Condemned by My Sister novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Cake

I was standing in the corner of my room when my sister knocked on the door.

I had been in that room for fourteen days, and I had not moved from it, or slept, or eaten.

The man on the mattress was me, and I knew his face better than I wanted to.

Then Marianne's knuckles hit the wood, and the room shifted around me.

I understood three things very quickly.

I could not touch anything, and nobody could hear me.

And from now on I could only be where Marianne was.

"Eli?" she called. "It's me."

She had a cake box in her arms, white and tied with red string.

Corbin stood a step behind her with his cane, looking at the stairwell.

"It's your birthday," she said to the door.

"I got you a cake. I don't know what you want me to say."

"I'm not here to fight."

She waited.

Nothing moved inside.

She took out her phone and called my number.

From the other side of the door, my phone began to ring on the floor.

It rang until it stopped.

"Marianne, let's go," Corbin said. "He's not answering. He doesn't want to see us."

"His phone is in there."

"Then he's ignoring it."

She knocked again, harder.

Her face tightened.

I had seen that look once, when I was eight and lay blue on the kitchen floor.

She had been on her knees beside me with the phone in her hand.

"Eli," she said. "Open the door. Right now."

The landlord came up the stairs with a ring of keys, grumbling about rent that was a week overdue.

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