On my eighteenth birthday, my family played an after-dinner parlor game: rate your children on a scale of one to ten. When it came to my parents’ turn, I discreetly smoothed the pleats of my dress under the table, my knuckles white in my lap. My mother couldn’t stand tears, so when I broke my leg at seven, I bit the inside of my cheek until it bled, never shedding a single drop. My father demanded relentless excellence, so from middle school through senior year, my name never slipped from the top of the honor roll. They told me a good daughter is modest, uncomplaining, and invisible, so I never claimed a single piece of the world for myself. I didn’t expect a standing ovation. I just thought, maybe, I had earned a passing score. My mother looked across the centerpiece, her eyes flat and cool. “Zero.” My father nodded slowly, nudging his wine glass aside. “We have no use for a daughter like this anymore.” Someone laughed nervously down the table, pointing a fork toward Alyssa, my second cousin who had moved into our guest room six months earlier. “And what about Alyssa?” My mother’s face softened into instant, radiant warmth. “A perfect ten. Without a doubt.” The dining room erupted into easy laughter, everyone treating it like harmless banter. I forced the corners of my mouth upward, telling myself they were just teasing, just indulging our houseguest. When the guests departed, my mother turned to me and said she was taking me to the boardwalk pier the following morning. It was the first time in eighteen years she had offered to take me anywhere simply for the joy of it. I lay awake all night, watching the ceiling fan slice through the shadows, my chest buzzing with an electric, breathless anticipation. The next afternoon, suspended at the very peak of the Ferris wheel above the Atlantic, she reached over and gently smoothed a stray strand of hair behind my ear. It was the first time in eighteen years she had touched me with something resembling tenderness. But when the ride stopped and the attendant unlocked our wire gate, my parents were nowhere to be found. I searched the crowded boardwalk for three agonizing hours, the salt spray scraping the back of my throat. Finally, a tall man in a dark tailored coat stepped out from the shadows beneath the wooden arcade deck and blocked my path. “Stop searching,” he said quietly. “They returned you.” That was how I learned the truth: eighteen years ago, my parents had traded two lifetimes of accumulated grace to custom-order the flawless daughter from the Registry of Souls. Now, having grown tired of their bespoke creation, they had filed a recall. Dissatisfied inventory, marked for total dissolution. “That’s impossible,” I stammered, my voice trembling in the autumn wind. “I’ve done everything they asked. I’ve always obeyed.” He opened an antique black-bound ledger, flipping through the thin parchment pages, his brow furrowing slightly. “Curious. Your compliance and compatibility metrics are recorded at a flat one hundred percent.” With burning eyes, I gripped the heavy wool of his sleeve, begging him to let me go home. He studied me for a long, quiet moment, his expression hovering between pity and clinical detachment. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll give you seven days. If their petition for return still stands when the clock runs out, you come with me.” … I ran almost the entire three miles back home. The man in the dark coat walked behind me, keeping a leisurely, unhurried pace, yet never falling more than three paces back. “Seven days,” his voice drifted over the sound of my ragged breathing. “The clock begins at midnight.” “I won’t need seven days,” I gasped, the cold air burning my windpipe. “It’s a misunderstanding. It has to be.” Mom had bought me cotton candy on the pier. Dad had stood beside my horse on the carousel, taking pictures. And when our gondola hovered high above the ocean, Mom had touched my hair. How could they discard me? When I reached the front porch, my hands shook so violently it took three attempts to seat the brass key in the deadbolt. The door swung open. The warm laughter drifting from the dining room died instantly. Alyssa was sitting in my usual chair at the head of the table. A generous portion of roasted tenderloin was arranged on her porcelain plate, and my mother was patiently spooning out the herb-roasted potatoes for her. At the click of the latch, the silver serving spoon slipped from my mother’s fingers, clattering loudly against the china. My father shoved his chair back, rising abruptly. “What are you doing back here?” My fingers clung to the white doorframe, slick with cold sweat. During that desperate run home, I had imagined them rushing to the foyer, asking if I was hurt, asking where I had vanished in the boardwalk crowds. Instead, they merely glared, their eyes narrowed in hostile disbelief. Behind me, the man in the coat