My Psycho Germaphobe Mom Ruined My Life

My mother has a strange obsession with cleanliness. Everything has to be scrubbed down with bleach before she considers it clean. I know full well how damaging bleach fumes are to the lungs, and I pull up research to talk her out of it. She finally stops. But then, my brother catches an infectious disease, and a doctor recommends disinfecting the floors with bleach. She turns on me immediately, screaming that if she hadn't listened to my nonsense, my brother never would've gotten sick. My brother hears this from her every single day and takes it to heart. When his condition gets worse, he pushes me off the top of a building. Maybe even God can't stand how unfairly I died, because I come back to life. Chapter 1 Before I even opened my eyes, the sharp smell of bleach hit me. I inhaled a lungful before I could stop myself and broke into a coughing fit. "Shut your mouth before you spit all over my clean floor," Mom's familiar angry voice rang out beside me. I wiggled my fingers and toes, slowly registering what had happened. I was still in one piece and perfectly healthy. I had been reborn, back to the very first day Mom started mopping the floors with bleach. Mom was an uneducated but fiercely confident woman from the countryside. Someone had told her that mopping with bleach killed germs, and she'd taken it as gospel and come straight home to put it into practice. The problem was she never read the instructions and had no idea how damaging bleach fumes were to the lungs. She just poured bottle after bottle of the stuff into the mop bucket. The concentration was so far beyond safe levels that pulling the mop out was enough to choke a person. In my last life, I'd fought tooth and nail to stop her, for the sake of everyone's lungs. She refused to listen, of course. It was only after I cited study after study and laid out case after case that she reluctantly switched back to plain water. I thought I'd saved the whole family. I thought they'd be grateful. But the truth was Mom never believed me. She resented me for it, and when my brother, Cody Aven, got sick later on, she pinned all the blame on me. Thinking about everything that had happened in my last life, I put on a smile. "I'm heading out, Mom. I'll let you get back to mopping. And make sure you add plenty of bleach. The more, the better for killing germs." She nodded at me approvingly. I didn't dare stay a second longer, terrified that every extra breath in that house was doing irreversible damage to my lungs. I grabbed my phone and bolted for the door. It was summer break. Every street and alley I walked past had signs advertising summer jobs. After some careful looking, I picked one that included room and board and headed home to pack my bags. In my last life, I hadn't gone out to work. I'd stayed home every day, studying for the SATs. But it wasn't long before Mom pulled me out of school. Her reasoning was that since Cody had already dropped out, it wasn't fair for me to keep going because it made him feel bad. So, she made me drop out too, to stay home and keep him company. Just like that, she killed my dream of going to college. Since I already knew I'd never get to take the SATs no matter what, there was no point in fighting it. Getting out of that bleach-soaked house was what mattered. That evening, I told Mom I was dropping out and that I'd already found a job. She was thrilled. "That's my good girl, already making money for your mother at your age. But why would you live somewhere else? Don't they charge for that? And you'd have to pay for food out there too, wouldn't you? "That's all money down the drain. You go tell your boss you won't be staying there. You'll come home every night, eat here, and sleep here. See if he'll give you a little extra for that." Chapter 2 Mom was torn. She liked that I'd found a job and could bring in extra income, but she didn't want to lose her free labor. After all, if I moved out, who was going to do all the housework? She'd gotten used to being waited on for years and had no intention of lifting a finger herself. She liked things clean, sure, but that didn't mean she liked cleaning. Why would she, when she could sit on the couch and order me around? I put on a troubled face. "You know how it is, Mom. I'm still underage. Most places won't even hire me. It wasn't easy finding this job." "What kind of boss won't let you come home at night? Tell me who it is. I'll talk to him. And if he still says no, you can just go work at your Aunt Peggy's husband's factory. The pay there is way better anyway." I dodged that suggestion as fast as I could, promising I'd talk to my boss about it. Mom was close with Aunt Peggy's family. If I actually went to work at her husband's factory, I'd never see a cent of my own paycheck. With my escape plan falling apart, all I could do was throw myself into work. I left early in the morning and came home as late as possible, trying to avoid the hours when Mom was mopping. Even so, I lived in constant fear that the bleach fumes were seeping into my lungs. The one small mercy was that I'd always slept on the enclosed porch. At night, I left the windows wide open to air things out. It was freezing, but at least I could breathe easily. My job started to settle into a routine, and then the news came that Cody had dropped out of school. Mom was so furious she choked on her own breath. "I worked myself to the bone to put you through school, and you just quit? You're the pride of the Aven family. You're supposed to carry on the family name and make something of yourself." Cody tossed his cutlery down without a care in the world. "Didn't Brielle drop out too? Why didn't you ever say anything to her about it? You only give me a hard time." Mom shot me a vicious glare, then turned back to coaxing him. "How can you compare yourself to her? You're the only son in this family, our one real hope for the future. It'd be such a waste for a smart kid like you to throw that away." I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing