3: 3
I gripped the phone.
"Mom, my code isn't working."
"I changed it."
"I've raised you to eighteen. After this you can do whatever you want, as long as you stop bothering me."
"Hang around outside my door again and I'll call the police to haul you off."
"Oh, and there's a bag of trash by the door. Take it down with you."
"Mom, then what about my acceptance letter—"
I waited quietly for five minutes.
She didn't answer.
I took the phone from my ear and tapped the screen.
She'd hung up five minutes ago.
I waited an hour outside the door.
When I was sure she wasn't going to let me in, I went downstairs.
Almost out of the complex, I turned and looked back at her place. The lights had already gone dark.
I walked for two hours and reached the train station.
I dug my ID and bank card out of my phone case.
There was $954.30 left on the card, saved up from summer jobs.
Mom never sent me any living expenses, so I'd had to work my way through school.
After the exams, this was all I had left.
I bought a hard-seat ticket for $123.60.
It got in at ten tomorrow morning. I'd make it.
Sitting in the waiting room, I couldn't understand why Mom's decluttering only ever meant throwing out my things.
My exam admission ticket had been one of them. So was my acceptance letter.
On exam day, Max snatched my admission ticket right out of my hand and took off, shouting as he ran.
"I want to verify the card! I want to verify the card!"
I chased after him, tripped over the coffee table, and went down hard.
My head hit the corner of the couch, raising a lump and scraping the skin.
Max saw me fall, crouched in front of me, and waved the admission ticket back and forth.
"Card checks out."
I reached for it. He scrambled to his feet and tore the ticket into tiny pieces.
"Grab it, refine it in an instant!"
He planted his hands on his hips and laughed. I picked the scraps up off the floor.
I wanted to piece them back together, but he'd shredded them too finely, and no matter how I tried, they wouldn't fit.
Seeing me try, he stomped all over them, hopping foot to foot.
"Bold mortal, have you not witnessed my true power? And yet you'd dare save this card's life!"
"Stomp, stomp, stomp!"
Mom came out of the kitchen and hurled a half-chopped gourd at my head.
"What's all this racket first thing in the morning?"
The tears came, panicked.
"Mom, Max tore up my admission ticket."
Mom stroked Max's head.
"Good boy, Max, helping Mom declutter."
Then she turned and looked at me with disgust.
"So he tore it up. It's just the exams, isn't it? Who do you think you are, some emperor?"
"Your brother just likes to play. Would it kill you, as his older brother, to let him have his fun?"
"Sit it if you want, skip it if you don't. Doesn't matter to me."
"With that thick skull of yours, born out in the country, you were never going to get in anyway."
"Go start delivering food. At least then you can put a little toward your brother's tuition."
Clutching my pens and pencils, I ran to the testing center, crying the whole way.
At the door, a teacher stopped me.
"Where's your admission ticket?"
"No admission ticket, no exam!"
The tears came again.
It was my homeroom teacher who got there in time, bringing a backup admission ticket, so that I could sit the exams after all.
I murmured to myself:
Was it because I wasn't useful enough? Was that why Mom threw me away?
The train swayed and rocked, like my uneasy heart.
What if there was no acceptance letter and I couldn't register?
And if I could register, what if I had no money for tuition?
If I couldn't get into college, and Mom decided I was useless and didn't want me, what then?
Three questions. I turned them over the whole way there.
