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The kitchen was clean. That was the first wrong thing. Too clean. Scrubbed recently and made to look like nobody had. Counters wiped. Teapot put away. Dish soap and under it the kettle smell, water boiled and poured out and still warm somewhere in the pipes.
Ellen stood in the doorway with her bag falling off one shoulder. She’d passed Corin in the hallway, going the other direction, Corin’s face doing the post-scrubbing look with her hands pink and damp and tucked against her stomach and her eyes on the floor. She’d said “O-oh, Miss Ellen, sorry, I didn’t hear you come in, I was just, I was in the kitchen but I’m done now, sorry” in a single breath, all of it out before she'd figured out where the sentence was going.
Ellen had said “hey,” and kept walking. Corin bowed and kept walking. Normal. Corin apologizing for being in a hallway that was also her hallway. Ellen grunting past. Most of their exchanges went like that.
But the kitchen. She went in. Dropped her bag by the door because her shoulder hurt and there was floor. The window over the sink letting in the end of the afternoon, thick orange light going red. Dust in it. Chair pushed in neat, the table bare.
Opened the cupboard. Teacup on the shelf still warm. Warm still. Ten minutes ago someone was holding this, or filling it. Washed it, shelved it. The heat still in the porcelain. Ellen stood there with the cup in her hand. She could do that. Go blank. Just be a body in a room with a warm cup and no next thing to do with it. She put the cup back and went out of the kitchen.
Corin was at the bottom of the stairs. Not going up. One hand on the railing, the other pressed flat against her stomach, and her lips were moving. No sound. Her mouth going over something, shaping it, reshaping. Eyes on the floor. She hadn’t noticed Ellen.
“Corin.”
Corin flinched. Grabbed the railing. Knuckles white. “Y-yes?”
“Make me tea.”
“I... tea? Now? I just. I just put everything away, I’m sorry, I should have... I should have asked if you wanted anything before I cleaned up, that was. I’m sorry, Miss Ellen, I didn’t think anyone was going to.”
“So take it back out.”
Corin stood there. Mouth open, eyes wide enough to show white above the green, and then she unstuck and started moving. “Okay. Yes. I can, um. Give me a minute. I’m sorry it won’t be as good as... it’ll be a minute.”
Past Ellen, toward the kitchen. Flat shoes barely making sound on the floor. Ellen followed at a distance. Going where she’d already been going. Corin took the teapot down and filled the kettle. Her hands shook and the kettle rattled against the faucet and she whispered “sorry” to it. To the faucet.
Ellen sat in the chair by the table, the one that caught the light. Dropped into it loose, one leg over the other, tail draped off the side pulling the whole chair crooked. Elbow on the table. Chin in hand. Eyes half on Corin, half on nothing. Corin’s back was to her. Shoulders bunched up by her ears. She kept checking the teapot lid, adjusting it, checking it. Pigtails falling forward. She’d push them back and they’d fall forward. The kettle screamed. Corin poured and a drop hit the saucer. Her whole body locked. Ellen saw it from across the kitchen.
Corin brought the cup to the table. Set it down. Porcelain clicked on wood and Corin winced.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s a... there’s a drop on the saucer. I can redo it, it’ll only take a minute, I’m sorry, I should have been more... the pour was off, I think the teapot was too full, or maybe my hand, I don’t... I’m sorry, Miss Ellen, if you want I can just start over from the —”
“Sit down, Corin.”
Corin did not sit down. She stood there twisting her apron in both hands.
“I just... if I redo it it’ll be better. It won’t take long, I promise, I’ll be fast, I just need to —”
“Sit. Down.”
Corin sat across from Ellen in the other chair. Right on the edge. Back straight, hands flat on her knees, not touching the backrest. Ready to stand again the second the permission got taken back. Ellen picked up the cup and drank. Too strong, a little bitter, hot enough to sting the roof of her mouth. She drank it anyway because she was thirsty and the tea was there.
“It’s fine,” she said.
“Is it? Because I think I let it steep too long, I was counting but then I lost track because I was worried about the drop and then I... I think it’s been too long. I can make a new one. I’m sorry, I should have timed it, Mr. Lycaon says you always time it but I forgot to and —”
“It’s fine.”
