2512 and counting.

Eve has an ongoing tally in her head on how many times her parents ever helped her (how many times she’s had to depend on them). It’s a very comprehensive list, the figures always rising higher and higher, and it’s been there for as long as she can remember, always at the back of her mind, its presence seared on her conscience so she never loses count.

She’s alone having dinner, watching her parents fight about money and business and their daughters with a detached calmness like she’s watching one of those dramas her friends like so much, and she briefly has a moment to wonder if she should tell Mother about that parents’ meeting the teacher took pains to make sure everyone remembered, and drains the thought away along with the leftovers. She makes a journey to the bathroom where Jay is crying his heart out but doesn’t say anything when he apologizes for not being the grown up between the two of them despite being five years older, because she doesn’t care.

People face tradeoffs. In exchange for a second daughter, Mother and Father spent an exorbitant amount of money and a great deal of time. There are a hundred could-have-beens for her parents, and Eve likes to think about each and every one of them: Mother could have gotten her Ph.D and Father could have become a writer, and both of them could have had a bigger house and travel around the world and buy expensive nothings just for the sake of buying them.

Father’s fiftieth birthday passes by and Eve counts away the days left for both their parents to die. It’s not that she wants them to die, it’s just that she has a debt to pay and she dreads that day like she counts the hours left until the deadline for her homework. Eve has a crippling fear that they might die early, leaving her with a debt unpaid forever. It’s what keeps her up at nights and what drives her to work harder and harder.

Eve passes all her tests and get straight A’s, and it’s only natural considering the amount of money Mother insisted on paying the tutor who taught her everything she needed to know. She feels a strange sense of irritation when she sees how happy Mother is, because she definitely didn’t get good scores to make her Mother happy. (She’s also dreading the day she doesn’t get perfect grades, because previous achievements just add to unreasonable expectations, and the fall will be just that much harder.)

Her second greatest fear is that she won’t ever be able to pay off her debt no matter how hard she tries, no matter how long her parents live. She carefully doesn’t think about how this is all very probable and vows that she’ll do it or die trying.

Eve’s fascinated by the lengths her parents are willing to go to for her and Jay’s education, watches as Mother puts aside money for their tutoring classes and makes do with the rest, as Father works longer hours at his accounting company to pay the bills, and watches them both with a morbid curiosity as Jay carefully reveals his plan to go to law school and work for a NGO, for justice and freedom and reform.

Eve keeps to the boys because they don’t have the emotional baggage or the propensity to gossip, and they know when to leave her alone. A boy comes up to her and asks her out for lunch, and she sharply declines when he offers to pay for her. When he shyly tells her that he has feelings for her, she wonders irritably what she’s supposed to do, if he expects her to reciprocate his feelings, and if he thought anything would change by his heartfelt confession. She never gives him an answer and watches as the hope slowly but surely dies out.

Eve’s never understood what it is about /family/ that allows the children to take and take and take and never be condemned. It’s like being someone’s child gives them liberty to demand things that would have been out of place for another person to ask for. She can think of ten people at the top of her head who would better utilize the same resources she has, and pictures an idyllic society where the good kids are matched with good parents and the bad kids with bad ones, and concludes that if that were the case, her parents should have the most devoted kids to have ever walked on earth.

/Where are you going in the middle of the night?/ Eve swallows back a curse and calms her racing heart, answers calmly /Going for a walk./ and thanks the Gods that it wasn’t Mother.

Eve watches Jay on TV, the best debater they’ve ever seen, bringing prizes home and putting a smile on their parents’ face. She’s used to her parents comparing her to Jay, and it’s really a relief because she doesn’t think Mother could handle it if both her children were failures. And she’s seen it coming for some time when Jay brings fewer and fewer trophies home and they stop altogether. He cries and cries because Mother’s so furious and Eve doesn’t think any less of him, because efforts don’t equal results. (It’s the story of her life.)

People only invest when output exceeds input. It’s glaringly obvious that Eve’s a failing business, the way she has to do everything twice before she gets it right. She recalls those classmates who get along fine without private tutors, and calculates her efficiency at a 60%, carefully doesn’t think of the fact that no matter how hard she tries, there will always be people who are better than her.

Eve experiences her first big failure when she’s disqualified to enter the middle school her brother’s at. The news surprisingly comes as a surprise because she doesn’t think she did anything wrong, but doesn’t say this when she tells Mother that she’s rejected, watches as she gets understandably furious. Eve takes it with grace until /how am I supposed to tell the others that you failed?/ because that’s not her problem and Mother should know better than to make assumptions.

Money is power. Those who have it have the power to /make/ changes, instead of being subject to them. She’d like a lot of money in the future, enough to pay off her debts. For that she needs a good job, and that’s the only reason she’s studying so hard. Jay believes in education for the sake of education, to quench his academic interest. Eve thinks that’s a waste of money.

Her second big failure comes with her SAT, and Mother’s so disappointed in her. She laughs and laughs and laughs at how stupid she’s been to not listen to her own advice at not making assumptions, because she thought with all her efforts she’d get a perfect score, and look where it got her.

People can be nice by nature or nurture. Eve learns it like she learns math at school, meticulously watches Jay’s endless supply of empathy, and listens to her friend spouting some sob story about her family while counting the seconds ticking by, calculating her losses and readjusting schedules. They say she’s a good listener, that she never judges and always keeps secrets, and Eve smiles because they’re all right but she doesn’t care.

