The Gift that Killed Me

My mother loved obedience tests. I told her I couldn't eat ginger, and she put it in every single meal. "Who's allergic to ginger? You're just being picky." For my eighteenth birthday she went out and bought half a ton of it, then made an all-ginger banquet and a bottle of homemade ginger perfume. She looked at me, pleased with herself. "Ginger cures everything. I'm doing this for your own good." "Only a spoiled kid refuses ginger. I minced it all up this time. Let's see you pick it out now." My mother was delighted. As far as she was concerned, the test had worked. What she didn't know was that I'd never lied to her. My ginger allergy was severe. Once I'd eaten or breathed in that much of it, the symptoms would build over the next two hours, and they could kill me. Chapter 1 I stared numbly at the birthday spread: ginger-glazed pork loin, ginger-roasted duck, ginger scalloped potatoes... even the dessert was ginger panna cotta. Except for the potatoes, where the ginger lay in visible strips, everything had been minced so fine there was no way to pick it out. I suddenly remembered my mother asking gently what I wanted for my eighteenth birthday. I'd thought it was a rare moment of warmth after my parents' divorce. I'd repeated the same request more than once. "Anything's fine, as long as there's no ginger. I'm allergic to it." It never occurred to me that this was another obedience test. Looking at the meal she'd prepared so carefully, I couldn't summon a trace of appetite. The smell of ginger flooded my nose. Nausea surged up my throat, and I bolted for the bathroom and threw up. My mother stormed in after me, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and hauled me upright. "Who gave you permission to throw up? I paid for every bite of that and spent hours cooking it. What right do you have to waste the body I gave you?" She dragged me back to the living room and picked up the bowl of ginger panna cotta. "Eat it." I shook my head desperately. "I really am allergic, Mom. I'll do whatever you want about everything else. Just don't make me eat ginger..." She hesitated, set me down, and carried the bowl into the kitchen. I thought she'd finally believed me, and let myself breathe. Then she came back with a smaller bowl, packed to the rim with minced ginger. This time there wasn't even any cream. She looked at me the way you'd look at a child too young to know better. "Stop being picky. How could anyone be allergic to ginger? "You just haven't had enough of it. Eat more and you'll learn to like it." The spoon came toward my mouth. "Be a good boy and take one bite. Ginger's good for you." I clenched my teeth shut. "Eat it, Lucas. Eat." The spoon tore into my gums. I cried out, and a mouthful of minced ginger went down. Blood welled up in my mouth, and it hurt less than whatever was tearing open in my chest. After the divorce, my mother had fallen in love with obedience tests. From the clothes I wore to the colleges I applied to, everything had to go through her. As the tests escalated, the way she looked at me kept getting colder. I wasn't her son anymore. I was a machine that was supposed to take orders. The ginger made me cough until my face was streaked with tears and mucus, and my mother smiled, satisfied. "See? You can eat it just fine. You really are your father's son. Always putting on a show." I tried to hold everything in, and two lines of tears got out anyway. Fat drops splashed across the back of her hand. She froze, then her face went dark and she seized my chin. "Didn't I tell you crying isn't allowed? I made this body and I raised it. You don't shed a single tear without my permission. "You're as heartless as that deadbeat father of yours. Ungrateful little snake." She looked at the ginger scattered across the floor during my struggle like it broke her heart, then took out her phone and snapped a few pictures. A notification chimed on my own phone. She'd photographed the barely touched dishes and the panna cotta sitting in the trash and posted them to the extended-family group chat. "My son turned eighteen today. I was up at five cooking a whole table of food for him and he wouldn't touch a bite. He begged me for dessert, so I made it, and he threw it in the garbage. What's a mother supposed to do?" Every reply under it called me an ungrateful little snake. Once she'd sent it, she turned and looked at me, cold. "Don't think turning eighteen means you're out from under me. Push back again and I'll post all of it to your class group chat. Once you have a job I'll show up at your office and make a scene, and we'll see how much humiliation you can take." Her voice was sharp enough to