search: “Can a peanut allergy kill you?” Consciousness faded. Through the wall, my brother laughed at his video game. In the living room, Mom and Dad watched a sitcom. No one cared what I did behind my closed door. No one knew their daughter was dying. In my next life, I don’t want to be a cruel joke’s punchline. I want to be treated like a human being. Even once. 1 “Ivy, come out and eat right now!” My mother’s voice pierced through the wooden door, dripping with irritation. I did not move. It was not because I was giving her the silent treatment. I physically could not move. My body felt like it was filled with wet cement. Every single muscle burned with a terrifying heat. I could feel the skin on my face stretching. My eyes were swollen shut into tiny, useless slits. My lips were completely engorged, so thick I could neither open nor close my mouth. My throat felt like someone had shoved burning coals down it. Every attempt to pull in oxygen felt like swallowing razor blades. “Ivy, are you deaf? I said dinner is ready!” She yelled again. Louder this time. I could hear the sharp edge of anger in her tone. Her patience was already gone. “Mom, she is just throwing a fit again.” My brother Cole’s voice drifted over from the dining table. He sounded entirely relaxed, like he was talking about the weather. “I just mixed a little peanut butter into her food. I just wanted to play a prank on her.” A prank. He said it so casually. As if sneaking peanut butter into the meal of someone with a deadly allergy was exactly the same as putting salt in a sugar bowl. Just a fun little science experiment. “Cole, you know your sister is allergic. Why would you do that?” My mother’s voice carried zero actual blame. It was just a mild, helpless complaint. “I just wanted to see what happened.” Cole sounded completely justified. “The books make it sound so scary. I bet they were just exaggerating.” “Alright, enough.” My mother cut him off. “Ivy, come out and eat your dinner. Stop being so petty with your brother.” I gave no response. I was not being stubborn. My tongue had swollen to twice its size. The entire inside of my mouth was inflamed. I tried to force my jaw open, but all that came out was a pathetic, muffled whimper. Like a stray cat that had just been hit by a car. “Ivy, I am warning you. Do not test my temper today.” My mother’s voice turned harsh. “If you refuse to eat, you are going to starve. Do not expect us to bring you a plate.” Her footsteps retreated from my door. The clinking of silverware against porcelain echoed from the living room. They had started eating. The perfect family of three. Without me. I lay paralyzed on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. There was a faint water stain right above me, shaped vaguely like a butterfly. I had stared at that stain countless times growing up. Whenever I felt overwhelmed, I would look at it until the tears stopped. But this time, the tears leaked out of my swollen eyes and rolled down my burning cheeks. Breathing was becoming impossible. I could hear the frantic pounding of my own heart. Thump. Thump. Thump. Like someone desperately banging on a door that would never open. My phone slipped from my numb fingers and hit the carpet. I let my eyes fall shut. Whatever. Let it end. Nobody cared anyway. When my soul finally drifted out of my body, my very first thought was strangely calm. So this is what dying feels like. 2 Every ounce of pain and suffocation vanished in a split second. I floated up near the ceiling, looking down at my own body on the bed. The girl lying there had her head twisted at an unnatural angle. Her face was swollen beyond recognition. Her lips had turned a sickening shade of dark purple. Her arms were covered in a horrific rash. The phone lay discarded on the floor, the screen still brightly lit. The search engine was stuck on the very last thing I tried to read before I died. “Emergency first aid for anaphylactic shock.” I floated right through my bedroom door. I drifted through the solid wood that nobody had bothered to knock on. In the living room, my mother was sitting on the sofa, scrolling through her phone. The coffee table was covered in half eaten dishes. Roast chicken, a green bean casserole, and a bowl of mashed potatoes. There was a full plate sitting at my usual spot. My mother had not cleared it away. A fork was still resting on the edge of the plate. She had no idea I would never take another bite of food in my life. My father, David, sat beside her watching the evening news. The meteorologist on the screen was predicting heavy rain for tomorrow. “Ivy is still not coming out?” He asked casually, not even taking his eyes off the television. “Ignore her. You spoil her too much.” My mother kept her eyes glued to her screen, her thumb swiping mindlessly. “Cole just played a harmless joke on her. Is she really going to drag this out?” “Whether she is dragging it out or not, the kid is allergic. You know that.” My father’s tone was completely flat. No panic. No concern. He might as well have been saying the milk was expired. “How bad could an allergy really be? It is not like she drank rat poison.” My mother frowned in annoyance. “She is just dramatic. She has been like this since she was little. The second she does not get her way, she locks herself in her room.” “Look at Cole. He is such a bright, happy kid. But having her around forces him to walk on eggshells.” Floating nearby, I actually wanted to laugh. Cole walked on eggshells? He certainly did not look nervous when he used my toothbrush to scrub the toilet bowl. He laughed louder than anyone when he snuck to the breaker box and cut the hot water while I was showering in the dead of winter. I was the one living in that house like I was navigating