Corin went quiet. Hands gripping her knees, scars on her fingers catching the late light. She watched Ellen hold the cup like a dog watching someone eat. Ellen finished. Cup on the saucer, on top of the drop. Stood.
“Thanks,” she said.
“You’re... you’re welcome, Miss Ellen,” Corin said, mostly to the table, and then quieter: “I’ll make it better next time. If you... if there’s a next time. Sorry.”
That was a Tuesday.
—
Friday, Ruby handed her the scratch-off at the crosswalk. “Your turn. Tail. Go.”
“Later,” Ellen said, and put it in her pocket. Ruby made the face, the big wounded one where her eyes went wide and her mouth went round. Monna laughed. Lynn did the tongue click.
Corner of the school, the signal that took forever. Ruby eating a taiyaki from the cart run by the old man who never smiled but always overfilled their pastries. Lynn watching a pigeon eat a french fry with her arms crossed, offended by it for some reason only Lynn understood.
“I just don’t understand you,” Ruby said through a mouthful of fish-shaped pastry. “I hand you fortune. I hand you destiny. I hand you two hundred dennies of pure potential and you put it in your pocket like a receipt.”
“It is a receipt. You paid two hundred dennies for a piece of paper.”
“It’s not a piece of paper. It’s a chance.”
“At what?”
“At glory, Ellen. At glory.”
The signal changed. They crossed, the four of them in a loose cluster, Ruby out front, Monna drifting, Lynn and Ellen at the back. Ellen’s tail swayed and caught the light and a kid on the other side pointed at it and said something to his mother and the mother pulled him forward without looking. That happened sometimes. Less now. Kids still pointed.
They split at the intersection. Monna and Lynn south. Ruby east, waving without turning around. Ellen west. The thirty-minute walk home. She liked this part of the day.
She walked. Sun dropped. Buildings shrank as she left the school district and crossed into the residential streets, the Victoria Housekeeping home at the end of its curving road.
Kitchen clean again. Corin in it this time, wiping the counter that was already clean, the cloth going in circles.
“Hey,” Ellen said.
Corin’s whole body snapped upright. The cloth fell from her hand and she grabbed it and dropped it and grabbed it. “Miss Ellen! H-hi. I didn’t hear you come in. I was just... the counter had a thing on it. A spot. I was getting it out. Sorry, did you need the kitchen? I can go, I’m almost done, I just need to —”
“Make me tea?”
Corin’s eyes went to the cupboard where the teapot was. Then she nodded, three little nods, and put down the cloth and her hands were already going. Ellen sat. Same chair. Same orange light. Put her feet up on the other chair, the one Corin would need, and took them down when Corin came to the table.
The tea was better. Still strong but not bitter. No drop on the saucer, or none she saw. She pulled the scratch-off ticket from her pocket and dumped it on the table with a lollipop stick and a crumpled worksheet. Pocket debris.
Corin looked at the ticket. Then at Ellen. Then back at the ticket. Then at Ellen again, checking.
“Ruby,” Ellen said, before Corin could apologize for looking. “She gives me one every Friday. She thinks my tail is lucky.”
“O-oh. Is it?”
“No.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry that my tail isn’t lucky, Corin.”
“S-sorry. I mean... okay.”
Ellen left the ticket on the table when she went upstairs. She didn’t mean to. She just left.
—
Monday. School. Ruby at the bench outside with her legs folded under her and textbooks she wasn’t going to read spread around her like a nest. The bench under the tree with initials carved in the bark, people who’d graduated years ago. Someone had carved a heart. Someone else had carved a word over it that made it unprintable. Lynn said this was a metaphor. Monna said it was just vandalism.
“Did you scratch it?”
“What?”
“The ticket. From Friday. Ellen. Did you scratch it.”
“Oh. I lost it.”
Ruby put down the pen she’d been chewing. “You lost it.”
“Yeah.”
“You lose every ticket I give you.”
“I don’t lose every ticket.”
“You lost the last three!”
“Those weren’t lost. Those were misplaced.”