cut, and every word made it harder to breathe. Worse than that: heat was crawling across my face, and a sharp pain had started twisting through my stomach. My heart sank. The reaction had started. Chapter 2 While my mother cleared the dishes, I hurried into my bedroom for my auto-injector. Because I knew how much she loved obedience tests, I kept my epi pen within reach at all times. Before I could use it, the bedroom door swung open without warning. I shoved the injector behind my back. My mother walked over and touched my cheek. "Why is your face so hot?" She noticed my hands behind me and frowned. "What are you hiding? Give it to me." I was shaking as I explained. "It's my allergy medication. I've told you I'm allergic to ginger, Mom." She tore the injector out of my hand and shouted. "Did I say you could use that?" I scratched at the fresh welts rising along my arm and understood that the reaction was getting worse. I was running out of time. I begged her to give it back. Instead she pulled out a bottle of homemade ginger extract and sprayed it all over me. "Ginger burns a cold right out of you. You're just run down. "Allergic to ginger? I've sprayed plenty of it on you and you're still standing." Ignoring me completely, she strapped on a garden sprayer and filled the whole house with ginger mist. "Quit the act. I invited your classmates over to celebrate. They'll be here any minute. "A little fragrance will keep them from catching whatever you've got." The house went thick with ginger. Dense red welts came up across my arms, my thighs, my neck. I tried to step outside for air, and she blocked the door and called it treatment. "Once your body gets used to it, it won't bother you anymore." I knew a new round of testing had started. I couldn't stop her, so I called 911, covered every inch of skin I could, and prayed I'd stay conscious until help arrived. My classmates showed up not long after. The second I saw Tyler Vance and his friends, I started shaking. These were the boys who'd bullied me. They'd shredded my textbooks, put a dead rat in my desk, and accused me of cheating because they couldn't stand my grades. Back when my mother found out, she hadn't wasted a single word arguing about it. She'd marched into the school with a kitchen knife and made them apologize to my face. So how was she inviting them to my birthday now? Tyler came over laughing and clapped my shoulder like we were old friends. "Happy birthday, Lucas." Then he leaned in and murmured, "Bastard. Wait till you see what I do to you." "Ah!" Before I could react, Tyler went down on the floor. His leg caught the corner of the table and opened a shallow cut. "Seriously, man? I reported you for cheating and this is what you do?" I fumbled for an explanation, and my mother slapped me before I got it out. She stared at my covered-up body with disgust. "If you can lie about an allergy, of course you cheated. You had it coming." Then she turned to Tyler, all warmth. "Tyler, I was wrong about you before. My son cheated, and I'm sorry." Mom, weren't you the one who put me behind you and swore you'd always believe me? When I came home too scared to sleep, weren't you the one who sat up all night with me? How did the woman who promised to believe me and protect me end up standing with the people who hurt me? My eyes stung, and I forced it back down. The next second she had me by the collar, her voice full of contempt. "Crying, again? What kind of man cries this much? Apologize to Tyler. Right now." The reaction kept climbing, and the welts spread across my chest. I couldn't tell anymore whether the tightness in my throat came from the ginger or from her. I pushed through the pain and tried to explain. "I didn't cheat. They cut up my clothes and locked me in the restroom..." She cut me off, flat. "Why is it always you they pick on and nobody else?" She stripped off my outer layer, baring arms gone an ugly, unnatural red. "There's no smoke without fire. Look at you, soft and pretty, exactly like that pretty-boy father of yours. If Tyler hadn't toughened you up, you'd be out selling yourself to rich women by now." I couldn't believe a mother had said that out loud, and I broke. "Mom!" She watched me cry without a flicker of feeling and pressed down on my shoulders. "Don't play the victim. Have you forgotten what I taught you? A real man owns his mistakes. "Tyler took the blame for you all that time. Now get on your knees and apologize." Chapter 3 I couldn't believe what I was hearing. A mother was ordering her own child onto the floor to apologize to the boy who tormented him. But I had nothing left for anger. The reaction was accelerating. The pain in my gut sharpened, the