My sister announced in the family group chat that I was officially banned from the reunion—and made it clear no one was to tell me where it would be. I didn’t argue. I didn’t reply. I simply opened the location pin… and laughed so hard I had to cover my mouth.

To understand why I am sitting in a hot rental car watching my family trespass in my beach house with the confidence of the historically unpunished, you have to understand what role I was assigned in the Morales family and how long it took me to stop performing it.

I am, by family mythology, the unremarkable one.

The intense one.

The difficult one.

The useful one.

I am thirty-four years old, at least according to the biography my family keeps on file for me, though I have long since learned that in my mother’s universe age is less a number than an instrument. I work in cybersecurity for a firm called Arborvale Tech Solutions. When polite strangers ask what I do, I usually say I work in data compliance because it sounds dry enough to end the conversation quickly. That phrasing has saved me from countless follow-up questions. It lets people categorize me as technically competent and socially dull, which is fine. Useful, even.