Status: FYI: two chapters posted March 20; COMPLETED

Do Not Resuscitate

Chapter 1

Children should come with a return policy.

We guarantee our products. If an item hasn’t met your expectations, that item must be returned within 18 years for a full refund. We also guarantee the product selection advice offered through our catalog, website, and staff; if an item you’ve purchased based on this advice turns out to be unsuitable, you can return the product within 14 years for full refund.

I figure by fourteen, a parent would have a pretty good idea their child is a fuckup. I mean, by the time I was eleven, it was pretty clear I wasn’t going anywhere in life. I knew it. Mom and Dad refused to acknowledge it, so they shelled out tons of money to make me better, as if money is all it takes. When my grades dropped from A’s to straight C’s, they got me private tutors. When I wasn’t hanging out with friends, they enrolled me in expensive afterschool programs that were more about socializing a bunch of rich kids than teaching us anything about how the real world works. When Dad’s band took off and he had money and he realized I might be old enough to start picking up an instrument or learning to sing—just like him—he threw me into every instrument possible just to see what would stick.

Nothing stuck.

I didn’t have the drive for school. I didn’t have the drive to make friends. I didn’t have the drive to go into music. I didn’t have the drive to do anything. I broke. I don’t know what happened, but my brain just broke.

I tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen. They thought I was being silly, dramatic, an over imaginative eleven-year-old and oh, how great it is to have such a great imagination because you’ll be able to do great things, Dannilynn. They expected something “great” from the love child of a famous musician and a soon-to-be CEO.

Too bad I was shit.

The only thing I could do properly was cry over a massive bag of cookies, shoving handful after handful into my mouth, mixing the salty taste of tears with the sweetness of whatever cookies I was eating. Thousands upon thousands of calories consumed in one sitting in the span of minutes.

Only to be choked up later, into the toilet, forced up by my middle finger.

If my parents had just listened to me, they would have known I wasn’t what they wanted. I could never be what they wanted. Then, they could have gotten rid of me. Broken products aren’t worth keeping.

At least Dad got to start over with a new kid. Brooklyn can be what he wants, the prodigy, musician child who will become a famous performer by the time she’s sixteen. A pop star, most likely. Dad’s rocker influence isn’t going to sway her. A pop star in a rock star’s house is still better than a good-for-nothing teenager.

Mom, she’s stuck with me. Stuck with a failure. No wonder she stays at the office so late. Who wants to come home to the constant reminder of their biggest failure? I don’t even want to be around me.

But I can’t get away from me, not the same way Mom and Dad can.

Lucky them.

I guess that’s what suicide is for. Getting away from yourself. Forever. What an amazing concept.

Too bad I’ll be trapped in my own head constantly until my body finally gives out. I’m forced to stay in bed, staring at my closed curtains, praying for sleep to escape the pain in my stomach and limbs and head, trying to avoid looking at the crack where the curtains barely meet and the bright-ass sun is creeping through, and I can’t do much. Except think. And think and think and think.

Sometimes I cry, too, just to mix things up.

My door opens, quiet aside from the light click of the knob turning. The maids are here early today, the ones Mom hires to tidy daily because a CEO doesn’t have time to clean her house herself. I don’t move to address whichever one is tasked with my room today.

There’s a longsuffering sigh, a very familiar one, not one of the maids. I’ve heard this sigh often. It’s the “how did I raise such a useless child?” sigh.

Mom.

I don’t turn to face her. There’s no point. I keep staring at the closed curtain, at the spot where the sun shines through, blinding myself. Maybe I won’t be able to see the disappointment etched on her face if I stare long enough.

“Dannilynn, what are you doing?”

She sounds frustrated, tired, irritated with the disruption in her day. As per usual. Why is she even here? She should be back at her office, in her cushy chair, barking orders at people who will actually respond to her.

When I don’t say anything, she goes on, “Your principal called my office. You haven’t been in school. Your teachers say you haven’t turned in assignments in the past week. Your thesis topic, Danny, it was due last Thursday. Last. Thursday. And your calculus test, your teacher said you wrote your name on it and didn’t fill in the answers. You couldn’t at least try?” She takes a deep breath, and she’s running her hand through her cropped hair, I can tell. She does that. “They had a whole list of things you didn’t do. French worksheets, an art assignment, discussion questions. I told them they had to be wrong. That wasn’t like you. I demanded they check again because my daughter wouldn’t skip school and forget to turn in her work. Yet here you are.” She’s swinging her arms wide now, in a gesture that encompasses my room.

There’s a heavy silence. I don’t move. I don’t answer. The seconds tick on, and I refuse to say anything. I haven’t said a word to her in weeks. I won’t start now.

Dead girls don’t talk.

She huffs. “Danny, I don’t have time for this.”

So go back to the office. Leave me alone. I’ll be gone soon. She won’t have to worry about me and the work I’m not doing. It’s not like I would pass anyway. I’m too stupid. I’ve accepted it. She should, too.

“Dannilynn,” she snaps.

Yeah, that’s going to work. My organs and heart are going to fail, I’ll be a carcass on my bed, and she’ll snap at me for hours before she realizes there’s a reason I’m not responding.

