I turned eighteen on a Tuesday, and my family celebrated by telling me to leave.

There was no cake on the kitchen table that morning. No card. No candles. Just my father sitting across from me with his coffee, his wife stirring sugar into hers, and my stepbrother leaning back in his chair with his feet up on the rung of mine, looking strangely comfortable.

“Sit down, Nathan,” Dad said.

I sat.

“You’re eighteen now,” he said. “You’re an adult. Which means we’re done taking care of you.” He took a sip of coffee. “You need to move out.”

For a second, I honestly thought he was joking. My father didn’t joke much, but I thought maybe this was some kind of weird birthday prank. Maybe there’d be a cake in the fridge after all.

There wasn’t a cake.

“I still have three months of high school left,” I said. “Where am I supposed to live until graduation?”

Dad shrugged.

“You’ll figure something out.”

His wife, Carla, gave me one of her gentle smiles. The kind that never reached her eyes. She’d been giving me that smile for six years, ever since she married my father and moved into our house with her son.

“We’ve already packed your things, sweetie,” she said. “To make it easier for you.”

She nodded toward the front door.

Three white plastic bags were sitting on the floor beside it. Kitchen trash bags, the kind with the red drawstrings. I could see the sleeve of my gray hoodie sticking out of one of them.

Eighteen years of my life, and it fit in three trash bags.

Then I remembered my savings.

I’d been working since I was fifteen. Grocery shifts at Kessler’s Market, stocking shelves and bagging groceries after school. Washing dishes on weekends at a pizza place downtown. I’d skipped football games and parties and sleepovers. I’d saved almost every paycheck.

By my eighteenth birthday, I had a little over three thousand dollars in a savings account at First Federal. It was supposed to get me through the summer after graduation. A deposit on an apartment. A used laptop for community college. Food.

It was the only safety net I had.

“Where’s my money?” I said.

Dad barely looked up from his coffee.

“We used it,” he said.

“You what?”

“Applications. Fees. Things your brother needed.” He shrugged again. “Consider it rent. For living here.”

I couldn’t believe him.

I looked at Ethan, my stepbrother. He was a year older than me, a freshman at the state university, home for spring break. He was staring down at his cereal bowl.

I looked at Carla. She was still smiling.

I looked back at my father.

They’d taken the only safety net I had. Then they’d handed me three plastic bags and pointed at the door.

I carried my three bags out to my car.

It was a 2006 Honda Civic, silver, with a dented back bumper and a check engine light that had been on for two years. I’d bought it for nine hundred dollars from a guy at work. It was the only thing I owned that my father couldn’t take.

I put the bags in the back seat. I got in the driver’s seat. I closed the door.

I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cry until the door was closed.

I lasted about ten seconds.