Chapter 4

A few hours later, there was a soft knock on the motel room door. I thought it was the manager, maybe complaining about the blood on the towel I'd used to clean my head. But when I opened it, Molly stood there, a smirk playing on her lips. The innocent, sweet facade was gone.

"Wow," she said, stepping inside and letting the door click shut behind her. "This place is even more of a dump than I imagined. Suits you."

She walked around the small room, running a finger over the dusty television.

"So, leukemia, huh? That' s a good one. Very dramatic. Almost as good as my 'orphan' story." She laughed, a cold, sharp sound.

"Why, Molly?" I whispered, my body too weak to even stand properly. I leaned against the wall.

"Why?" She spun around, her eyes glittering with a chilling intensity. "Because I had to survive, you idiot. My parents were dead. I was nothing. An orphan. People get tired of orphans. I had to be the perfect child, the sweet, traumatized girl who needed protecting. And you? You were in the way. You were the real daughter. I had to make sure they chose me, every single day."

She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial hiss. "The peanut allergy? I faked it. A doctor friend of my dad' s gave me a cream that causes a convincing rash. It was so easy. The bullying at school? I started the rumors about you, then cried to the principal that you were tormenting me. Every time you got in trouble, every time they looked at you with disappointment, they looked at me with love. I won."

She was inches from my face now. "And now, you're actually dying. It' s perfect. You're finally getting out of my way for good."

She slapped me, hard, across the same cheek my father had hit. I stumbled, and she kicked my legs out from under me. I crumpled to the floor, a wave of dizziness and pain washing over me.

"You'll die alone in a place like this," she gloated, standing over me. "And I'll have everything. Their love, their money, their future. It will all be mine."

She turned and left, slamming the door.

She didn't see the little green light on my old, beat-up laptop sitting open on the desk. She didn't see that the webcam had been recording for the past ten minutes.

With trembling fingers, I crawled to the desk. I stopped the recording. I saved the file. I opened my email and attached the video, sending it to my father, my mother, and my brother. Then, I uploaded it to the private, shared family photo album online, the one they used to post pictures of their perfect family vacations, pictures I was never in. The caption I wrote was simple: "The Truth."

Then, I deleted everything from my laptop, grabbed my duffel bag, and left the motel. There was only one place left to go. The only person who had ever shown me an ounce of kindness. Maria.