murmured, “Do you believe me now?” “No,” I whispered under my breath, shaking my head. “Mom was just startled.” I slipped off my sneakers, reaching into the shoe closet for my white knit slippers. They were gone. In their place sat a dusty pair of worn foam guest slides retrieved from the bottom shelf. As I took a hesitant step into the foyer, my father slammed his smartphone face-up onto the mahogany table. “You have the nerve to show your face in this house?” On the screen was the extended family group chat. My mother had uploaded a photo taken earlier that week outside the high school gates: me standing on the sidewalk beside an older boy with bleached hair who lived down the block. “Irene took off with some street kid,” her message read. “She’s grown now. We did everything humanly possible, but some children are simply beyond saving.” The comment thread beneath was a toxic cascade: “I always knew that quiet act was performative.” “Straight A’s mean nothing when the soul is rotten.” “Thank God you have Alyssa now. That girl actually has a heart.” “Dad, that’s Sean,” I choked out, tears stinging the backs of my eyes. “He was just helping me carry the mock trial binders to the bus stop. I didn’t run off with anyone. I was looking for you at the pier for three hours—” “Still lying to our faces?” My father’s jaw clamped shut. “I’m not lying—” “Crack.” The blow whipped my head to the side. My ear erupted into a high, metallic whine. My teeth tore into the soft flesh of my cheek, filling my mouth with the warm, coppery taste of salt and blood. “Talking back now?” he hissed. I pressed a trembling palm to my burning face, my eyes flicking toward the black ledger resting in the collector’s pale hands. I had only learned an hour ago: eighteen years ago, the very first attribute my mother had checked on her specification order was “absolute obedience”. I lowered my hand, centimeter by centimeter, staring down at the polished oak floorboards. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I wasn’t trying to talk back. It won’t happen again.” The tension in my father’s shoulders relaxed into smug satisfaction. But my mother had already turned her back to me, drawing Alyssa into her side. “Did that scare you, sweetheart?” Alyssa rested her chin against my mother’s sleeve, her voice breathless and delicate. “Auntie, it’s okay. I’m just so glad Irene is safe.” My mother stroked her hair tenderly. “You’re too kind, Alyssa. You always put others first.” I swallowed down the blood in my mouth. It was fine. They were just overwhelmed. They were just upset. Dinner carried on. With my chair taken, I brought a rusted metal folding chair from the utility closet and wedged myself into the corner of the room. Alyssa wrinkled her nose at her plate. “Uncle, I really don’t like cooked carrots.” My father chuckled—a warm, affectionate sound I hadn’t heard directed at me in years. “Fussy little thing,” he teased gently, yet his fork was already moving, patiently transferring every single carrot from her plate onto his own. My fork froze above my mashed potatoes. When I was six, I gagged on a piece of gristle during Sunday roast. My father made me stand in the corner until I finished the plate. When I threw it up, he scooped another portion, forced me to swallow it down, and told me that self-indulgence was a moral defect. From that day on, I ate whatever was put in front of me. I never used the words “I don’t like” again. Later that evening, I walked down the hall to fetch a glass of water. Passing the cracked door of my father’s study, my mother’s hushed, urgent voice drifted out into the corridor. “The agency promised that once the recall was processed, she would simply cease to exist. Why did she walk back through the front door?” My bare feet rooted to the carpet. My father sounded thoroughly exasperated. “We traded two full lifetimes of grace for that order. The practitioner explicitly stated that if we were dissatisfied, the return was guaranteed. I’ll call the office first thing in the morning.” The glass in my hand began to shake, water splashing cold over my knuckles. They really had returned me. They just didn’t understand that being returned meant death. The broker must not have made that clear. I turned back toward the hallway, only to catch a murmur slipping through Alyssa’s half-open door. “Don’t worry, she was already discarded once today,” Alyssa was whispering into her phone, her voice sharp and stripped of its usual honeyed innocence. “They trust me completely now. The deed is as good as ours. I’ll take care of the rest.” A floorboard groaned beneath my weight. Alyssa spun around, abruptly ending the call and sliding the phone beneath her pillow. “Irene?” Her eyes widened into wide, innocent saucers. “You’re still awake?” I stared at her, saying nothing. When I pushed open my bedroom door, the man in the dark coat was leaning against the window casing, silhouetted