welts burned and itched, and I couldn't pull in a full breath. I was gasping when I begged her. "Give me the injector. I feel so bad..." She still didn't believe the allergy was real. She waved the auto-injector in front of my face and smiled, cold. "Still acting? Let's see how long you can keep this up. "On your knees. A real man owns what he's done. Get down there and apologize to Tyler and I'll give you the medicine." I knew what this was. Making me apologize to my bully was about breaking something inside me. I was too weak to fight it. She bore down on my shoulders, and I was seconds from kneeling in front of my entire class. Then a gentle voice cut in. "Mrs. Merrick, what you're doing is wrong." I turned and saw Jenna Holloway, our class president. When Tyler's group went after me and everyone else pretended not to see it, Jenna was the only person who'd still talk to me. She was the one light in three miserable years, and someone I was grateful for all the way down. Jenna pulled me upright, put herself between us, and looked my mother straight in the eye. "Mrs. Merrick, I sat directly behind Lucas during that exam. I can testify he did the whole thing himself. He didn't cheat." Something warm went through me that I'd never felt before. My own mother wouldn't believe me, and a stranger's daughter had stepped up anyway. That was when my mother shrieked and went at Jenna with her nails. "If you were taking the exam, what were you doing staring at my son? "Little tramp. Trying to get your hooks into him?" The boys' eyes slid back and forth between Jenna and me, smirking. I'd gone numb to my mother's need to control everything years ago. What I couldn't take was watching her twist the one person who'd helped me. I explained frantically. "There's nothing going on between us." Under my mother's screaming, nobody believed a word of it. Jenna just smiled and comforted me instead. "It's okay, Lucas. We know the truth. Their ignorance doesn't change it." I wanted to smile back at her. But there was nothing left in me. My throat was closing, my hands and feet were going cold, and my thoughts were coming apart. I didn't know if I'd last until the ambulance came. I caught my mother's pant leg and slurred out a plea. "Medicine... please..." If she'd given it to me right then, I might have had a chance. Seeing how bad I looked, she hesitated and drew out the injector. I reached for it with everything I had left. Tyler snorted, crossed the room to her, and held up his phone. "Mrs. Merrick, don't blame Jenna for this. Your son's the one who's gone off the rails. Look at these." My mother took one glance, pulled the injector back, and threw the phone into my face. "I go without so you can go to school, and this is how you pay me back?" I picked the phone up and stared, horrified, at hundreds of pictures of me drinking and half-undressed in some club. How did they exist? Under her thumb, I'd never set foot in a place like that. Tyler's smug grin told me everything. I raised a shaking hand and pointed at him. "They're... AI... deepfakes..." Tyler deliberately talked over me. "Mrs. Merrick, Lucas has been scratching at himself all day. Who knows what he picked up?" Half believing him, my mother yanked my scarf down and saw the welts crowding my neck, the plainest proof there was. She didn't give the injector back. She slapped me. "So that's what those red spots are. Now they're on your neck too. What filthy thing did you catch?" I'm allergic to ginger, Mom. Why would you take an outsider's word over your own son's? I fought to get the words out and only made broken sounds. That was when Tyler cast the images onto the television, and the jeering started. Brett Kaminski said, "Kid's got a future in that line of work," and Devon Pryor laughed and added, "So much for the honor student." Even Jenna, who'd been standing in front of me a minute before, backed away like I was something filthy. "Lucas, that's disgusting. Maybe your mother had you pegged after all." The revulsion in her eyes went into me like a blade. I tried to explain and could only rasp. My vision blurred, and the last thing I saw before it all went out was my mother dropping the auto-injector into the trash and looking at me with contempt. "It's a common cold. You are such a disappointment, Lucas. Can't you be tough for once in your life?" But it wasn't a cold, Mom. It was an allergy, and your obedience test was really about to take me away from you. My breathing got heavier until I couldn't answer at all. A film settled over my eyes, and my heart clenched down until it felt like it would tear. "Thud." I couldn't hold on anymore. I went straight down into the enormous birthday cake.