Five People, Four Rejections, They Voted to Erase Me, So I Erased Them novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Vote
Nessa's request for her own deposit is rejected four to one, then the family votes her out on camera; she walks out and finds the video already online, with 212 more of her.
Every dollar the three of us kids spent in the Pfeiffer house had to go through a family vote.
My father called it the Fair Table.
We held it at the dining room table every other Sunday.
My little brother's phone sat on a ring light by the salt shaker, filming.
"It's for the family archive," he always said.
I had believed that for four years.
My older sister went first, because she was the oldest and wore it well.
She was twenty-nine, and she wanted a plum silk gown for a bank gala.
"Eighteen hundred and fifty dollars," Corrine said, and turned her phone around so we could see it.
"That color is you," Mom said.
"Look at that color," Dad said, beaming. "Five in favor."
He wrote it on his legal pad before anyone had lifted a hand.
Corrine kissed his cheek.
My brother was twenty-two, and he wanted a drone, twelve hundred and ninety-nine dollars.
"Five in favor," Dad said, grinning, halfway through Colm's sentence.
Then he turned to me and capped his pen.
"Nessa. You're up."
I had practiced this in the drugstore break room for a week.
"I'm asking for twenty-four hundred dollars," I said. "First month and deposit on a studio on Linden Street. It's six minutes from work."
I did not say that I was twenty-six and had never slept anywhere but this house.
Every other Friday my whole paycheck, thirteen hundred and twelve dollars and forty cents, went into the family account.
That was the pooling rule.
Dad laid his pen flat.
"Let's do this properly. Hands."
He pointed his pen at each person in turn and said the name out loud.
"Corrine."
Corrine looked at me with soft eyes and kept her hands in her lap.
"Your room is free, Ness. It just doesn't make sense."
"Against," Dad said. "Colm."
My brother Colm shrugged and kept his hands in his lap.
"Against. Noreen."
Mom looked at the tablecloth.
It took her a moment.
Her hands stayed put.
"It's only a vote, sweetheart," she said. "Nothing counts until we sign it."
"Against," Dad said. "Four rejections. And Nessa."
I raised my own hand.
Nobody laughed.
Colm moved his phone closer to my face.
"One in favor," Dad said. "Motion denied."
I should have stopped there.
I said, "Fine. I'll find the money somewhere else."
Eugene Pfeiffer folded his hands.
"You want out of this table, Nessa. So let's put that to the table."
He cleared his throat for the camera.
"Motion. Nessa Pfeiffer is removed from this house, from the family accounts and from the Fair Table. All in favor."
Corrine's hand went up first.
Then Colm's.
Mom's hand rose last, and she did not look at me.
Dad raised his own.
"Four to one," he said. "The vote is final."
He pushed a pen across the table toward me, as though I might want to sign something.
I looked at the four hands still in the air.
I looked at the red dot on Colm's phone.
"So I stepped out," I said.
Then I stood up and pushed in my chair.
"I'll be gone in an hour."
It took forty minutes.
One duffel bag, my work shoes, my grandmother's rosary and the winter coat I had bought myself the year before.
Corrine caught me at the car.
She had my phone charger in her hand and her eyes were wet.
"I voted no because he was watching," she whispered. "Call me tomorrow. I'll fix this."
She hugged me hard.
I let her.
I drove to a motel off Route 6 that cost sixty-four dollars a night, which was most of what I had in my own account.
I sat on the bed with my shoes still on.
At nine forty, my phone lit up with a notification from the Fair Table channel.
The video had been posted twenty minutes after I left the house.
It was titled "Denied Girl Finally Gets Erased."
The editor's credit said Ronan Keogh, the man who had cut every episode for three years.
It already had three hundred thousand views.
The thumbnail was my face with my hand in the air, and a big red X across it.
Under it was a playlist.
Two hundred and twelve videos, all with my face.
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