Chapter 2

I ran until I reached a small park a few miles away from the school. I collapsed onto a bench, my whole body trembling. The adrenaline started to fade, replaced by a deep, hollow coldness. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to stop the shaking, but it was no use.

My mind was a chaotic storm of images from two lifetimes. Ethan's confused eyes. The red stain. My mother's furious face. The hard impact of the marble floor.

It was all real. It had all happened. And it was all happening again.

But this time, I wasn't in it. I was here, on a park bench, safe.

And I felt a bitter, ugly relief.

In the Miller family, I was an afterthought. Ethan was the quiet, diligent son. And then there was Ashley.

Ashley was my parents' adopted daughter. They took her in when she was ten, after her parents supposedly died in a car crash. From the moment she stepped into our house, she became the center of their universe. Especially our mother's.

Dr. Olivia Miller, the brilliant surgeon who could mend the most complex parts of the human brain, was a completely different person at home. For Ashley, she was a doting, endlessly patient mother. Ashley was her little princess. She got designer clothes, expensive vacations, a brand-new car the day she turned sixteen.

For Ethan and me, her biological children, she had only criticism and neglect. Our good grades were never good enough. Our needs were always an inconvenience. We were the extra, annoying pieces of furniture in the house Ashley owned.

My father, Robert Miller, was quieter. He saw the blatant favoritism, but he rarely challenged my mother. He loved us, I think, in his own passive way, but he was tired. It was easier to let Olivia have her way than to fight the constant battles. So he let it happen. He watched as we became ghosts in our own home.

I remembered my sixteenth birthday. I had asked for a specific art set, something I had saved up half the money for. My mother had scoffed.

"What a waste of money, Chloe. You should be focusing on your studies, not doodling."

That same week, Ashley mentioned wanting a new handbag she saw in a magazine. The next day, the five-hundred-dollar bag was sitting on her bed.

I had tried so hard to win their affection. I got straight A's. I won academic awards. I helped around the house. Nothing worked. In their eyes, I was just the jealous, difficult older sister to perfect, sweet Ashley.

Any complaint I made about Ashley was twisted into an attack.

"Chloe, you need to be more understanding. Ashley has been through so much trauma," my mother would say, her voice sharp with disappointment.

And Ashley played her part perfectly. She was always sweet, always innocent, always the victim. But I saw the small, triumphant smirks she shot me when our parents weren't looking. I knew she was manipulating them, but no one would ever believe me.

In my last life, I had fought against it until my last breath. I had tried to expose Ashley's lies, tried to make my mother see me, see Ethan. It got me nothing but a shove down the stairs.

This time, I was done. I wouldn't fight for the love of people who were incapable of giving it. I wouldn't waste my breath on a family that was already broken beyond repair.

Let them have their perfect little world with their perfect little Ashley. I wanted no part of it.

My phone started ringing in my pocket, jolting me back to the present. The screen lit up with a picture of my father.

I stared at it, my heart pounding. I knew what this call was about.

I let it ring, the sound cutting through the quiet park. It stopped, then started again. And again.

On the fifth call, I finally pressed the green button, my hand still shaking.

"Chloe? Chloe, where are you? Are you okay?" My father's voice was tight with panic.

"I'm fine," I said. My own voice sounded strange, flat and distant.

"There was a shooting at the school library," he rushed on, his words tumbling over each other. "Your brother... Chloe, Ethan was shot. We're at St. Mary's Hospital. You need to come right now."

The words were the same. The hospital was the same. The tragedy was the same.

"Okay," I said, the single word feeling heavy in my mouth. "I'll be there."

I hung up the phone and stood up. My legs felt weak, but I forced them to move. I started walking towards the hospital. Not as a grieving sister. Not as a part of their family.

But as someone who was about to watch a play she had already seen the ending to. And this time, I would make sure everyone saw the final act.