Muffled heels stride purposefully across my carpet. She doesn’t notice the small spots of dried blood the maids always try to get up when they come to clean. In her defense, their efforts have worked for the most part. The light brown dots look like dirt on the white carpet.

She stops in front of me, eclipsing the strand of sun. Her hands are on her cocked hips. Her posture is stiff. She’s analyzing me, but I keep my eyes focused straight ahead where the sun used to be. She wants something from me. Answers to her questions. But I can’t give her answers. I can’t give her what she wants.

Her posture relaxes, and then she’s kneeling in front of me, her eyes level with mine. There’s something in them, in her pretty blue eyes that I didn’t inherit, something that totters perilously close to concern.

“Danny,” she says softly, “talk to me. What’s going on?”

Oh, no, I’m not falling for this act. She’ll lure me into a false sense of security, I’ll finally say something and tell her everything on my mind, and she’ll bash my feelings in with a metaphorical bat. I have everything, she likes to remind me. Money, connections, a roof over my head, food on the table, and people have it worse than you, Dannilynn, stop being a brat, at least you didn’t have to raise a child at sixteen.

I told her she should have gotten an abortion once. She told me I was being insensitive.

She waits a minute or two, and she realizes, once again, I’m not going to answer. The softness dims, her motherly instincts waning under the strain of dealing with her difficult child. She pushes to her feet, mumbles something under her breath, and walks back around my bed, I hope towards the exit.

“I’m calling your father.”

Big whoop.

The door slams shut behind her. I listen hard for the furious click of heels against Italian tile, but nothing. There’s an eerie stillness, and I almost consider the possibility I hallucinated my mother’s presence. Almost.

I catch a low, frantic voice. A pause. More frantic voice. Another pause. More pause. A pissed exhalation. A heavy pause. Aggravated voice. Increased volume. Increased. Increased. “I don’t know what to do, Matt,” yelled into Dad’s ear.

And there’s the furious click of heels against Italian tile.

Well, that was fun. Back to staring at the blinding light while Mom tries to get Dad to bend to her will.

I can’t fathom what she expects out of him. Money for counselling, someone to blame for my problems, actual advice, heaven forbid. Like he’s going to help. He and Mom hate each other. He hasn’t seen me in months, and that was only for three days, all of which I spent locked in my room in his house. Dad doesn’t care. He has no reason to.

Aside from the media frenzy my suicide will cause, but he can handle the shots at his image. Hell, he can turn it around to make himself look better. Create an album, do a tour, start a foundation in my name. He’ll make people love him more than they already do. Loving, mourning musician daddies are hot, right?

Ew.

Mom and Dad have no reason to worry. They’ll come out of this happier. I’ll be happier. Let nature take its course. Survival of the fittest and whatnot.

The door swings open, displacing air in a swish, announcing Mom’s presence. A smell wafts in with her. Warm, salty, meaty, an unwelcome intruder in my bubble.

Food.

Mom rounds my bed, comes back into my line of sight, and places a tray on my bedside table. I try my hardest not to show any interest. I try to keep my eyes ahead. I don’t have the strength. My gaze snaps to the tray. There’s steam rising from a bowl. Soup. Chicken noodle. Peaking around the bowl is a warm chunk of bread, soft and perfect for dunking into broth. It’s calling to me. I want it.

A loud growl makes me start. I glance at Mom, the floor, back at the tray, searching for the animal the sound came from. We don’t have a dog or a cat or a mountain lion. What the hell growled?

The sound happens again, low, threatening. This time, I feel the vibrations.

In my stomach.

Good Lord, that sound is me.

Mom doesn’t comment on the sound, thank God. She calmly pulls up my desk chair and sits. She takes the spoon between thin fingers, twirls the metal around the bowl. I swear the smell intensifies.

“You need to eat something.”

No. No, I don’t. Eating is the exact opposite of what I need to do. Take the warm soup and the fluffy bread and get out of here. Take it away. Now.

“Please, Danny.” She sounds like she’s begging. She is begging. “Some bread? Look.” She takes the bread from the plate, rips off a piece, dunks it into the broth, and holds it over the bowl for a moment.

I watch, mesmerized. Broth drips off the bread. Once, twice, three times and stops. Satisfied, she holds the broth-enriched bread near my face.

“Eat.”

I don’t want to. I don’t. I can’t. But it smells so good. It’s drifting into my nostrils, circling me, wrapping me in warmth and comfort. The smell holds promise of better days. If I take a bite, maybe I’ll be okay. Maybe, for a moment, I won’t feel so shitty.

I’m going to eat it.

Just a bite.

I take the offering delicately from Mom and pop it in my mouth before I can have a second thought. Flavor bursts in my mouth. My taste buds tingle, so intensely I have to pause to let the tingling pass before I can chew. My eyes drift shut, my nostrils flare, my stomach enthusiastically accepts the small amount of food. Canned chicken noodle soup is heaven. How sad.

“Another bite,” Mom says, ripping and dunking more bread.

I eat it.

She doesn’t demand I eat anymore after the second bite, but I’m tempted to grab the bowl and drink it. I can imagine it vividly, the smooth broth sliding down my throat, warming my perpetually cold body on the way down. Like a hug in a bowl. Delicious—

“You’re going to stay with your father.”