“That’s the same thing!”
“No, lost means gone. Misplaced means I know where they are. Roughly. In theory.”
Ruby stared at her. Deciding something. Which was fair. Ellen couldn't always tell either
“Where are they. Roughly. In theory.”
Ellen thought about the kitchen table. The ticket in late light. Corin’s hands adjusting it along the table’s edge. “My room. Somewhere. I’ll look.”
“You won’t look.”
“I’ll look.”
“You won’t look and next Friday I’ll give you another one and you’ll lose that one too and we’ll have this exact conversation again on Monday.”
“Probably,” Ellen said.
Ruby threw a pen cap at her. It bounced off Ellen’s shoulder and landed in the grass. Monna looked up from her phone.
“What are they fighting about now?”
“Scratch-offs,” Lynn said. “As always.”
“Seriously?” Monna said. “Every week with you two.”
Ellen picked up the pen cap, pocketed it. She ate her lunch. She’d said she lost it and the bread tasted like bread. Lynn talking about a movie. Monna arguing about the ending. Ruby drawing dresses in her notebook margins, long impossible things. The afternoon went.
—
The next Friday, Ruby gave her another ticket.
“Don’t lose this one.”
“I’m going to lose this one.”
“Ellen.”
“I’m being honest with you. Isn’t that what you want?”
“I want you to scratch the ticket and win money and split the money with me because I bought it.”
“That’s a lot of wants.”
“I’m a girl with dreams.”
“Dream smaller,” Ellen said, and put the ticket in her pocket.
She left it on the kitchen table that evening, next to the first one. Corin had placed the first ticket along the table’s edge, squared with the corner. Two silver rectangles. Unscratched.
—
Third week. Ellen said “tea?” from the doorway and Corin said “okay” without stuttering and for about three seconds it was ordinary. Two people in a house who both knew where the kettle was.
“Not as strong this time,” Ellen said, not looking up from her phone. Slumped in the chair already, one shoe off, the other half-off and hanging from her toes. “You keep making it too strong.”
Corin’s hands stopped on the teapot. “I... okay. Um. Less leaves?”
“Yeah.”
“How much less?”
“I don’t know, Corin. Less.”
Corin stood there with the teapot lid in one hand and the caddy in the other. Lips moving. Then she put in what she put in and filled the pot and brought it to the table and poured and her hands were only shaking a little and the pour was clean. Ellen drank. Lighter. Still tea, still Corin’s, but the bitterness had backed off and what was left she could drink without the wince.
“Better,” she said. The sound Corin made. Quick breath in. Corin’s hands going still on the table. Ellen kept scrolling.
The tea was fine. Corin sat across from her and the silence was close to comfortable and Ellen put the third ticket on the table and Corin reached for it, stopped, hand hovering, “Can I... is it okay if I,” and Ellen said “yeah” and Corin placed it next to the others, extending the row, and her face went careful, and that was a Friday in the third week.
—
Fifth week. Five tickets along the table’s edge. Corin dusted around them without moving them. Wiped the table up to them and then wiped the other way.
The tea got better. Ellen stopped mentioning it.
She came home everyday, but Tuesdays and Thursdays and some Wednesdays she went to the kitchen first. Not always for tea. Sometimes the chair was enough. She’d sit with her lollipop and her bag on the floor and do nothing while Corin cleaned or whispered apologies to dust she’d missed.
They didn’t talk much. Two people in a room at a certain hour.
One Thursday Corin said something.
She was reorganizing the spice rack, which did not need it, which Rina had destroyed again because Rina believed all spices were the same spice. Corin had every jar out on the counter and was wiping each one. Small circles with the cloth. Eyes on a jar of something brown.
“Miss Ellen, can I... I’m sorry, this is. You don’t have to answer, but…. do your friends ever... I mean, your school friends, do they ever wonder where you… After school. When you come here instead of... I’m sorry, it’s none of my business, I shouldn’t have.”
Ellen had her eyes half-closed. The lollipop stick in her mouth for ten minutes past the candy. “What?”
