Chapter 5
Outside, Mom was lying on a stretcher, crying.
Logan and Sienna stood next to her holding a banner, sobbing loud enough for the whole block to hear.
“Cashin, come out here!” Logan yelled. “Mom worked herself to the bone for you. She kept Sienna and me from going to school just so you could go. And now that you’ve made it, you threw her out like garbage!”
I grabbed the banner and ripped it down.
“Logan, that’s a complete lie. You took the tuition money I gave you and blew it. Keep talking and I’m calling the cops.”
A crowd had gathered.
Half of them were already livestreaming on their phones.
Sienna dropped to her knees and started sobbing.
“Everyone, look at this! My big brother bullied us our whole lives. If we didn’t do what he said, he’d hit us. And now he’s making Mom wait on him and his wife like a servant. He barely feeds her. His wife smacks her around whenever she’s in a bad mood. One time she pushed Mom down the stairs and broke her leg!”
The crowd turned on me fast.
“Sienna, you’re lying through your teeth.”
The truth was that Sienna had once sent Mom out in the rain to pick up her kid. That was how Mom slipped and got hurt.
Now they were pinning it all on us.
“Mom,” I said, staring at her, “tell them. Is any of this true?”
Sienna helped Mom sit up with a perfectly rehearsed look of heartbreak.
Mom looked at me, tears streaming down her face.
“Cashin, let’s not drag up the past, but I’m begging you. Please don’t push me away. I know I favored you and neglected your brother and sister. I’ve let them down. They’re struggling right now. I can’t go be a burden to them.”
Then all three of them clung to each other and cried like the world was ending.
Even some of the bystanders had tears in their eyes.
“Cashin,” Mom sobbed, “I’m not asking for much. Just a bed and some food. Actually, no. The floor is fine. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
I never thought she would go this far just to break me.
I dug my nails into my palms.
Then some guy in the crowd stepped up and punched me square in the face.
“That’s what you deserve! That’s your own mother, and you treat her like that?”
“Someone call the cops!”
“Gets a wife and forgets where he came from!”
“Poor siblings, stuck with a brother like him!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Logan and Sienna exchanging a satisfied smirk before quickly looking down and pretending to cry again.
Their whispers carried right to me.
“Mom, didn’t I say this would work? Cashin will definitely take you back now.”
“Logan, you’re always the smart one.”
“After this, let’s see if he ever tries this again.”
Something hot and poisonous spread through my chest.
I wiped the blood from my mouth and reached for my phone.
And then everything changed.