The View from the Top by Hillary Frank Page B

down to find blood trickling down her heels. Blade must’ve been too sharp. Or too dull, maybe.
    She stepped out onto the floor and dragged her feet along the tiles, tracking trails of blood behind her—and in the never-ending reflections. She wondered what would happen if she’d cut her wrists instead of her heels.
    How long would it take for her parents to realize she was lying in the tub bleeding?

    Mary-Tyler headed down the hall in one of her many black bathing suits—an athletic racer-back-type thing, to keep all her stuff tucked in neatly. Though, again, why did it matter if only her parents ever saw her? One of these days, she thought, I should buy a two-piece. Nothing too risqué—a tankini or something. Maybe she’d do it today, even, to go with her freshly shaven armpits and legs.
    She walked down the spiral staircase, and when she got to the first-floor landing, she stopped and checked the thermostat. Sixty-eight degrees. Way too cold. She turned it up to seventy-five. No, seventy-six. Why did it need to be so cold in here when her parents spent all day outside anyway?
    She punched the warming button up one more degree, then continued through what her mom called the “sitting room,” the “den,” and the “sunroom” until she reached the kitchen. There, she opened the fridge and found a plate wrapped in tinfoil, topped with a Post-it with her name on it. She lifted the foil. Today it was blueberry pancakes with bacon. Plus a glass of freshly squeezed juice, which sat beside the plate. When they were at the “cottage,” Mary-Tyler’s dad was in a constant state of squeezing oranges. That is, when he wasn’t keeping an eye on the workers.
    Being in the kitchen always put Mary-Tyler on edge. There were just too many things in there that she imagined could be used to damage herself. Obviously, there were knives, which she could use to chop off her hands.
    But then there were other things, like boiling water or hot coffee, which she could dump all over her bare feet. Or the vegetable peeler, which could scoop out her eyes.
    Trying not to look at the fancy gigantic corkscrew on the counter, she grabbed her breakfast, plus a bottle of pure maple syrup, and brought them out to the patio table.
    The gardeners’ snipping had fallen into a pattern of threes, echoing the call-and-response of the birds around them. There would be a snip-snip-snip from one, then a snip-snip-snip from the other—a waltz over the drone of a distant lawn mower.
    Mary-Tyler poured herself a puddle of syrup, then plunged a strip of bacon into it and bit off an end. Cold, but still crisp. Just how she liked it.
    â€œNo, see there have to be two of each,” she heard her dad say up ahead of her, somewhere inside the topiary. “Otherwise they can’t reproduce.”
    â€œBut it’s bushes, man!” one gardener said. “Bushes can’t do the reproduce!”
    â€œTheoretically, I mean,” her dad said sternly.
    More snipping sounds.
    â€œIt makes perfect sense!” she heard her dad say. “Haven’t you ever read the story?! If we get flooded, we’re all set!” He chuckled.
    No laughter from the gardeners.
    Mary-Tyler burst a berry against the roof of her mouth.
    â€œMake sure one’s a male and one’s a female,” her dad said. “Because obviously, that’s the only way it’ll work. Got it?”
    He emerged from behind a rhinoceros and shook his head disapprovingly at a row of tree-shaped bushes, which he’d been going on about nonstop last night at dinner.
    â€œThey look too ... lollipop-ish,” he’d said.
    Of course, Mary-Tyler had to pipe up and inform him that that wasn’t even a word.
    â€œToo much like a lollipop,” he’d clarified.
    â€œI know what you meant,” she’d snapped. “But I just don’t get it.”
    â€œGet what?”
    â€œWhy you have to