This is not a story about a broken nose. It’s the chronicle of the day I stopped pretending my family wasn’t a beautiful house with poison in the walls. It’s the story of how I burned it to the ground.
My brother Mason slammed me into the refrigerator with a force that felt like a car crash. The pristine, stainless-steel door, usually gleaming with my mother’s obsessive polishing, groaned under the impact. Jars rattled on the shelves inside, a chaotic symphony to the violence. Before I could process the shock, he drove his knee into my stomach. The air exploded from my lungs in a silent, desperate gasp. I was a fish, flopping on the deck of a boat, drowning in the open air. His elbow came next, a sharp, brutal arc that connected with my face. The sound was sickening—a wet, crunching noise that I felt deep in my teeth.