by the yellow glow of the streetlamp. “Still want to stay?” he asked. I wiped the dried crust of blood from the corner of my mouth. “Yes.” “Why?” “Alyssa is planning something. She’s going to ruin them.” I crumpled the tissue in my fist. “They’ve been manipulated. Once I expose the truth, they’ll see… they’ll see I wasn’t the bad one.” He looked at me with ancient, unblinking eyes. “They’re my parents,” I whispered into the quiet room. “For the next seven days, I have to protect them.” I didn’t sleep that night. At three in the morning, I stood before the bathroom mirror, practicing the tilt of Alyssa’s smile. I tried twenty times before I could muster that soft, slightly helpless cadence: “Mom, could you maybe… make me a sunny-side-up egg this morning?” When I was ten, shivering with a hundred-and-three-degree fever, I had reached out from beneath my quilt, begging my mother for a hug. She had stepped back, frowning. “You’re practically in middle school, Irene. Stop being so needy.” I had never reached for her again. Yet that was what they wanted now. They wanted a daughter who leaned on them, who demanded their comfort. I had to learn how to do it. At dawn, my mother sat at the breakfast counter with her black coffee. I crept up beside her, gently taking a corner of her beige knit cardigan between my fingers. “Mom… could you maybe… fry me an egg this morning?” A dry snort came from behind the morning paper. My father lowered the financial section, laughing under his breath. “What are you doing? Parodying Alyssa?” My mother snatched her cardigan from my grip as if it had been brushed with grease. “Since when are you this clingy? When Alyssa asks, it’s sweet. When you do it, it looks grotesque and calculating.” My father took a sip of his coffee. “Cheap imitation.” My fingers curled inward, retreating slowly into my pocket. “I’m sorry.” Halfway through breakfast, Alyssa reached across the quartz island for the orange juice. As her canvas tote bag slid from the barstool, a folded legal document spilled onto the floor—a stamped photocopy of the deed to our family home. I couldn’t stop myself. “Mom, Dad—has Alyssa been asking you about the house deed lately?” Alyssa’s face blanched. “Irene, what are you trying to say?” “I heard you on the phone last night,” I pressed, my heart hammering against my ribs. “You said they trusted you completely, and that the deed was as good as yours.” “I was just helping Uncle photocopy the property tax files at the library!” Alyssa’s eyes filled with sudden, glistening tears. “I didn’t mean to overstep…” My mother slammed her coffee mug down, dark liquid splashing over the white quartz. “Irene! Have you completely lost your mind?” “I’m just trying to warn you—” “Fascinating,” my father muttered, his tone dripping with acidic disgust. “I don’t recall requesting ‘spiteful and paranoid’ when we filed the specifications. It seems even bespoke creations can rot from the inside out.” He shook his head. “Defective inventory belongs in the incinerator.” A sudden, sharp heat gathered behind my eyelids. A single tear broke free, splashing hot against the back of my hand. I scrubbed it away with my cuff in a blind panic. “Don’t cry. Never cry.” I squeezed my eyes shut, inhaling through my teeth until my ribs ached, forcing the rest of the moisture back down into my throat. Good. Nobody saw. The doorbell rang. Two contractors in denim overalls and tool belts walked into the foyer, carrying paint rollers and drop cloths. “Which room, ma’am?” the lead painter asked. My mother pointed straight down the hall, toward my door. “That one on the left. Strip the beige. We’re doing pastel pink—a full princess suite for Alyssa.” The breath left my lungs. “Where do I sleep?” My father didn’t look up from his phone. “The basement utility room.” Cardboard boxes were dragged into the corridor. My honors certificates, my debate trophies, my stacked textbooks, and my modest wardrobe were tossed into crates like rubbish. “Toss anything that doesn’t fit,” my mother instructed casually. “Don’t clutter up Alyssa’s space.” I scrambled forward, wrapping both arms around a heavy box of books. “I can carry them myself. Please.” The basement utility room had no windows, only bare concrete walls, a water heater that hummed with a low vibration, and a narrow canvas cot wedged against the pipes. I looked back toward the second floor. The framed awards marking eighteen years of obedience were already in the trash, and a roller loaded with baby-pink paint was gliding across the wall of what had been my life. I dragged the box across the concrete floor. It was fine. As long as I was still inside this house, it didn’t matter where they put me. Behind me, the basement door clicked shut. The heavy deadbolt turned into place. I rushed to the stairs, rattling the brass knob. “Mom?” No answer. Only the rhythmic, muffled thud of work boots from the floor