Chapter 2 - The Anatomy of a Parasite
The air in the room felt thick, heavy with the suffocating scent of expensive perfume and cheap malice. My ears were ringing, a dull, high-pitched whine that drowned out the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the distant rumble of city traffic outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.
For six years, I had built my identity around being the survivor, the protector, the older sister who held the pieces together. I had worn my exhaustion like a badge of honor. I believed—with the fierce, irrational loyalty of someone who had lost everything in a single afternoon—that our shared trauma was a cement bond that could never be cracked.
Now, looking at Victoria’s cold, impassive face, I realized the horrifying truth: to her, our shared trauma wasn't cement. It was an anchor weighing her down, and she had spent years cutting the rope while smiling in my face.
Without a word, I turned on my heel and walked back into the kitchen.
The two-tier cake sat innocently on the counter, its pastel frosting catching the recessed LED strip lights overhead. The hand-shaped fondant roses looked fragile, almost pathetic against the harsh, modern backdrop of the high-rise kitchen.
Footsteps clicked lightly against the tile floor behind me. I didn't need to turn around to know it was Victoria. I could smell the sharp, expensive blend of jasmine and Pinot Noir before she spoke.
Victoria stepped up beside me. Without breaking stride, she reached out, popped open the cardboard bakery box, and dragged the pad of her index finger right across the top of my meticulously crafted centerpiece rose.
The delicate sugar petals collapsed instantly under the pressure of her nail, smearing the soft white frosting into a greyish, mangled clump.
“This is trying way too hard,” Victoria murmured, her voice laced with casual disgust. “It looks like something a suburban housewife bakes for a PTA bake sale. Totally tacky.”
From the living room archway, Chloe snorted loudly. “Grocery-store energy. Honestly, Maya, I’m surprised you didn’t just buy a sheet cake from Costco and slap some plastic Disney princesses on it.”
I watched the little streak of colored frosting smeared across Victoria’s fingernail. I didn't feel rage anymore. Rage is hot, explosive, reactive. What I felt was a cold, numbing clarity—the kind of absolute stillness that comes right before an earthquake shatters the fault line.
Victoria wiped her finger on a paper napkin with exaggerated care, tossing the balled-up paper onto the clean counter. Then, as if administering the final, administrative stroke to a minor business contract, she looked me dead in the eye.
“And just so we’re clear, you’re not going to be my maid of honor.”
I blinked, pulling my gaze away from the ruined cake. “Your what?”
“My maid of honor,” she repeated, rolling her eyes as if explaining a basic math concept to a slow child. “Brad’s proposing next month. We’ve already talked about the ring, the timeline, the whole thing.”
She smiled, a tight, triumphant little curve of her lips.
“Chloe’s going to be my maid of honor. She actually knows how to throw a party that doesn't look like a wake.”
A heavy, suffocating pause hung in the air between us. My chest tightened, not because I cared about standing at an altar in a matching pastel dress, but because of the sheer, unadulterated rewriting of history happening right in front of me.
For nearly two years, Victoria had talked about Brad incessantly. Every single dinner date, every minor text disagreement, every agonizing detail of their sluggishly progressing relationship had been analyzed, dissected, and resolved over hours of phone calls with me. When Brad forgot her anniversary two years ago, I was the one who drove over with a bottle of wine and a takeout box of pad Thai at midnight because Victoria was sobbing on her bedroom floor, claiming she was entirely unlovable. I had spent countless mental hours coaching her on communication, buffering her insecurities, and listening to her endlessly fantasize about her future wedding.
And in all those mental architectures, I had naturally assumed—foolishly assumed—that the sister who held her hand through the worst moments of her life would stand beside her when things finally came together.
“But I’m your sister,” I whispered, the words sounding hollow even to my own ears.
“Exactly,” Victoria snapped, picking up her wine glass again. “My sister. Not my friend. There’s a difference, Maya. Sisters are mandatory. Friends are chosen. You fall into the first category, not the second.”
Before I could find the breath to reply, Becca leaned forward from the living room, her eyes gleaming with malicious excitement.
“Oh, God, speaking of parties—remember that surprise party she threw you for your twenty-second birthday?” Becca called out, pitching her voice so everyone in the apartment could hear.
Victoria let out a sharp, mocking bark of laughter. “Don't remind me. I wanted to crawl out of my skin.”
My breath hitched. The surprise party.
Two years ago, Victoria had called me three weeks before her birthday, weeping uncontrollably. She told me she felt invisible, that none of her college friends cared about her, that nobody had ever thrown her a real, proper birthday party in her life, and that she felt like a complete failure.
It broke my heart. I wanted her to feel seen, to feel celebrated, to know that despite the shadow our parents' death cast over our lives, she mattered.
I spent three grueling weeks tracking down old high school acquaintances, sorority sisters she had lost touch with, and distant cousins. I used every spare dollar I had—money I had been secretly setting aside to fix the failing transmission in my aging Honda Civic—to rent a small, chic downtown lounge for a Saturday night. I ordered custom catering, baked cupcakes until my oven smoked, and coordinated arrival times down to the minute.
