This is why I need a place of my own, Stella thought. She sat paralyzed on the sofa while Burney screamed obscenities at the screen. Left 4 Dead. Stella would leave Burney for dead if it came to that.

In the kitchen the mother is talking about something or another—the fact that she’s thirty, time’s running out, things should start happening.

But this is my life, Stella thought. Why could this not be a standard choice?

Her father was on the family desktop watching some guy doing that thing with the jumping over fences and brick walls. Sam was, well, doing something on the floor, who knows what. He’s gluing coins to his math book for one reason or another.

“I’m going,” Stella said. Her voice was so tiny that no one heard.

Burney was seizing to her left, his fingers thrashing about on the control.

“I’m going,” she said again.

She went to her room. She knew she was being selfish. She knew she had no reason to be sad. But she needs this. Time away from home shouldn’t have to be in the malls or on vacations or at work. Seriously. There needs to be somewhere she can hear herself think.

Or speak, actually. And drink. And smoke whatever the hell she wanted to smoke. And play the piano and make mistakes. And write on her walls. And stick up notes wherever she felt like it. And scrawl on the mirrors with lipstick. And walk around naked. And speak out loud to sort the things in her mind. And to put the phone on speaker so she can prance around and reply with feelings and passionate arm gestures.

She tried to imagine what having kids would feel like and thought it might be a fit if she were interested in growing another human being. She wasn’t. She liked things. That wasn’t to say she wasn’t social. She was very social.

She just wanted to breathe.