Corin’s cloth stopped. She gripped the jar with both hands, holding it against her stomach. “Your friends. They must wonder. Where you go. After school. Because you come here and... I just wondered if they. I’m sorry. Forget I said anything. I’m sorry.”
“They don’t wonder.”
“Oh. Okay. I’m sorry I asked.”
“They know about Victoria Housekeeping. They just don’t.” Pause. “They don’t think about it much.”
“That’s nice. That they don’t worry.” Corin turned the jar in her hands. Turned it again. “I’d worry. If I had a friend who went somewhere every day and I didn’t know what it was like there. I’d worry.” And then, fast, hearing herself: “N-not that they should worry! I’m not saying they’re bad friends. They sound really nice. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, I — ”
Ellen pulled the lollipop stick from her mouth. Wet cardboard. Grape. “Ruby worries about the tickets.”
“The… The scratch-offs?”
“She gives me one every Friday and asks about it every Monday and I tell her I lost it.”
Corin put the jar down. Picked it up. Put it down. “Y-you tell her you lost it?”
“Yeah.”
“But they’re... here.” She looked at the tickets on the table. Five of them in their row, each one placed by her own hands. Her voice got small. “Miss Ellen, why don’t you just... tell her they’re here?”
Because then Ruby would ask where here was. And Ellen would have to describe this kitchen. The tea, the evenings, Corin wiping already-clean counters. It would become a thing and things were things you could lose.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Corin shelved the jar. Label out. She was already regretting the question. Adding it to whatever list she kept, the one she went through at night.
Ellen watched Corin’s hands on the jars. Ruby’s hands at the crosswalk, holding out the ticket. Two people giving her things. Nobody asking for anything back yet.
—
That night she lay on her bed and didn’t sleep. Some nights her body was done but her brain wasn’t. She’d stare at the ceiling and let whatever was going to come come.
What came: Lynn’s question from weeks ago. What are you going to do. Lynn without the usual voice, the dry one that made everything a joke before it could be anything else. She’d just asked. Looking at Ellen like she wanted the answer. Ellen had shoved it under a joke and now it was back.
What about you, Ellen?
She turned over. Pressed her face into the pillow. Victoria Housekeeping laundry soap, floral and sharp, nothing like the detergent from any of the other six. She could list them. Didn’t want to. She’d listed them once, on a form, and couldn’t remember what the first address had been.
Seven houses. This the seventh. She hadn’t unpacked all the way because why would you. You unpack and then you’re the one with all your stuff out when the car comes. Corin unpacked. Corin practiced tea service to empty chairs because if she wasn’t useful they’d send her back and she couldn’t survive that so she just kept cleaning and cleaning and cleaning. Ellen wasn’t like that. She kept her stuff in the bag. Kept it loose. Easy to grab. That was the whole point.
Except the pillow smelled like this soap now and not any other soap and a girl with green hair was arranging her scratch-off tickets along a table’s edge like they were worth keeping and Ellen hadn’t stopped her.
She pressed her face into the pillow and waited for sleep.
—
Seventh week. Ellen came home on a Wednesday and the kitchen was warm and the kettle was already off and Corin was sitting in her chair with a cup of tea. Her own cup. Just sitting.
Ellen stopped in the doorway. Corin looked up. Her hands went to the table and her mouth opened and the apology was right there, Ellen could see it forming, and then Corin closed her mouth. Opened it again.
“Kettle’s still hot,” she said.
Ellen sat. Corin poured her a cup from the pot and set it down and it was the right strength and there was no drop on the saucer and neither of them said anything about it. Corin picked her own cup back up and drank. Ellen drank. The clock in the hall ticked. Corin’s shoulders were down, away from her ears, and her hands on the cup were still.
It lasted about two minutes. Then Corin noticed a crumb on the counter and got up to wipe it, cloth in hand, apologizing to the crumb.
—
Eighth week. Seven tickets along the table’s edge. Once Ellen came in and found Corin measuring the gap between two tickets with her thumb, making sure they were even, and when Corin noticed Ellen watching she jerked her hand away. “Sorry, I was just... they were a little. Sorry.”
