The Game was Roux’s idea. More than an idea. A plan. She made it up herself, this shotgun of a game. She packed it tight with
salt and metal, counting on collateral damage, too, but she aimed it straight at me. She said it was like Never Have I Ever,but not any version I’d ever played. It began innocently enough, with everyone confessing the worst thing they’d done that
day.
None of us had ever heard of Roux’s rules, so it was possible she invented them that night, for us. For me. Or perhaps she’d
played this way before, spreading it, so that her game now cropped up at slumber parties when Truth or Dare or Two Truths
and a Lie had lost their shine. Only middle-school girls could safely play it, children whose worst thing was, I showed my bra to that boy I like, or I called my sister the b-word.
We should have known better.
We were grown-up women, so we packed our worsts away in hidden boxes. We were mothers, so we sank those boxes under jobs and
mortgages and meal plans. Mothers have to sink those boxes deep.
Roux announced herself with the knocker, three sharp raps, though of course we had a doorbell. It was at least twenty minutes
after every other neighbor who was coming had arrived.