above. They just didn’t want me wandering around while the painters worked. That was all. It was just a precaution. Around noon, the scent of roasted rosemary chicken drifted down through the ventilation shaft. I knocked on the wood, polite at first, then harder. “Mom? I haven’t eaten since yesterday.” Silence. Then, faint and high-pitched, Alyssa’s voice carried through the floorboards: “Auntie, the pepper on this chicken is a little too strong for me.” My mother’s indulgent laugh: “Then leave it, sweetie. I’ll make you a fresh grilled cheese.” My knuckles struck the wood again. My father’s shout sliced down the stairwell, muffled but furious: “Stop pounding on that door! Missing a meal won’t kill you. Use the time to reflect on why you slandered Alyssa!” I raised my fist to knock again. Halfway to the wood, my strength deserted me. My hand fell back to my side, heavy as stone. I slid down against the rough grain of the door until my tailbone hit the concrete, tucking my bruised, scraped knuckles into the sleeves of my oversized sweater. From the shadows beside the water heater, the man in the dark coat stepped forward. “Is it worth it?” He ran a gloved thumb along the edge of his ledger. “Leave with me right now. In your next cycle, I can place you with a good family. When you scrape your knee, someone will pull you onto their lap. When you’re hungry, there will be hot soup on the stove.” He paused, his voice softening into something quiet and profound. “You wouldn’t have to be top of your class. You could just exist, and they would love you unconditionally.” I pulled my knees to my chest, resting my chin on my denim. Through the floorboards, the muffled laughter of a happy family sharing lunch drifted down. “Just a little longer,” I whispered into the dark. “It’s only day one. I haven’t figured out how Alyssa does it yet.” He looked down at me. “And if you master her routine, and they still cast you aside?” I buried my face entirely into the crook of my knees. It took a long, hollow silence before my voice found its way out: “Then it just means… I wasn’t good enough at playing the part.” The door stayed locked for twenty-four hours. No food, no water, no bathroom. In the dead of the night, when the pressure in my bladder turned into an agonizing, throbbing ache, I finally tapped my knuckles softly against the lower panel of the door. “Mom… please. I need the restroom.” Nothing. I tapped twice more, but the memory of my father’s hand across my face stopped me cold. Good girls don’t make noise. I curled tight on the canvas cot, crossing my legs, clutching my lower stomach, and waited for the faint gray light of dawn to bleed around the doorframe. “I can open this door,” the man in the coat offered from the corner. I shook my head. “Mom locked it. If I break it, I’m disobedient.” Around eleven the next morning, the deadbolt finally slid back. I stumbled up the stairs, using the handrail to keep my shaking legs underneath me, but froze at the threshold of the foyer. It was Thanksgiving weekend. The whole family was there. My aunts, my uncles, my younger cousins were gathered in the living room around platters of roast turkey, cheeses, and wine. Aunt Brenda spotted me first, her wine glass pausing halfway to her lips. “Well, look who finally crawled out of hiding. Did your little street boyfriend drop you back off?” My aunt quickly pulled her fourteen-year-old daughter behind her hip. “Keep your distance from your cousin, honey. Some behaviors are contagious.” My knees were trembling so violently I thought they would buckle, but eighteen years of conditioning took over: I bowed my head, greeted every aunt and uncle by name, and only then stumbled into the hallway half-bath. When I finished, I lunged toward the sink, cupping the freezing tap water in my trembling hands and pouring it down my throat. I drank so fast I choked, coughing until my ribs burned, before dipping my palms under the stream once more. The girl in the mirror had a split, crusted lip and dark, hollow bruises under her bloodshot eyes. Outside, my mother’s voice snapped: “Irene! Everyone is waiting on you!” I splashed cold water over my cheeks, scrubbed my face dry with a hand towel, and forced my lips into the gentle, vacant smile they required before stepping out. The moment I sat at the edge of the sectional, Uncle Greg crossed his arms. “So, Irene. Running around with street trash now, are we?” “I wasn’t running around,” I whispered, my voice cracked from lack of water. “I was at the pier. He was just carrying my mock trial binders—” Nobody was listening. “What good are high test scores when your character is in the gutter?” Aunt Brenda sneered. “Valedictorian doesn’t mean a thing if you’re rotten inside.” “I took first place in state debate every year,” I whispered. My mother let out a dry, humorless chuckle. “Alyssa’s grades might be average, but she actually has warmth. She