Our family group chat is called Fam ❤️. Five people. Me, Mom, Dad, my sister Zoe, my little brother Sam. Tonight my phone buzzed and the header said 6 members. The new one had no name. No profile photo. Just a gray circle. Mom: "who is this??" Three dots. Typing. Then it sent one photo. Our living room. The couch. Dad's mug on the coffee table, still steaming. Taken from inside the house.

Sam: "lol i'll just kick them" Sam removed the member. The header said 5 again. Mom typed "must be a glitch" and Zoe sent a thumbs up. For one minute it was a normal Tuesday. Then my phone buzzed. "[no name] joined the group." Nobody added them back. There's no way to add yourself. 6 members.

Mom: "everyone OUT. leave the chat. we'll make a new one." We all left, one by one. I made the new group myself. Added exactly four people. Named it Fam 2. It sat quiet for a minute. I watched it. Then the header changed. 6 members. The gray circle: "You forgot to add me."

Sam started crying. Mom turned the wifi off at the wall, like that would do anything. The gray circle posted one more time: "New rule. Nobody leaves the group again." That was two years ago. We text good morning every single day, all five of us. We have never missed a day. We don't say why. On my aunt's phone, our family chat shows five members. On ours, six. We don't talk about it. We just never leave.