When Victoria walked through the venue doors and everyone shouted Surprise!, she burst into tears and buried her face in her hands.
I thought those were tears of pure, overwhelming joy. I remember feeling a fierce swell of pride, believing I had healed a little piece of her broken heart.
“I cried because I was mortified,” Victoria said now, leaning against the counter and swirling her wine. “It was the most pathetic, try-hard gathering I’ve ever attended. Half the people there didn't even know why they were invited.”
“You told me you loved it,” I said, my voice dropping an octave, steady and cold. “You hugged me and said it was the best night of your life.”
Victoria rolled her eyes, showing pearly white teeth in a condescending grimace. “What was I supposed to do, Maya? You looked so intensely proud of yourself, standing there with your homemade banner and your cheap sparkling cider. Making a scene would have been awkward. So I played along. Just like I always do.”
The front door buzzer rang, cutting through the toxic air of the kitchen. More guests were arriving.
Victoria straightened up, her demeanor shifting instantly into high-society hostess mode. She reached out and grabbed my bare forearm, her manicured fingers digging into my skin with surprising force.
“Look, people are getting here,” she hissed, leaning in close so the girls in the living room couldn't hear. “Leave the cake box on the counter, grab your coat, and head out. We’re redoing the whole kitchen layout anyway, and honestly, that thing is an eyesore.”
I looked down at her hand clamped around my arm. The same arm that had held her trembling shoulders when the funeral director handed us our parents' folded death certificates. The same arm that had hauled boxes up three flights of stairs when she moved into this very building.
“I decorated this whole place,” I said quietly, my gaze lifting to meet hers. “I hung the lights, I arranged the floral centerpieces on the dining table—every single thing you asked me to come early for.”
“And it looks like a cheap Pinterest fail,” Victoria spat back, her eyes flashing with genuine venom. “We’re changing it before the real guests get here. Just go, Maya. You’re killing the vibe.”
Before I could pull my arm away, the heavy oak front door of the apartment clicked open. Voices echoed from the entryway—boisterous, loud, unfamiliar laughs belonging to late arrivals.
Victoria released my arm, smoothed down the lapel of her designer sweater, and immediately raised her voice just enough for the newcomers in the hallway to hear every syllable.
“You know what the saddest part is?” she announced to the room, projecting her voice with theatrical cruelty.
I already knew I didn't want the answer, but my feet were glued to the kitchen tiles.
“She actually thinks we have some special, unbreakable bond because our parents died,” Victoria said, shaking her head with a chuckle that made my blood run cold. “Like... get over it. People lose parents every day. That whole trauma-bonding thing is just an excuse for clingy people who can't stand the fact that nobody likes them.”
The living room went dead silent. Even Chloe looked momentarily startled by how public and raw the jab was.
Victoria poured herself another splash of Pinot Noir, completely unbothered. “I have actual friends for emotional support. I don't need a charity case following me around reminding me of the worst year of my life.”
Our parents, Carl and Linda, had died six years earlier.
I was twenty-four. Victoria was twenty.
I remember the phone call like it was yesterday—the clinical, detached voice of a state trooper asking if I was the next of kin. I remember driving four hours through the dead of night to the university health center in Ithaca, my knuckles white on the steering wheel, my chest tearing apart with every breath. I remember sitting through the grueling estate meetings, untangling the messy web of credit card debt, medical bills, and incomplete insurance payouts left behind in the wake of the crash.
I was the one who became the designated co-signer on the staggered trust fund our parents had managed to scrape together for Victoria’s education, taking on legal liabilities that could have ruined my financial future if I missed a single deadline. I was the one who rearranged my entire life, putting my own college degree on hold for two years, working three jobs, and sleeping four hours a night because I genuinely believed that losing both parents meant my baby sister should never, not for a single second, feel alone in the world.
Victoria didn't mention any of that to her friends. Not a single word of the sacrifices, the sleepless nights, the debt, or the unconditional love that kept her afloat when she was drowning in grief. To her, I wasn't a sister who gave everything; I was an embarrassing reminder of a tragedy she wanted to curate out of her aesthetic.
The front door opened wider. The sound of heels clicking on the entryway marble filled the foyer.
Aunt Helen walked in.
She wore a heavy woolen camel-coat, buttoned neatly to the chin, holding a gift bag in one gloved hand and shaking the melting March snow from the brim of her classic felt hat. Helen was our mother’s older sister—sharp-eyed, no-nonsense, and possessing an instinctive radar for bullshit that had intimidated every boyfriend Victoria and I had ever brought home.
Helen stepped into the apartment, her sharp eyes sweeping across the room.
She looked at me standing rigidly by the kitchen counter.
Then she looked at the mangled fondant rose on the two-tier cake box.
May you like
Finally, she turned her gaze toward Victoria, who had frozen mid-sip with her wine glass halfway to her lips.
“What on earth is going on in here?” Aunt Helen asked, her voice cutting through the ambient party music like a freshly honed blade.