knows how to love people.” “I never spent money,” I pleaded, looking directly at my mother. “I never asked for an allowance. I saved every dollar you ever gave me for lunch.” “That’s just calculated,” my father intervened, carving a slice of ham. “Cold and calculating.” “I’ve always obeyed you—” “Obeyed?” My father slammed his carving fork down. “You were insolent just two nights ago!” The room closed in around me, the air turning thick as grease. Eighteen years of discipline, sacrifice, and unyielding perfection, and every single triumph had been reclassified as a sin. Uncle Greg chuckled into his beer. “You know, the quiet ones are always the most dangerous. They store up their resentment like venom. Doesn’t she keep a private journal? I bet that notebook is filled with all kinds of sick thoughts.” My stomach plummeted. I stood up so fast my vision went black at the edges. “Mom—no. Don’t touch that.” Too late. My mother was already carrying a vintage leather-bound notebook out from the hall bureau. Aunt Brenda flipped it open with a wet-tipped finger, reading aloud in an exaggerated, theatrical drawl: “September 12th. Mom praised Alyssa’s dress today. I felt a tiny pinch in my chest. I have to do better.” “Jealous little snake,” someone muttered. Uncle Greg leaned over her shoulder, reading the next entry: “Dad said a 98 on my AP Chemistry midterm was mediocre. I will study until two tonight so I can get a 100 next time.” He scoffed. “Playing the martyr, are we? God forbid a father pushes his child to excel!” “Give it back!” I lunged across the rug, reaching for my words, my private shame. My father shoved my shoulder, hard. I hit the floor. The notebook flew from Aunt Brenda’s hands, striking the corner of an end table. A small cedar keepsake box tumbled out from between the pages, cracking open on the hardwood. An antique gold locket with an intricately carved, beveled-crystal face rolled across the floorboards. “Where did you steal that?” my mother demanded, her voice rising an octave. I threw myself onto my hands and knees, covering the heirloom with my body. “Grandma gave it to me! Before she went into hospice, she slipped it into my pocket! She said it was for my high school graduation!” “Liar,” my mother spat. “My mother never favored you over the other grandchildren.” “It’s the truth! She told me—” My father’s hand came down hard across the back of my head. The force sent the locket skittering across the floor. It struck the heavy iron claw-foot of the coffee table with a sickening “crack”, the delicate vintage crystal lens shattering into jagged slivers, the gold hinge snapping in two. The tears broke through my defenses, hot and humiliating. I frantically gathered the sharp fragments, but the more I grabbed, the more my vision blurred. The razor-sharp shards of beveled glass sliced into the pads of my fingers, scarlet droplets beading across the fractured crystal and twisted gold. “Stealing from the family, and now destroying heirlooms,” Aunt Brenda said, turning her head away in disgust. “A girl like this shouldn’t even be attending the academy. She’ll drag the entire family name through the mud.” “You’re right,” my mother agreed instantly, her tone cold and final. “First thing Monday, I’m pulling her enrollment.” “No!” I scrambled forward on my knees, the sharp edges of the broken glass grinding into the flesh of my shins. “Mom, please. Don’t withdraw me.” She stepped back. I crawled after her, my bloodied fingers clutching the hem of her trousers. “I’ll fix it. I’ll stay in the basement. I won’t ask for food. I’ll do whatever you say—just please don’t take school away from me.” My mother looked down at me as if I were something tracked in from the gutter. “Let go of my clothes.” I didn’t let go. I couldn’t. At school, Mrs. Cooper praised my essays. In the library, classmates asked me to explain calculus problems. Within those red-brick walls, nobody called me a defective model. It was the only place on earth where my existence wasn’t a crime. “Mom, please. I’m begging you.” She leaned down, and with deliberate, icy precision, she peeled my blood-slicked fingers off her cuff, one by one. “If you were truly afraid of the consequences, Irene, you should have learned to be a decent human being a long time ago.” I collapsed onto the floor among the shards of shattered glass and gold. My palms leaked crimson onto the polished oak. Behind me, in the corner where the holiday sunlight failed to reach, the man in the dark coat quietly closed his ledger with a soft, final thud. The next morning, I arrived at the high school thirty minutes before the first bell. Normally, the students on hall monitor duty would shout across the lockers: “Hey, Irene, can I check your notes on the history assignment?” Today, as I reached the landing of the third floor, two girls talking by the water fountain went dead silent the moment their eyes met mine. I