a minefield. He lived like a king who could do whatever he pleased. The only difference was who our parents chose to believe. “Fine, I will go check on her.” My mother finally put her phone down and stood up from the couch. I drifted behind her as she walked to my bedroom door. She pushed it open just a crack. The room was pitch black. The curtains were drawn tight. She could barely make out a curled up silhouette on the mattress. “Ivy, are you coming out to eat or not?” I did not move. I was already dead. “Alright, stop faking it.” Her voice grew even more exasperated. “If you are not eating, I am throwing it away. Do not come crying to me that you are hungry at midnight.” She waited for three seconds. The figure on the bed gave no response. “You are absolutely infuriating.” She slammed the door shut. Her footsteps marched back down the hall. She left. She did not take two steps inside. She did not flip the light switch to look at my face. If she had, she would have seen my deep purple lips. She would have touched my hand and realized it was already turning cold. But she just stood at the threshold. Ten feet away. Tossed out a few annoyed words. And walked away. I hovered in the hallway, staring at the closed door. “Mom, is she still not coming out?” Cole chewed on a chicken wing, his mouth shining with grease. He glanced down the hall toward my room. “Who knows with her. She is just throwing a pity party.” My mother started clearing the table. She scraped the leftover chicken into the trash. She picked up my untouched plate, stared at it for a second. She hesitated briefly. Then scraped it right into the garbage too. “Is she seriously mad?” Cole’s voice held a tiny fraction of guilt. But it vanished instantly. “I literally just put a drop of peanut butter in her food. Is she really going to overreact this much?” “Overreact or not, you know she has that allergy.” My mother stacked the dirty plates and carried them to the sink. “Just do not do stuff like that again.” That was it. No punishment. No lecture. No screaming that he could have killed his sister. Just a casual “do not do that again”. Spoken with the exact same weight as telling him not to leave his dirty socks on the floor. I watched the whole exchange. My chest felt strange. A deep, hollow ache. I was already dead. I had no heartbeat. So why did it still hurt? 3 “Mom, do you think she is actually sick or something?” Cole’s voice dropped lower. “What could possibly be wrong with her?” My mother turned on the faucet. The loud rush of water drowned out her words. “Your sister has done this her whole life. The slightest inconvenience and she plays dead.” She paused to scrub a plate. “Remember when you pulled her chair out? She laid in bed for two months claiming she was hurt. And she was perfectly fine in the end, was she not?” My soul drifted into Cole’s bedroom. His dual monitors were glowing brightly. A multiplayer shooter game was paused on the screen. He was leaning back in his expensive gaming chair, a lollipop in his mouth. His phone buzzed. A text from his friend. “Yo, how is your sister?” Cole typed back quickly. “She is fine. Just playing dead for attention like always.” “Your mom didn’t chew you out?” “Nah, my mom knows she is just a drama queen.” “Nice. We will have to think of a better prank next time. Lol.” “Yeah, next time I am going to steal her final project so she fails her class.” “Lmaooo you are a menace.” I stared at the glowing chat bubbles. Something shattered deep inside my chest. It was not anger. It was something much colder than anger. It was absolute, suffocating despair. The realization that in their eyes, I was not even a human being. I was just a toy. A prop for their amusement. Something they could break without ever worrying about the consequences. Because my parents would never punish him. They would always, always take his side. I turned around and floated out of his room. I did not want to hear his laughter anymore. I did not want to know how else they planned to humiliate me. I was dead. None of this should matter to me anymore. But why did it still sting? Later that night, my mother came back to my door. This time, she knocked. “Ivy, come out and take your shower.” No response. “If you do not answer me, I am coming in.” Still no response. She pushed the door open. The room was pitch black. She reached her hand in and flicked the light switch. The bright overhead bulb flooded the room. My corpse was still lying exactly where I collapsed. My posture had not shifted an inch since the afternoon. My face was even more grotesquely swollen now. My lips were a horrifying, bruised plum color. My fingers were curled inward, stiff and rigid like claws. My mother stood in the doorway. She took one look at me and frowned deeply. “Are you seriously still putting on this act?” She did not step closer. She stood at the doorway, her arms crossed defensively over her chest. Less than ten feet away. Ten feet. Her daughter was dead. Her dead child was lying ten feet away from her. She stared at me for three agonizing seconds. Then she turned around and walked away. “Ivy, I am telling you right now, if you do not get up, I am taking your phone tomorrow.” Her voice echoed down the hall. She never looked back. She never hesitated. She just walked away. I hovered right above my own bed. Looking down at my ruined body. I looked so disfigured I barely recognized myself. Mom. You did not recognize me either. But that is because you never really looked at me to begin with. Whenever you looked at me, your eyes were always filled with impatience. You always thought I was complaining, whining, faking it. You never once considered the possibility. That one day, I might actually die. Even when I was lying dead right in front