out loud. Cody was dead last in his entire grade, and dropping out was still "a waste"? By that logic, nobody should ever drop out. Cody was so spoiled he couldn't stand anyone disagreeing with him. The second Mom pushed back, he shoved her away. "Will you quit nagging? I told you, I'm not going back. Ever. If you think school's so great, go yourself. I don't need school to make the Aven name mean something." Mom couldn't win against him and eventually gave in. Cody hadn't been home two days before he and Mom were at each other's throats, and the reason was the bleach. She mopped with it every single day. I was out of the house during the day, and Dad had been living at his workplace and never came home, so Mom had long since gone nose-blind to the fumes. But Cody had just gotten back, and the smell hit him like a wall. "Are you trying to kill me? It smells like you dumped poison all over the floor." "Oh, sweetheart, that's just bleach. It's good for you. If I mop with this stuff, you won't get sick." Mom was delighted that Cody had finally noticed all the effort she put into keeping the house clean, and she started showing off about it. "Get rid of it. What is this garbage? I'm perfectly healthy, and I don't need this crap on the floor." Cody scowled. "Just listen to your mother. Would I ever do anything to hurt you?" Mom adored Cody more than anything, and when it came to his health, she refused to budge an inch, not even for him. She'd even convinced herself that his coughing was actually a good sign, that it meant his body was fighting off germs, and that the fumes were triggering some kind of detox reaction. She thought once the viruses inside him were killed off, the coughing would stop on its own. After all, she breathed it in every day now and didn't feel a thing. She went and mixed an extra-strong batch of bleach water and mopped Cody's room with it. He couldn't take it anymore. He stormed out and kicked over the mop bucket. Chapter 3 The entire bucket of bleach water spilled across the floor, and the fumes hit like a wall, filling the room in seconds. The liquid seeped into the cracks between the floorboards and wouldn't go away. "Look at this garbage. It's choking me out. Do you even realize that?" Cody was fed up. He grabbed Mom's mop and tried to snap it in half. But when he couldn't break it, he threw it down in frustration and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. Mom stood there helplessly. "I'm doing this for you. I'm your mother. Why would I ever hurt you?" She didn't dare yell at Cody, so she turned to me to vent instead. "Your brother doesn't appreciate what I'm doing for him. I'm trying to keep him healthy. How is that a bad thing?" Mom's lungs were already badly damaged from the bleach. She could barely get a few words out without coughing. But she had no idea that was the reason. That suited me just fine. "Mom, Cody's still young. He doesn't understand how much you care. You can't just let him have his way. Kids don't know about this stuff. When he's older, he'll see that you were only looking out for him." Mom nodded firmly and then started muttering to herself. "But what's wrong with me? I've been using bleach for so long that all the germs in my body should be gone by now. So why am I still coughing?" "You're overthinking it, Mom. It's probably just from getting so worked up with Cody. Don't let him get to you. He's still a kid. We just have to be patient with him." The last thing I wanted was for Mom to figure out what was really going on. To make sure she didn't get suspicious, I offered to take her to the clinic downstairs. It was a back-alley operation. The doctor, a guy named Walt Granger, had actually been a veterinarian. One time, in a pinch, he'd used animal medication on a human patient, and by some miracle, it worked. After that, Walt got a taste for easy money and converted his vet practice into a clinic. Treating people paid a lot better than treating animals. Most of the people in the neighborhood were elderly, and nobody ever questioned his credentials, so he'd gotten away with it all this time. And because Walt didn't hold back with his dosages, going way heavier than any real hospital would, his treatments worked fast. People swore by him. He had a solid reputation around the neighborhood. But I knew the truth about that clinic. In my last life, after Cody pushed me off the building, I hadn't actually died on impact. I'd held on, praying Mom would take me to a hospital. Instead, when she saw me lying there covered in blood but still breathing, she panicked and carried me to Walt's clinic in secret. Walt told her he could fix me. He stuck a needle in my arm, and I died right there on the spot. After that, Mom didn't want Cody taking the blame, and Walt didn't want to take the blame either, so they struck a deal and dumped my body together. Mom told everyone I'd run off with some older man, so my body was never found. Thinking about Walt's track record as a doctor, I smiled. Mom was going to be in great hands down the road. True to his veterinary roots, Walt didn't skimp on the dosage. One shot, and Mom's back stopped aching, her legs stopped hurting, and her cough vanished completely. It was practically a miracle cure. Walt was a genius, as far as she was concerned. But Mom still had questions. "Doctor, what's actually causing this? Why was I coughing like that?" Walt had no idea. His whole approach was to jab people with a needle and hope for the best. If it worked, great, and if it didn't, too bad. Diagnosing the cause of an illness was way beyond his pay grade. If he'd had that kind of knowledge, he would've gone into real medicine and never become a vet in the first place. I watched Walt put on a face that was trying very hard to look thoughtful but was really just confused, and I jumped in before he could say anything. "That's actually what I was wondering too, Dr. Granger. Do you think it could be stress-related? She's been fighting with my brother these past couple of days, and it's really gotten to her."