I liked attention, but I didn’t like this kind of attention. I didn’t want pity. It was weak. My father was being weak. I remember that the word “professional” kept popping into my brain—my father was being unprofessional. How on earth was I going to be able to restore any dignity to this family I was born into? Now we were outcasts and we were victims. I could deal with being outcasts because I had Chet. He was never an outcast. Everyone loved Chet. My dad was an outcast, and now he was acting like a victim. He was making victims out of all of us. I stared at him hard with my eyes. Stop this.
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