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Dean was still staring at me, silently begging me to get them to shut up.

I glanced at Sebastian, who was still eating chips and staring at the TV like nothing was going wrong, but the tension he was holding in his shoulders gave away that he was uncomfortable.

I drank the rest of the water from my glass then got up and walked toward the stairs.

Mom and Dad’s voices became clearer with every step I took and by the time I reached the landing, I could hear everything they were saying.

“It’s not where you put the laundry,” Mom was ranting.

“You don’t get to decide where I put stuff in my own room!

” Dad yelled back. I winced at the words, knowing the ensuing argument would be about how he always referred to the stuff in the house as his— his room, his kitchen, his TV —which was inappropriate for a married man.

I’d heard the argument so many times that I could practically recite every word they would each say.

Before they could get too far into it, I stopped at their ajar bedroom door and knocked, cursing Dean under my breath for having a friend over right now.

At first, I wasn’t sure if they heard me over their yelling, because it continued on, right up until the door was thrown all the way open and Mom appeared.

She went from yelling to pasting a bright, fake smile on her face in an instant.

Or maybe it wasn’t a fake smile and she really could swap emotions so quickly like that.

“Eleanor,” she said in a sickly cooing voice. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I said, choosing not to pick a fight over her calling me Eleanor. I was Nora to everyone in my daily life but her. I tried to convince her to call me Nora, but she always said that she didn’t name me Eleanor just to call me by some other name.

“How was your day at school, honey?” she asked, putting her hands on my shoulders lightly.

The movements were awkward and stiff, like she thought she should try to be affectionate but it didn’t come naturally.

Every interaction between us lately had been feeling more and more fake, both on her side and mine.

The routine was always the same. She asked me how school was.

I said I was doing well in all my classes, because that was what she wanted to hear.

She said that of course I was doing great, because I was the smartest girl in my class.

That was generally where the conversation ended.

If I even started to open up to her, she would rush off, claiming she’d forgotten something that needed to be done urgently.

She had this obsession about being the perfect family.

It started with just the house—it always had to be clean and tidy, to the point that we were barely allowed to play as kids because it would create a mess.

Then as we grew up, the perfection spread from just the house to us too.

We had to get perfect grades, be model students, join a club or sport team, and have respectable interests.

We couldn’t have issues, because those would clearly be a reflection on her bad parenting and she couldn’t have that.

If she knew that Sebastian was downstairs right now, she probably wouldn’t have picked a fight with Dad, or she would have done it silently—having arguments was not part of the perfect marriage they supposedly had.

“It was great,” I said, because that was what I was supposed to say now. “I got an A on my math test.”

She smiled and brushed a finger under my chin. “I knew you would.”

I doubted she even knew I had a math test today but I didn’t point that out. I would take her support wherever I could get it, even if it was a lie.

Dad appeared behind her, still dressed in his work suit but with the top button of his shirt unbuttoned and his hair sticking up every direction like he kept grabbing at it in frustration. He did that a lot when he was dealing with Mom.

“How are you, Nora?” When Dad asked, it was a genuine question, but right now clearly wasn’t the time to get into anything.

“I wanted to ask you two something,” I said.

I hadn’t come up here with a plan on how to stop the argument, but I would need to ask if I could stay out past my curfew tonight at some point, so I might as well do it now.

“I was thinking of sleeping over at Clementine’s house tonight. Do you guys mind?”

“Oh, I don’t know, honey,” Mom said, crossing her arms. I wasn’t worried.

This was always how it started: she thought another piece of the perfect family was all of us being home every single night, spending time together as a family.

But Dean went out every weekend, so it would just be the three of us home and if I did stay, I wouldn’t be hanging out with them anyway.

“I was thinking we’d spend the evening together. It is a Friday?—”

“Exactly,” Dad cut in. “It’s Friday, the day for kids to be socializing.” He looked at me over her shoulder. “Go ahead, spend the night at her house. Say hi to her mom for us, okay?”

Mom looked at him pointedly, probably hating that he steamrolled over her so easily.

Normally, there’s a little bit more discussion and some back and forth before he told us we could go.

But she didn’t take back what he said. She just smiled and brushed her hand against my cheek one more time before turning and walking back into their room.

I was sure she was planning to pick a fight with him over this now.

“Thanks, Dad,” I said, going on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek. Then I raised my voice loud enough for Mom to be able to hear me and said, “Oh and by the way, Sebastian is downstairs. I’m not sure if he’s planning to stay for dinner.”

He wasn’t going to be staying for dinner but that wasn’t the point of what I was saying, anyway.

I just needed an excuse to mention that there was a guest in the house, so they needed to stay quiet.

Dad smiled tightly at me, then closed their door.

I waited a minute to make sure they weren’t going to immediately start arguing again and once I was sure they weren’t, I went into my room too.

It was time for us all to go back to our normal routine of pretending that everything was perfect when we all knew it wasn’t.