The Allergen List

Riley has spent twenty-seven years believing her body is made of glass. Her parents raised her on a strict list of forbidden foods, filling her plate with plain boiled vegetables while her younger brother Tyler feasted on steak and crab legs. Her mother's mantra was simple: those foods would kill her.

Then a spoonful of oyster sauce in a dish at her boyfriend Jared's family dinner should have sent her into anaphylactic shock. It didn't. Alone in her apartment, Riley devours everything she was ever denied — milk, mango, steak, shrimp — and nothing happens. The illness that defined her life was never real.

Now, summoned home for Sunday lunch, Riley sits before her usual plate of boiled spinach and begins to question the parents who built her life around a lie — and the dowry they expect her to pay for.