A few days ago I finished a book called Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson. A friend recommended it to me and it is one of the most interesting books I have read (in a good way of course). It is about a young woman named Lillian who does a favor for someone who she reconnects with from high school, only this favor she does for her is pretty major. Lillian flashes back to when she was in high school; she didn’t fit in with the other students because she doesn’t come from financial means, while everyone else does. She befriends a young woman at the school named Madison, who, while she is rich like the other girls, doesn’t ostracize Lillian like they do. She is honest and upfront about her privilege and Lillian’s lack of privilege, but they remain on good terms. One night, Lillian’s family meets with Madison’s family over dinner, and Madison’s dad tells Lillian he and Madison need a huge favor from her. Madison did something that would have gotten her suspended from school, but they want Lillian to take the blame for what Madison did so that Madison can stay in school. Lillian is flabbergasted, but because she doesn’t want to damage her friendship with Madison, she goes along with it and gets suspended. At first, I was thinking, Welp, I guess that’s the end of that friendship. But, no, it’s not over. The book just got started after that.
Madison calls Lillian over to visit her home out of the blue, and even though they reconnect and catch up, that’s not all Madison called her over to do. Madison tells her that her husband’s first wife died of cancer and left him and Madison her two kids, who have a secret no one can know about: they catch on fire. Literally. At first, Lillian isn’t sure whether to go with this or not, and honestly when I first read this, I was like, Oh, no, girl you need to get out of there as fast as you can. But again, because Lillian doesn’t want to damage her friendship with Madison, she goes along with it and lets Madison give her the twins to take care of. When she first meets the twins, one of them severely injures Lillian on the eye (I can’t get into the description of the injuries here because they were pretty horrifying to read about) and pushes her into the pool. Carl, the chauffer, clearly knows that these twins are troublesome, but probably he is so used to Madison not taking responsibility for these kiddos and leaving it to him and Mary (the chef) to take care of them, he basically tells Lillian she needs to get it together, especially because she doesn’t have much experience caring for kids.
Madison does everything in her power and prestige to keep Lillian in her place, like “I am doing you a favor putting you in this toxic situation and I expect you to feel grateful for me, even though I don’t feel like I need to be grateful to you, even if you, not me, took care of these fire-catching kids.” However, as I learned more about the backstory of the kids, I felt a tinge of sympathy for them. Even though Madison tells Lillian their mother died of cancer, the twins one day find Lillian and Carl writing a list of things they can give the twins to keep them under control and not catch fire, and one of the things listed was sleeping pills. One of the twins finds out about the sleeping pills, and tells Carl and Lillian to not give her and her brother pills. She later tells Lillian that their mom committed suicide by taking sleeping pills and forced the twins to commit suicide by taking the pills, too. Lillian can empathize with the twins even though she doesn’t set on fire like they do, because she didn’t have an easy childhood either, and she understands what it’s like to not fit in or be accepted by others after her experience going to the prestigious school and not fitting in with the other students. The twins come to trust her when they realize she isn’t trying to change them, but is just genuinely trying to support them.
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