Brother, This April Fools’ Day Is the Last One Chapter 03

Brother, This April Fools’ Day Is the Last One Chapter 03

She took my silence for a yes.

“Oliver, it’s gorgeous outside. Let’s go camping.”

Oliver started toward the oven. He figured they should let me out before they went, otherwise I’d rat them out to Mom and Dad the second they got home.

Lily’s eyes flicked to the child lock she’d pressed herself. She grabbed Oliver’s arm before he could open the door.

“Oliver, Mom and Dad are going to call a repair guy to fix the oven when they get back. Imagine them opening it and finding Chloe inside, Mom would freak out. You know how she gets.”

They both laughed.

Just like that, Oliver shrugged it off. He walked away from the last chance I had.

My hand hit the glass one last time and stayed there.

Somewhere in the middle of it, resentment crept in. I hated my parents for buying this oven.

Would I still be alive if they’d never had this thing installed?

But the resentment didn’t stop there. Why had I been the only one sent to Oakville, out of all three of us, why me?

I was the victim. I was always the one it happened to.

I never asked him for a MacBook. He made that up. There was no proof. Nothing.

Why did they have to twist it all around on me?

Not my parents. Not my own brother and sister. None of them believed me.

The grief kept building, layer after layer, until it filled every part of me.

The memories came in waves as my life narrowed to its final minutes, and each one carried its own kind of terror.

I remembered Oakville, being left there as a child. My grandparents made it clear they only wanted boys, not me, and they put lit cigarettes out on my skin to make sure I knew it.

Nobody asked. Nobody came.

Or maybe the memory that hurt worst was what came after, when my parents finally brought me home.

Arthur Miller let himself into my bedroom. He was my parents’ business partner, the upstanding guy everyone called a good man.

Mom had always told me he was a perfect gentleman. In their world, her world, Dad’s world, Arthur was the best kind of man.

A devoted husband and father, polite to everyone. The kind of man no one would ever suspect.

When his hand slid under my skirt, the only thing I could get out was:

“Mr. Miller, stop—what are you doing? This isn’t right. You know it isn’t.”

He slapped me across the face. Then he locked the door.

The rest of that afternoon passed in silence.

I was supposed to be in art class that day. I should have been sitting in the sun with a paintbrush, filling a canvas with flowers.

Instead, he took my virginity by force. He held me down by the hair and told me exactly what would happen if I screamed.

He pinned me to the bed and told me no one would believe me even if I fought.

“Go ahead and tell them. No one’s going to believe you. I used a condom, so even if you go to the cops and get a rape kit done, I’ll hire lawyers who’ll tear you to pieces on the stand.”

“And when it’s over, here’s what people will say — that some eighteen-year-old girl slept with a man for a MacBook, and when he wouldn’t buy it for her, she cried rape.”

Everything inside me broke.

This man, the one everyone trusted, the one my parents admired, said those things to me while he held me down.

That despair, the same despair, was the last thing filling my head as the oven roasted me alive.

And then, at the very end, a strange calm settled over me. Maybe dying wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to me.

The oven let out a low, heavy thud.

And the house was empty.

No one cared whether I lived. No one would care when I was gone.

The oven groaned and clicked around me, over and over, like it was the only thing left in the world willing to say goodbye.

What a way to die.