My parents may take the sky away from me, but they aren’t touching my bake sale. Nothing is stopping me from raising funds to feed hungry little kids with food-stuffed backpacks, not even my shaky legs. Just the thought that any kid in our community, let alone the entire world, doesn’t have enough to eat—eat!— makes me want to spend an entire week cooking. Aminta’s promised to pick up the miniature cupcakes and bite-size brownies after Souper Bowl Sunday, and Caresse is printing out my (short) article on hunger in America. Two hours after my showdown with my parents, I throw open the freezer to look for the flour. It’s no longer jammed full of Ziploc baggies of frozen soup from our canceled Souper Bowl last week; all of those are defrosting in our fridge. I cannot bring myself to care that the soup won’t be custom-themed for the game this week.

Out of nowhere comes the familiar, searing heat of my sister’s irritation. “Thanks to you,” Roz snipes, “I’m not allowed to go to India with Auntie Ruth anymore. Now they’re all paranoid about the malaria meds.”

I shut the freezer door without removing anything. “But they don’t know for sure if the drugs made me photosensitive. It could be anything, a freak of nature.”

“Does it matter?”

Roz is right. When our parents are in serious lockdown mode, logic doesn’t matter. I tell her, “I’m sorry.”

Roz sniffs. “It’s not fair that I’m being punished because of you.”

“Welcome to my life.”

“You’ve never been punished for me.” Offended, she crosses her arms in front of her chest. Wait for it, wait for it. And there it is: the royal lift of her nose.

“Can you say, personal driver?”

“You were going to school anyway.”

“At five thirty in the morning?”

“I have to go then, too.”

“That’s the point. I didn’t.” My thoughts, usually so tightly contained, burst through every lock I’ve bolted in place: Be the good girl, the good friend, the good big sister.

Roz narrows her eyes. “You’re always so mean.” Then, as always, the cry of the mortally wounded little girl who needs protection from the big, bad older sister: “Mom! Dad!”

To which, I dismiss her with a shrug and return to setting out my ingredients.

“Mom!” Roz hollers, since I’m not caving or apologizing, frantic to make it up to her. “Dad!”

The parent brigade rushes in to find Roz ready as always to air her complaints about me. With both hands on the back of her chair, legs spread wide, she could be addressing her crew team. “Why should I be punished just because Viola got sick?”

“It’s called being prudent,” says Dad patiently. “What if Viola’s condition is genetic? There aren’t enough studies to know. Why chance you getting sick, too?”

“But I didn’t do anything,” Roz wails. “This is all Viola’s fault.”

That is my cue to leave before Hurricane Rosalind gathers force, but I can’t abandon those hungry kids. Silently, I turn to fetch the butter, but my legs feel weak. My hands shoot out to the kitchen island at the same time that Dad wraps his arm around me.

“Gotcha, princess,” he says, which is just about the worst thing he could call me now, the nickname that had been mine until it was given to Roz as her birthright.

“You always need all the attention,” she snarls at me. “Oh, I’ve got another bake sale! Oh, I’ve got another cause to support! Oh, I’ve got to make all the soup for Souper Bowl Sunday. Whatever.”

“Rosalind!” Mom says, shocked.

Dad says to Roz in his best placating tone, “Princess, you don’t mean that.”

That princess is too little, too late, salt in my sister’s wounds. She snaps, “I do.”

Even Dad is looking at his little princess like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. While I should feel a spurt of vindication, I am woozy, something I won’t admit. Dad must see it because he lifts me into his arms.

“No bake-sale prep today,” Dad says.

“What do you need, honey?” Mom asks me. Again with the Mother Touch on my forehead like I have a cold or the flu, but this—this tender first responder attention for me before Roz is something that neither she nor I are used to.

“No, I’ve got to bake,” I tell them, but, tired, I stay put in Dad’s arms.

“Forget about that for now. Okay, honey, so we were thinking,” Dad says, shooting a look at Mom, who nods at him.

A new phase in my crisis management plan is about to be rolled out. I brace myself.

“You can choose,” Dad says.

I am literally shocked by those words. “What?”

“We finished the basement last week. It’s all ready for you, and our strongest recommendation is for you to be down there because it’s the safest place for you to be out of the light. But you can choose,” Mom echoes Dad.

“She gets the basement?” Roz explodes as if anyone in their right mind would agree to live in a den of wolf spiders.

Dad asks, “Want to see it?”

“Yeah, I would,” I say. There is nothing up here for me anymore.

No wonder they designated the basement as my final resting place. There is no chance of any light penetrating the windowless cement walls, now painted a warm shade of gray. Or of anything penetrating for that matter—not a hint of fresh air or the lilacs blooming in spring or even the barking of dogs trotting by our house. The exposed overhead light bulb that could have been part of a set for a horror movie has been covered in a UV-protective shell, diffusing a vague suggestion of candlelight glow. As if that was the design intent, candle-filled lanterns of all sizes accent the basement.

In the corner, five throw pillows in varying gradations of pink cover the platform bed. The soft sheepskin rug from the Shed has been transplanted here, now topping a nubby carpet so plush under my feet, I’ve become Tigger, bouncing as I approach the back wall embellished with large decals of affirmations—“Wake up and be awesome!” and Firefly quotes—“Time for some thrilling heroics.” My fuzzy, oversize beanbag chair occupies the back corner. Where the washer and dryer have gone, I don’t know.

This is my dream room, the dorm space I’ve been designing on Pinterest for the last three years. I’m astonished my parents knew. I lift my eyes to Dad to find Mom at his side; both are nervous and expectant at the same time. How many hours did they pour into creating this room, the one that would have been totally perfect if it had been upstairs along with everyone else, or better yet, in a college far, far away?

“No fair,” grumbles Roz, thudding down the stairs before gawping. “No. Fair.”

I’m about to say, “You take it, then,” because no matter how beautiful the trappings, there is no masking that this is a glorified bunker. Then I read the quote above the landing:

“One day you will take my heart completely and make it more fiery than a dragon.”—Rumi

My mind races to Josh and the dragon meteors and our fiery kiss.

If only that were true. I lower myself onto the bed. There, I find the blanket that Josh had wrapped around us, the one he had thrown over the sunroof to protect me.

“I’ll stay here,” I tell everyone.

“Oh, honey, that makes me so happy!” Mom says, and her face relaxes.

“It’s the best choice,” Dad agrees.

Roz clomps up the stairs: No. Fair. No. Fair.

So begins my stay in my very own Necromanteion.