Fridays she brought a ticket home. The other days she came to the kitchen anyway. They didn't talk about the tea and they didn't talk about what it meant that Ellen kept coming back. They sat in the kitchen while the light went orange and then red and then gray and sometimes Corin cleaned and sometimes Corin sat there and both of those were fine.
One Thursday she had her history textbook open on the table and was half-reading a chapter on something she’d forget by Monday. Corin wiping the stove. A plate of cookies appeared near Ellen’s elbow at some point so she ate two and didn’t look up. Ellen’s phone buzzed. Ruby in the group chat, a picture of her cat sitting on her backpack. Ellen looked at it and kept scrolling and then scrolled back to it.
Ruby had walked her to the bus stop that morning. Talking about nothing, the cold, some kid in their class who’d shaved his head on a dare, and then Ruby stopped and fixed Ellen’s scarf. Just reached over. Tucked the end back in. Kept talking about the kid’s head.
Ellen had stood there and let her do it.
She looked at the picture of the cat again. Monna had replied with a string of hearts. Lynn had replied “that cat has better posture than you ruby.” Ellen typed “fat” and sent it and put her phone down and went back to the chapter she wasn’t reading.
—
Friday lunch. Ruby had her legs across Monna’s lap and was eating Monna’s fries because she’d finished her own. Monna let her. Monna always let her. Lynn was reading something on her phone with her chin on her hand and not talking, which meant she was either mad or thinking about something she’d bring up in twenty minutes with no context.
“Ellen. Ellen. Look at this.” Ruby held up her phone. A video of a dog failing to catch a ball. The dog missed and the ball bounced off its head and the dog looked confused.
Ellen watched it. “That dog’s broken.”
“That dog is doing its best.” Ruby played it again. “Monna, look.”
“I’ve seen it,” Monna said. “You sent it to me at two in the morning.”
“It’s better with sound.”
Lynn looked up from her phone. “Why does your cat sit on your backpack every single day?”
“Because he loves me.”
“He’s sitting on your homework so you can’t leave.”
“That’s what love is, Lynn.”
Ellen stole one of Monna’s fries. Monna moved the tray closer to her without looking. Ruby played the dog video a third time. Lynn went back to her phone.
The bell rang. They got up. Ruby linked her arm through Ellen’s on the way out, which she did sometimes, grip loose and easy, already talking about something else. And then Ruby shoved another ticket into her hand after they linked arms. Ellen saw it coming. No surprise.
—
Ellen came home and the kitchen was dark.
Dark. Empty. Chair pushed in and the table bare except for the tickets. Teapot in the cupboard where it lived when nobody needed it.
Ellen stood in the doorway. Bag on her shoulder. Lollipop. Usually Corin was here and the kettle was going or about to go. Today the kitchen was a room and nothing else. She tried to remember. Rina said something at breakfast. Or yesterday. Corin’s name and something about an address, a client, a deep-clean. Ellen had been eating toast and looking at her phone.
She went through the house. Lycaon’s study: strings, closed door. Rina’s room: the bangboo behind the door, Drusilla saying something quick. Hallway. Stairs. Corin’s door at the end of the upper hall, closed. She stood in front of it. Nothing on the other side. Not Corin’s kind of nothing. The loud kind, the effortful kind, Corin working hard to take up less room. This was just a door with no one behind it. She went back downstairs.
Kitchen. The chair. She sat. Cushion warm from the window but the room was wrong. No kettle sound, no cloth on the counter. None of the Corin-sounds, the small ones. Whispered apologies, pigtails brushing her collar, cloth going in circles. The kitchen was surfaces and light. She sat there alone. She looked at the tickets. Seven. Ruby’s Fridays, carried here in her jacket, tended by Corin.
The shark. White, with stitched-on eyes. She’d had it between her third home and her fourth. Left it on a bed she didn’t know was the last time she’d sleep in it. Hadn’t taken it because she didn’t know she was leaving, and by the time she knew she was in a car and the shark was in a room that wasn’t hers and she couldn’t. She couldn’t go back for it. Nobody goes back for a stuffed shark. Her mother’s voice was like that too. Gone before she knew to hold onto it.
She was gripping the table edge. Let go.
