Chapter 1
One Year Earlier
I was sitting on the couch watching a stupid sitcom when she came out of her bedroom. There were times I could tell Mom was on edge, ready to pick a fight, and that was one. “You didn’t clean my bathroom,” she said. I ignored her the first time. Don’t know why I did it; it’s not like ignoring her had ever stopped her before.
She walked across the living room. The darkness from all the windows being covered was kept at bay by the lamps I had on. The dull flicker of our TV (an old, square boxy one, not the new, flat HD kind) cast shadows that jumped as it switched between scenes, casting the room in a brighter shade of bluish light. Our brown suede couch was pressed against my cheek, the smoothness of the material felt oddly warm, heating up the side of my face that lay against it. I was stretched out, the hot dogs I had eaten for dinner making me sluggish and sleepy, the smell still hanging in the air from an hour ago when I had microwaved them.
Our house was small, and the main living area was over half of the first floor. Mom didn’t even have to shout to be heard over the television, standing only ten feet away from me, at the entrance to the hallway that led to the bedrooms. “Sienna. You didn’t clean…” she said, forcing my eyes to come to her for a moment before they went back to the TV, “…my bathroom.”
“I’ll get it once my show is over,” I said, uncaring. On the screen, Neil Patrick Harris was propositioning a woman, and I wanted to see if she’d fall for his line of bull or not. I suspected she would; fictional women were prone to being blindsided by jerks who just wanted to get in their pants. I knew this because I watched an hour of TV a day and read copious amounts of books, and there was a distinct common theme when it came to most of the women I saw – get used, abused, and discarded. Bleh.
She took another step, blocking the TV, casting her shadow over me, her silhouette outlined by the light from the screen. “You’ll do it now.”
“Hey!” I sat up, all thoughts of laziness and lying on the couch evaporated, the heat already in my face from irritation.
“Your chores aren’t done,” she said, a smug, self-satisfied look on her face. “Clean the bathroom and you can finish watching it.”
I glanced at the clock. “It’ll be over by the time I get done cleaning,” I said, and pointed at the digital clock on the microwave. We didn’t own a DVR, those magical things I’d heard others talking about – on TV, only. I hadn’t left my house for as long as I could remember.
“Then I bet next time you want to watch a show you’ll make sure your chores are done before I get home,” she said, and her smile was overly sweet, patronizing.
“Really?” I asked, my studied disbelief allowing me to keep a calm I didn’t feel inside. “You’re that bent out of shape about me failing to do one little chore that you want me to shut off the TV ten minutes before the end of my show?
“No,” she said, and there was an undercurrent in the way she said it that caused my muscles to tense involuntarily. “I don’t want you to shut off the TV.” She reached down and pushed the power button on the front of the unit, and it flipped off in a flash that seemed almost in slow motion as it disappeared into a pinprick of light at the center of the screen. “I’ll take care of it for you.”
“What the—” I was on my feet in a quarter second. “I was watching that!” I knew my voice was raised; dangerous ground. I didn’t care.
“Now you’re not,” she said. “If you want to be watching it again, go clean the bathroom.”
“It’s not my fault you shed hair like a cat,” I said, not bothering to keep my voice down. “I shouldn’t have to clean up your mess!”
Her eyebrows tilted down, and I knew I was edging onto her nerves. Good. “Cleaning my bathroom, as well as yours, is something you clearly know to be part of your weekly responsibilities. This is not new. It has occurred every week for years, and is not something you simply forget and do later – it is something that you pretend to forget every so often, because you find it unpleasant. That’s a shame,” she said without any remorse. “But as an adult I find all sorts of things I do unpleasant, such as working to pay for your housing, your clothes, the food you eat, the television you enjoy—”
“When I abide by your tyrannical commands.”
“When you follow the rules,” she said, slow, steady, the cadence of the words drumming into my head. “When you do as I say. You need to learn responsibility to accompany your self-discipline, and it’s as important as any martial art I could teach you.”