Chapter 1

On the night of the fall family holiday, my dad came home with three boxes of holiday pies.

The first box was savory meat pie, salty, the kind my brother Phineas Swanson loved.

The second was sweet-filled, sugary all the way through, exactly to my sister Rosemary Swanson's taste.

When it came to me, he took out the last box, the smallest one, opened it, and turned it upside down.

A few blackened crusts rolled out and thudded against the table.

Where they'd cracked open, there wasn't even any filling inside.

One bite and it was hard enough to chip a tooth.

At the table, my mom set the last dish, the pork rib soup, in front of Phineas and Rosemary.

Then she turned and handed me a bowl of plain rice porridge with a few grains of rice floating in it.

"Soak it in there, it'll soften right up."

"You can't taste anything anyway, so the good stuff would just go to waste on you."

I gripped my chopsticks tighter.

When I was seven, Rosemary was standing in the middle of the road playing, and a truck loaded with cargo came toward us from up the street.

I shoved her out of the way and was nearly crushed under its wheels.

The sheer terror of it destroyed the nerves that let me taste anything.

After that, I became the family's garbage disposal.

Every dish my parents burned, every leftover sitting overnight in the fridge, every expired snack Rosemary didn't want.

All of it went into my stomach.

Only this time, I didn't touch anything on the table. I went straight back to my room.

Under my pillow was an envelope, and inside it, ten thousand dollars stacked neatly.

That was the money I'd saved up for my own treatment.

From now on, the sour, the sweet, the bitter, the sharp of everything, I wanted to taste all of it on my own.

1.

My mom carried the bowl all the way to my bedroom door.

"You're not going to eat this pie?"

I stuffed the envelope back in a panic and looked at the thing in her hands.

The black crust was soaking in the white porridge, and even the broth had gone pitch dark.

"No. My tooth hurts."

Her face darkened.

"If you're picky, just say you're picky. Now you've even learned to make up excuses."

"Your dad bought this especially for you. It can't go to waste."

I shook my head, wanting to tell her I wasn't lying.

Since last week, my wisdom tooth had been throbbing.

At the worst of it, even my cheek had swollen up.

But it was like they couldn't see it.

Or rather, they saw it and just didn't care.

Rosemary would point at my face and laugh.

"Sis, you're so swollen you look like a pig's head."

My dad didn't say anything to her. Instead, he dug up a strip of expired pills from somewhere and tossed it at me.

"When it hurts bad, take a couple. Just tough it out and it'll pass."

Tough it out. I'd been hearing that word for over a decade.

Back when I first realized I'd lost my sense of taste, I cried and made a fuss too.

My mom took me to the hospital for an exam.

The doctor said the whole treatment would cost more than ten thousand.

She jumped at the number, stood up right away, and led me out by the hand.

"Money's tight at home right now. Just bear with it a little longer."

"We'll get you treated once we have the money."

I nodded obediently, ate my food like a good girl, and stopped crying about it.

Later, we moved to a new place, twice the size of the old one.

I thought things had finally eased up, and I stammered out a question about when they'd take me to get treated.

My dad blew out a ring of smoke, his face full of worry.

"The mortgage on this place is heavy. The house has to come first."

"That condition of yours doesn't hurt and doesn't itch. It's nothing serious. Bear with it a while longer."

I pinched the hem of my shirt, and I believed him again.

After that, Phineas got a high-end computer worth over a hundred thousand, and Rosemary started at an expensive international school.

But I never asked again when they'd take me to the hospital.

Because I knew they'd only find some new reason to make me keep bearing it.

If it doesn't hurt, doesn't itch, and doesn't get in the way of daily life, then it can be ignored.

My mom dragged me to the table, picked up the chopsticks, and pushed them into my hand.

"Look at your brother and your sister. Every one of them is eating just fine."

"It's a holiday today. Don't go breaking your dad's heart."

Phineas ate with grease all over his mouth, the smell of meat drifting through the air.

Rosemary poured herself a cup of tea and sipped it slowly along with the sweet filling.

I looked at the lump of black starch in my bowl.

What fell before the chopsticks did were my scalding tears.

The crust was even harder than I'd expected, so all I could do was gnaw at it slowly with my front teeth.

My dad knocked the rim of a bowl against the table, ice in his voice.

"If you're not going to eat it, then don't. Who's this half-dead act supposed to be for?"

Phineas swallowed his last bite of meat pie and joined in with a frown.

"Don't be someone who has it good and doesn't know it."

"Think how many people out there don't even get enough to eat."

I forced down a mouthful of the black crust and felt it lodge hard in my throat.

And in my chest, too, everything was jammed up tight.