She reached for the nearest ticket. The oldest one, first Friday. Edges soft from being straightened over and over by Corin’s hands. Cheap cardstock. Two hundred dennies.
She flipped her tail around and pressed the rough underside against the first silver circle.
Ruby asked every Friday, use your tail, it’s lucky, and Ellen always said later, and later never came. She pressed and dragged and the pressure was wrong, too hard, and the cardstock buckled and she eased off and tried again. The foil came away in a thin gray curl. A number underneath.
She stopped. Looked at the symbol. Didn’t check the prize grid. Which was stupid. It was a scratch-off.
She scratched the second symbol. Easier. Her tail found the pressure. Third. Scritch. The sound Ruby called lucky. She flipped the ticket. Checked the grid.
Nothing. Loser.
Face-down on the table. She picked up the second ticket. Easier now. Three parts, three curls of gray, three numbers that didn’t match. Third ticket. Fourth. The kitchen getting dark. Orange gone and what was left was gray-blue, the color right before a room stops being a room. She could see herself in the window over the sink. More shape than face.
She stopped after the fifth. Put it down half-scratched. One and a half parts done and the others still sealed and her hands were shaking. She watched them do it. Up. Sink. Mouth under the tap. Water cold and tasting like pipe and she stayed there, bent over, water on her chin, breathing through her nose, until her hands stopped. Back. Sat down. Finished the fifth. Did the sixth and seventh faster, foil coming off in chunks, her tail scraping hard enough the sound changed. More rip than scritch.
Losers. All of them.
She pulled it out of her pocket. The eighth ticket. She did this one slow because it was the last one and after this there wouldn’t be any left sealed. She sat with it. Then scraped the last part.
Also nothing.
Eight tickets. Eight losers. Every one.
She looked at them spread on the table. Symbols showing. Foil in gray curls. They’d been worth nothing this whole time. Even sealed. Even when Corin was dusting around them. Already losers before anyone looked.
She breathed out.
She gathered them up. All eight, scratched and done. Held them in a stack. She could throw them away. That’s what you did with losing tickets.
She put them back on the table in a pile.
Corin would come back, whenever she came back, and she’d find the pile and they’d be scratched. All of them. The seals she’d dusted around for eight weeks, opened. She’d know Ellen had been here alone and done it. And her first thought would still be that she’d done something wrong. Ellen sat in the chair and looked at the pile. Kitchen dark now. Real dark. She could still see the tickets because the silver caught what light was left.
She thought about Rina’s voice at breakfast. Corin. A client. An address she hadn’t caught.
She stood up. The chair moved and then it didn’t.
She went upstairs slow. The hallway dark. She didn’t turn on the light, went by feel, hand on the wall, wallpaper under her fingers with its raised pattern. Past Lycaon’s door, strings quiet. Past Rina’s door, bangboo humming low. Past Corin’s door. Her room. She lay down with her jacket on. The pillow. The soap. The ceiling with its thin line of hallway light.
She didn’t sleep in four minutes. Didn’t sleep in ten.
Corin’s hands. The way she placed each ticket along the edge. The shark with stitched-on eyes and the bed she’d left it on. Ruby at the crosswalk saying use your tail. She’d used it. Alone in a dark kitchen. It wasn’t lucky. The tea. How it got better. How she’d said “not as strong” and Corin made it not as strong and she’d said “better,” the one word, not looking up, and that sound Corin made. That breath. Tomorrow. Corin coming back and finding the pile.
She’d be there. She didn’t know what she’d say. Probably just sit there, tail over the side, like always, like it was nothing, except she’d be there because she wanted to be. Kitchen. Chair. Tea. A girl who lined up scratch-off tickets along a table edge. That was the whole stupid thing and she wanted it so bad her teeth hurt and she already had it, that was the part that didn’t make sense, she was already there, she’d been going for eight weeks, so why did it feel like something she could still lose. The ceiling. The line of light. The shark. Corin measuring the gap between two tickets with her thumb.
She closed her eyes. The four-minute clock started and failed and started again.
Downstairs the pile of scratched tickets sat on the table where the line had been. Gray foil curls around them. The chair went cold.