I tried to push myself up, but my arms shook. The concrete had scraped my palms raw. I could see tiny pieces of gravel embedded in the flesh of my left hand, blood welling up around them like garnets.

“Look at him,” Tyler announced, turning to address our assembled relatives like a prosecutor delivering his closing argument. “He’s been milking this wheelchair thing for two years, ever since the ‘accident’ that nobody actually saw.”

“I was there,” my mom said from somewhere in the crowd. Her voice was weak, uncertain, the voice of someone who’d been beaten down by two years of family gatherings exactly like this one.