Next Life, I’ll Find a Family That’s a Little Less Smart Chapter 03

Next Life, I’ll Find a Family That’s a Little Less Smart Chapter 03

Mom stood outside the door. For a long, tense moment.

When there was no answer, her patience snapped.

“Why do you always have to be so difficult?”

“We’re your family. Would it kill you to meet us halfway?”

She set the mug down hard on the hallway floor.

“Drink it or don’t. I’m done indulging this.”

She turned on her heel and stormed back to the bedroom.

The hallway fell dead silent again.

From where I floated, I could see everything. A mouse crept along the baseboard, appearing seemingly out of nowhere.

It climbed the rim of the mug and started lapping at the honey lemon tea.

Inside my room, flies had found their way in through the cracked window.

They circled my face, buzzing.

By the next morning, a smell had settled through the house. Faint, but wrong.

My body had voided its bowels. The first hints of rot.

The neighbor, Mr. Sterling, stopped by that morning to borrow a few books.

He was barely through the front door before he covered his nose.

“Arthur, what’s that smell? You got a sewer line backed up or something?”

Beatrice was on the couch, eating a sandwich.

“Oh, that’s Silas. He’s running an anaerobic fermentation experiment with organic matter. Some of the gas must have leaked.”

She smiled, without missing a beat.

“He’s collecting data for an environmental science project.”

Mr. Sterling’s expression eased right away. He nodded in genuine admiration.

“Arthur, those two kids of yours are something else. Barely out of school and already doing this kind of work? Incredible.”

Dad gave a humble laugh, but beamed with pride. He was eating it up.

“Oh, come on. They’re just tinkering.”

Mr. Sterling looked around.

“Where’s your oldest? Hazel, right? I don’t see her around.”

“She’s usually out on the balcony studying around this time.”

Dad’s smile stiffened.

“Hazel’s a bit under the weather. She’s resting in her room.”

Once Mr. Sterling was gone, Silas emerged from his room in a white lab coat.

He was carrying a medical penlight. His face was all business.

“Placebo trial has exceeded its window. Initiating forced awakening through pupillary light reflex.”

He was already heading for my door.

“An extended low-metabolic state could cause irreversible brain damage. We need to wake her up now.”

Mom had been mopping the floor. She stopped mid-stroke.

She grabbed Silas by the arm.

“Silas, that’s enough.”

“Hazel has asthma. What if you trigger an attack? I’ll go get her myself.”

Dad folded his newspaper.

“Yeah, that’s enough. Keep this up and she’ll have a full meltdown.”

Dad stood and grabbed his coat.

“I’ll pick up that new allergy medication for her, and that giant teddy bear she’s been begging for.”

“I spoil her a little, she’ll be fine. It’s not her fault she drew the short straw in the gene pool in this family.”

I watched Dad rush out the front door.

I tried to cry. The tears dissolved before they fell, nothing but vapor now.

That teddy bear was all I’d wanted for my last birthday.

I’d begged and begged.

Now it wouldn’t do me any good.

Beatrice ignored all of it.

She padded to my door without a sound, dropped to the floor, and pressed her eye to the crack under the door.

“Silas. Come here.”