My Mother Is Faking Everything

Summary

A line of glowing text drifted across my vision, shimmering like a glitch in the air: She’s been through three lifetimes and she still hasn’t realized her mother is faking the illness.

I froze.

Today was the morning of the National Merit Finals—the single most important day of my academic life. And yet, here I was, locked in my own bedroom. My mother was having another "episode." She claimed her prosopagnosia—her face blindness—had flared up again. She screamed that I wasn't her daughter; she claimed I was her mother-in-law, the woman who had tormented her for years.