Chapter 3

Grandma Evelyn passed away when I was twelve.

It was incredibly sudden. She was sewing my socks the night before, and the next morning, she just didn't wake up.

I held her cold hand and cried for a whole day until my throat was hoarse and my tears ran completely dry. I felt like an empty shell.

My parents came back to handle the funeral. Chloe stood behind them, wearing a gorgeous floral dress and holding an ice cream cone.

Watching me cry with dirt and tears all over my face, she rolled her eyes and hid behind our mother.

After the funeral, my mother said, "You’re coming back to the city with us. You'll go to school there from now on."

I had no choice in the matter.

I was dragged into that house they called a home.

From that day on, my life turned into a slow, agonizing torture.

My parents' academic demands on me were borderline psychotic.

I had to get perfect scores. A single point missing meant a beating.

An A- meant a wooden ruler snapped across my palms.

A B meant kneeling on the hardwood floor of the hallway for two hours.

If my grade ever fell below a B, I wasn't allowed to eat dinner that night.

I remember once, I got a 97% on a calculus test because I misread a multiple-choice question.

My father stared at the paper for a long time before delivering a hard slap across my face.

The force spun my head around, and tears welled up in my eyes.

But he just screamed at me, calling me a brainless idiot, a worthless parasite, saying I didn't deserve to be his daughter.

That night, I lay in bed with my cheek swollen and my ears ringing.

Chloe pushed my door open. She held up her test sheet, which had a big red 'D' circled on it, and waved it in front of my face.

"Hey, Nora, guess what? Dad just gave me a hundred dollars because he said I showed improvement."

She giggled, her eyes curving into crescent moons. Then she leaned in close, whispering, "You are so pathetic."

As she turned to leave, I saw my mother standing at the end of the hallway, waving Chloe over with a bowl of freshly made dessert in her hands.

Meanwhile, I was starving, my face still burning from my father’s handprint.

I studied like my life depended on it. Not out of passion, but out of sheer, paralyzing terror.

I was terrified of the ruler, terrified of the kneeling, terrified of going hungry.

So I did practice questions, memorized textbooks, and took practice exams over and over, turning myself into a flawless test-taking machine.

I was the valedictorian of my class every single year.

I won state math championships, took first place in city-wide debate tournaments, and won national writing contests.

But to my parents, none of it mattered.

When I got first place, they never praised me; they only told me to make sure I kept it up.

When I got perfect marks, they didn't smile; they only said it was the bare minimum expected of me.

But what about Chloe?

When she barely scraped a passing grade, they took her to fancy dinners.

When she got a C, they bought her designer clothes.

Even if she just finished her homework on time, my mother would kiss her cheek and tell her she was the sweetest angel.

During junior year, I got the highest score in the entire district, ranking number one.

Chloe, on the other hand, scored in the bottom 5% of our class.

That night, my father was in the living room wiping Chloe’s tears, cooing, "It’s okay, baby. We’ll just try harder next time."

Then he turned his head to look at me, his eyes instantly turning ice-cold. "You. Go copy your prep vocabulary fifty times."

I opened my mouth, wanting to say that I hadn't made a single mistake, that I had a perfect score.

But I kept my mouth shut.

Because I knew all too well that no matter what I achieved, in their eyes, I would never compare to Chloe.

No, it wasn't just that I didn't compare.

It was that I was never considered worthy of being their child.

That night, I didn't sleep a wink.

Lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, those whispered words from their room kept looping in my head.

"We paid off the right people."

"As soon as the acceptance letter arrives, we'll throw a gala."

"You two look completely identical. Who could tell you apart?"

I began to piece together every single detail of our childhood.

Chloe had always been terrible academically. Everyone knew that.

She barely got by in middle school, and by high school, she was consistently at the bottom.

My parents hired private tutors for her, but it did nothing.

On her last mock SAT, she scored a 980.

Meanwhile, from freshman to senior year, I had consistently scored near-perfect scores on every major exam.