of you, you refused to believe it. By ten o’clock, my father went to take his shower. My mother was back on the couch, watching a reality TV show. The television blared with canned laugh tracks. Hahaha. Hahaha. It echoed loudly through the house. Cole was back in his room, violently mashing his keyboard. He was in a voice call with his buddies. “Dude, that sniper is camping in the back!” “Revive me, revive me, I am down!” “Hahaha, we destroyed him.” Their laughter seeped through the walls. I floated in the empty hallway. Listening to the noise. It felt incredibly ironic. In this house. Every single person was smiling. And not a single one of them knew. That this family was missing a person. Forever. At eleven o’clock, my mother turned off the TV. She went to brush her teeth. As she walked past my bedroom, she paused. “Ivy, are you really…” She pushed the door open slightly. The lights were still glaringly bright. I was still lying there, frozen in the exact same position. She stood at the threshold and let out a heavy sigh. “You are impossible.” She reached out and flicked the light off. Click. The room plunged back into total darkness. My soul stood in the black void. Looking down at my own corpse. I suddenly remembered a true crime article I had read on Reddit a few weeks ago. It discussed how long it took for someone to be discovered if they died alone in their house. 4 Some people in the comments said three days. Some said a week. Some said it depended entirely on when the neighbors complained about the smell. I remembered reading that and thinking to myself. That would never happen to me. I lived with my parents and my brother. No matter how bad things got, they would definitely notice if I died, right? Now I knew the truth. They would not. They would just assume I was throwing a tantrum. Sulking, whining, acting out. Faking it. Even if I was dead. They still would not believe it. The next morning, my mother woke up to make breakfast. The sound of sizzling bacon drifted from the kitchen. The smell of food floated down the hall. It used to be my favorite smell in the world. “Ivy, get up, you are going to be late for school.” My mother yelled from the stove. No response. “Ivy!” Still nothing. “Unbelievable. Every single day it is a battle with her.” She walked out holding a plate of bacon. She glanced down the hallway. She did not walk toward my room. “Cole, go wake your sister up.” Cole walked out of his room, stretching casually. “Why should I? She will get up when she wants to.” “Just go knock on her door.” “No way.” He did not even spare a glance in my direction. My mother stood by the dining table. She looked at my empty seat. She pulled out her phone and sent me a furious text message. “Are you getting up or not? If you miss the bus, I am not driving you.” The message delivered. Silence. She sent another one. “Ivy, do not push me today.” Still silence. She slammed her phone down onto the table. “She is trying to give me a heart attack.” She grabbed her purse and her keys. And she left for work. The house fell completely, suffocatingly quiet. Leaving just me. Lying in the dark bedroom. My phone was still on the floor. The corner of the screen was cracked. Notifications began to pile up on the lock screen. Texts from my mother. A missed call from my homeroom teacher. Messages from classmates asking for homework answers. Nobody realized. That the owner of this phone. Would never reply to another message again. At ten o’clock in the morning, my homeroom teacher finally called my mother. My mother picked up. “Mrs. Astor, Ivy did not show up to homeroom today. Is everything alright?” “What? She is not at school?” “No, she never arrived.” “That stubborn girl…” My mother’s voice was laced with pure fury. “She was throwing a tantrum last night and locked herself in her room. I assumed she just walked to the bus stop on her own this morning.” “You should really go home and check on her, Mrs. Astor.” “Fine. I will handle it.” She hung up the phone. She did not rush home immediately. She told her boss she had a family issue, finished writing her morning report, and packed up slowly. It was noon by the time she finally drove home. As she unlocked the front door, she was already yelling. “Ivy, get out here right now. You have crossed the line today.” She stomped down the hallway to my door. She pushed it open. The lights were off. The curtains were still drawn tightly shut. The room was pitch black. She reached for the switch and flipped it. The lights hummed to life. I was still on the bed. Frozen in the exact same position I had been in since yesterday. Still wearing my clothes from yesterday. The swelling in my face had gone down slightly. But my lips were significantly darker now. A deep, horrifying blackish purple. “Ivy?” My mother’s voice faltered. She finally sensed something was horribly wrong. I had never skipped school to prove a point. No matter how angry I was, I never skipped class. Because I knew the punishment for skipping school would be ten times worse than whatever I was currently enduring. So I always woke up on time. I always caught the bus. No matter how sick or miserable I felt. But today, I did not get up. My mother finally stepped into the room. She walked slowly to the edge of the bed. She reached out and shoved my shoulder. “Ivy? Stop trying to scare me…” My body shifted slightly under her weight. It was stiff. Freezing cold. Like pushing a heavy boulder. My mother’s hand snatched back like she had been burned. She stared down at my face. She stared at my distorted, disfigured features. The blackened lips. The rigid, clawed fingers. Her pupils dilated violently, consuming her entire iris in sheer terror. “Ivy!!”
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