Eve goes to the park every weekend past midnight and walks and walks and walks until she’s reached the bridge, right above the widest and deepest part of the river, perches on the edge and looks down at the darkness beneath her, imagines it swallowing her up. It’s like she’s the only one in the world and it’s the most wonderful feeling, just her and the darkness and the rest of the world blending away.

Her friend finds the birthday card she gave Eve minutes earlier in the trashcan and looks so comically shocked that Eve notes to herself to never again throw away people’s gifts where they might accidentally see them. /I didn’t have any use for it/ She smiles, doesn’t apologize because she’s not sorry, doesn’t give an excuse because she’s not a liar.

Eve stares at the cardboard boxes and dilapidated trailers, half listens to Jay’s speech about the income gap (too intensely emotional), and thinks /that’s why you need to be filthy rich/, smiles and cheers him on when Jay says he’s going to change the country.

Her grades, her prizes and essays, they’re a means to an end and the debt is all that matters. /You don’t seem passionate about what you do/, Jay worries, and Eve doesn’t care because drive is better than passion, and motivation is all she has.

Eve has an exceptionally high threshold of pain, and it takes quite a high dose to affect her like all other things seem to do. The day she gets her clean slate will be the day she expires, because she won’t have any reason to keep going. But she doesn’t mind waiting for her parents to die if it comes to that, because no parent should bury their child.

The railing is freezing cold as she looks down at the street lamp reflected on the surface, and she wonders idly about how long it’s passed since she sat here because she feels like her ears are going to freeze off her head. She slowly lifts her numb butt off the railing and stretches her arms, lowers her feet –

/You’re going to therapy every week./ Eve gives Mother an incredulous look at that, has a sudden vivid image of slapping her across her face and is mildly surprised at the violence her mind can come up with. She calmly tells Mother that she doesn’t need therapy, thank you very much, and refrains from telling her that if she keeps this up she might really kill herself just to spite her. She’s not sure if she’s joking or not, especially now that she knows that there’s the choice. (And always, always the temptation is there.)

- and the footing’s not there, so she grabs at the railing only to find thin air, and she’s confused by what’s happening before she curiously realizes that she’s going to hit the water and –

/Who are you to tell me what to do?/ she doesn’t ask, because it’s Mother, who’s provided every single thing Eve didn’t have the money for, who has every right to dictate how to live her life because she basically /owns/ her. Eve closes her eyes, sees the digits skyrocketing, and decides that yes, she owes a great deal to Mother but no, that doesn’t mean she can force her, because someday she’s going to make it even, and that someday is not today.

- doesn’t hear her thoughts over the wind howling in her ears, feels panic like a faraway shout that doesn’t reach her, her body shattering into a million pieces.

It’s the bottomless pit in the far corner of her mind she taps into, like reaching behind a curtain, to draw out the quiet roiling fury that’s been gathering for several years, and this time she chooses to let go. When she comes to herself, she has bloody knuckles and a hoarse voice, and all she sees is red, an endless sea of it.

“Just what the hell were you thinking?” Jay looks like he wants to throttle her, and it’s strange because that’s a question Mother would’ve asked her days ago, except she didn’t, and instead Mother watches her with unreadable eyes. All she can hear is the beep of her heart, and if Eve didn’t know better, she’d say Mother almost looked sad.

This is the first time in her life Eve’s ever shown something like fury, and Jay is absolutely, devastatingly broken. Mother calmly says that she’s still going to therapy, and Eve flexes her sore fingers, hates Mother with a ferocity that surprises her. What managed to finally drive Jay away didn’t even affect Mother.

She’s grateful that she survived the fall (and more importantly that her memory is fine) because her death would mean her parents wasted a whole lot of money for absolutely nothing, and she would never forgive herself.

/Leave her be, she’s not even grateful for what you did for her./

She feels like she’s been put on a leash, like her freedom and privacy have suddenly lost their meaning. Mother doesn’t have an iota of trust in her, and Eve can /feel/ her worrying constantly over her. It’s terribly suffocating, being at a place she definitely doesn’t think of as home, with someone who’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Jay tells her that he’s always available for her, but they both know that she’s never been the first to talk.

/I’m not doing this for gratitude. It’s my duty as a mother to take care of her, and that won’t change even if she hates me for it./

Eve carefully perches on the railing, making sure that she’s not too over the edge, looks down and wonders what her mangled body must have looked like in the water, dying it a pretty red. She doesn’t look up when Jay says, “Mother’s worried sick about you,” because it’s not her problem.

It’s scary how Mother’s ready to do everything for her if she thinks it’ll help Eve, how she doesn’t expect anything in return for her money or time or energy, and Eve realizes that her greatest fear should have been her parents refusing to accept her money because they didn’t expect any kind of remuneration. It’s the first time she truly panics, because she’s about to lose the driving force of her life.

She looks down at the darkness, asks why she couldn’t see what was there all the time, that Mother wanted nothing except for her to truly be happy and well, and the darkness mocks her for being so stupid not to realize that it was her all along. She’s created her own demons, and now she’s got to deal with them all.

She sits down on the armchair, across the bespectacled man with a notepad, looks him in the eye and says, /I’m not suicidal./