My Family Members Are Dolls That Never Respond To Me Chapter 06
Three or four people stood outside the door.
The woman in front held a microphone, a camera crew behind her.
Mom blinked.
“Can I help you?”
The woman smiled.
“Hi, sorry to bother you. We’re from the local news. We were hoping to interview Nora Sheldon.”
“Is she home right now?”
The expression on Mom’s face went stiff.
The rest of the room turned toward the door.
Dad frowned.
“Interview Nora? What about?”
The woman blinked, clearly not expecting that reaction.
“You haven’t heard yet?”
“Nora scored a 1590 on the SAT. That’s one of the highest scores this state has seen in years.”
“We tried the school first, but they told us she’d already left campus. So we came here.”
The room went dead quiet.
The hair clip in Annie’s hand slipped and clattered onto the floor.
Mom opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
Fifteen ninety.
One of the highest in the state.
The two facts landed like two hard slaps across every face in the room.
They had known Nora was smart. They had known her grades were good.
But no one had guessed she was this good.
When Leo got into the top engineering program, he’d only just squeezed in on a borderline score, the same as Annie had this year.
But Nora?
A solid 1590. One of the highest scores the state had produced in years.
Leo’s face was the ugliest of all.
Because he had never wanted to admit that Nora was better than him.
He had to work through a problem for a long time. Nora saw the answer at a glance.
The awards he broke himself getting home, Nora picked up as easily as breathing.
When his parents praised him, he was the pride of the Sheldon family.
But the second Nora stepped up beside him, all that praise felt like a hollow copy of hers.
So somewhere along the way, he’d started leaning toward Annie too.
Annie was slower. Weaker.
She needed him to teach her. She needed him to protect her.
Only in front of her did he get to stay the brilliant older brother forever.
Adrian was silent too, his fingers tightening around his phone without him noticing.
He knew better than anyone how smart Nora was. How brilliant she was.
And the more he knew, the less he could bear to look at her.
A boy’s love has its own small, unspoken vulnerabilities.
Nora shone too brightly.
Bright enough that standing beside her, he sometimes flinched from the light.
Then Annie appeared.
She looked up at him with wide eyes and asked him the simplest questions. She said it in that worshipful way, that Adrian was so incredible.
That feeling of being needed swept over the promise he had once made Nora, easily and completely.
The reporter was still waiting.
“So would Nora be available for an interview?”
“We also heard she didn’t apply to any of the top East Coast schools.”
“That’s a pretty surprising choice. Do you know where she ended up applying?”
Mom finally found her voice, dry and thin.
“She. She applied to schools in the West Coast harbor city.”
The reporter paused.
“The West Coast?”
She glanced down at her notes, hesitating.
“Actually, according to the school, Nora didn’t confirm her enrollment at any West Coast school.”
“They said her guidance counselor wasn’t willing to share where she’d gone. Something about respecting the student’s own wishes.”
Dad’s expression shifted.
“What does that mean? She didn’t go to the West Coast?”
The reporter startled at his tone.
“We. We don’t know either.”
“That’s actually why we came by. We were hoping to confirm.”
Mom fumbled for her phone and dialed Nora again.
Just the same mechanical voice.
“The number you have dialed cannot be reached at this time.”
The party menu, the venue photos, Annie’s admission letter, all of it, still spread across the coffee table, suddenly looked painfully out of place.
The reporter took in their darkening faces and finally sensed something was off.
She lowered her microphone, awkward.
“We’ll. Try to reach you another time?”
The moment the door shut, the phone slid out of Mom’s hand and clattered to the floor.
She stared at the silent chat window, murmuring.
“Nora. Where on earth have you gone?”