Chapter 4

The next morning, I watched my mom carefully change the band-aid on Brittany' s knee, which had a barely visible scratch. Brittany whimpered as if in great pain, and my parents showered her with sympathy.

A strange, dark feeling bloomed in my chest. It felt like satisfaction. Her tiny, fake pain was nothing compared to the throbbing ache in my head and the deep bruise on my heart. For a second, I was glad she was getting all the attention for something so small, because it made their cruelty to me seem even more ridiculous.

That afternoon, I went into my room. I gathered up all the report cards with their perfect grades, the certificates for academic achievement, all the proof of my efforts to win their approval. I took them out to the trash can in the backyard.

One by one, I tore them into small pieces. The rustle of the paper was the only sound. With each rip, I felt a little bit lighter. I was done. I was done trying to be the daughter they wanted. I was done trying to earn something they would never give me. I stuffed the pieces into the bin and walked away.

Grandma found me sitting on the back steps.

"It' s okay to let go, Chloe," she said, sitting beside me. "Your worth isn' t written on those papers. It' s in here." She gently tapped my chest, right over my heart. "You are smart, and you are strong. You don' t need them to tell you that. You just need to believe it yourself."

I went back to school with a new resolve. It wasn' t about them anymore. It was about me. My grades climbed even higher. At the parent-teacher conference, my teacher gushed about my potential.

My dad looked at the report card, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes.

"It' s a shame she isn' t a boy," he said to the teacher, right in front of me. "She could have really made something of herself."

The compliment and the insult came in the same breath. It didn' t hurt anymore. It just made me tired.

High school was a new world. It was bigger, and the other kids seemed so much smarter and more confident. The easy success I had in middle school was gone. For the first time, I struggled. My grades slipped. I felt like a fraud, like everyone could see that I was just the poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks.

I got a bad grade on a math test. My parents saw the report.

"See?" my mom said with a sigh. "I knew it wouldn' t last. She' s just not cut out for this."

My dad just shook his head. "Useless."

But Grandma was there. She looked at the same report. "You' re in a new place, Chloe. It' s hard to adjust. Don' t you worry. You' ll find your footing." Her belief in me was a lifeline.

One day in the school library, I overheard a group of seniors talking. They were talking about their college applications, about places like New York City, about art schools and dorm rooms and a life that sounded like it was from another planet. A new dream began to form in my mind, a tiny spark in the darkness. A life far away from here. A life that I could build for myself.

The spark became a fire a few months later. A girl in my year, Sarah, didn't come to school one day. Then we heard the story. Her parents had pulled her out to marry a man she' d never met. I saw her once more, in town with her family. They were dragging her along like a prisoner. Her eyes were empty. There was no light in them at all.

The sight terrified me. That could be my future. That was the future my father had planned for me. Marry some local boy. Stay here forever.

The fear and stress made me sick. I came down with a high fever. I lay in bed, shivering and weak. My parents barely noticed. After two days, Grandma finally forced them to call a doctor. My dad made the call, his voice full of annoyance, as if my illness was a huge inconvenience he had to "make time" to deal with.

Lying there, I made a promise to myself. I would not end up like Sarah. I would get out. I would study, I would work, I would do whatever it took to escape.