lowered my head and slipped into homeroom. Someone had carved into the varnished wood of my desk with a red grease pencil: “Thief.” “Sociopath in training.” I pulled a sanitizing wipe from my bag and began scrubbing at the wax, stroke by stroke. My lab partner arrived. She stood by the desk for an agonizing ten seconds, clutching the straps of her backpack, before picking up her books and moving to an empty seat in the back row. “I’m sorry, Irene,” she whispered, not meeting my eyes. “My mom saw the post. She said I can’t sit with you anymore.” I nodded gently. “It’s okay.” Within fifteen minutes, the intercom buzzed. I was called to the principal’s office. On the mahogany desk lay color printouts of my mother’s Facebook posts: the broken heirloom, the pages of my journal, the photo of me standing beside Sean. Mrs. Cooper, my homeroom teacher, let out a heavy, defeated sigh. “Irene, you’ve been our top student for four years.” A desperate spark of hope flared in my chest. “Mrs. Cooper, I swear I didn’t—” “The PTA board has already lodged six formal complaints this morning,” she interrupted, sliding an official withdrawal petition across the desk toward me. “Your mother called at dawn. She stated that your mental state has become entirely unstable and that you represent a liability to the student body.” “I didn’t steal that locket,” I whispered, the words tumbling out in a frantic rush. “My grandmother gave it to me. Sean was just helping me with mock trial materials. I’m not crazy. I haven’t changed.” Mrs. Cooper remained silent for a long moment, staring down at her own manicured hands. “Go home for a few days, Irene. Get some rest.” Every time we won an academic meet, she used to clap me on the shoulder and say: “You’re the pride of this department, Irene.” Today, she wouldn’t look at my face. I pushed the petition back toward her. “I’m not signing it. I can still sit for midterms.” During lunch, Lucy—the quiet girl from the school paper—slipped into the empty chair beside me beneath the bleachers. She pressed a cold carton of chocolate milk into my hand. “You look like a ghost,” she murmured. A sharp, painful lump rose in my throat. In two days of waking nightmare, she was the first person to ask how I was doing. “Thank you,” I managed, my voice breaking. “Lucy, thank you—” The heavy metal doors of the gymnasium slammed open with a deafening bang. Lucy’s mother stormed across the basketball court, her face flushed with fury, and grabbed her daughter’s jacket, hauling her roughly to her feet. “What did I tell you in the car?” the woman shrieked, shaking Lucy by the shoulders. “Stay away from that girl! Do you want her dragging you into the mud with her?” Lucy’s eyes turned red with humiliation and panic. “Mom, stop! Irene isn’t like that!” “Smack.” The slap echoed sharply off the metal bleachers. I froze, paralyzed. Lucy covered her face, stifled sobs hitching in her chest. Instinctively, I took a step forward, reaching out. “Mrs. Dawson—” The woman whipped around, shoving her daughter behind her back like a shield, baring her teeth at me. “Don’t you dare touch my daughter with those filthy hands!” My outstretched arm hung suspended in the empty air. Slowly, carefully, I drew it back against my ribs. “I’m sorry.” Lucy didn’t come back for afternoon classes. At three o’clock, when the dismissal bell rang, students actively parted around me in the corridors, like water avoiding a rotting log. Two underclassmen pointed toward my back, murmuring behind their binders: “That’s her.” Even the elderly cashier at the corner bodega who used to slip an extra piece of salt-water taffy into my brown paper bag simply slid my change across the Formica counter, making sure our skin never grazed. Outside the iron gates of the school, beneath the sprawling shadow of an ancient elm, the man in the dark coat stood waiting. I stopped before him, cradling the unopened carton of chocolate milk against my chest like a fragile bird. “You said… in the next life, I could choose a different family?” He nodded once. “Yes.” “An ordinary one? A family that doesn’t have much?” “If that is what you wish.” “And if I fail an exam… if I come home with an average score… they won’t put me in a box and return me?” He looked down at me, his eyes dark pools of absolute stillness. “No.” A tear slipped free, falling directly onto the cardboard carton. This time, I didn’t lift my hand to wipe it away. All my life, I believed that if I were just a little more obedient, a little more brilliant, a little more quiet, they would finally look at me with pride. Later, I thought that if I could just unmask Alyssa, they would remember that I was their daughter. But now, even the few people who dared to show me kindness were being struck across the face. I walked over to the wooden bench beneath the tree and set the carton down carefully on the green slats. “Let’s go,” I said. The man didn’t move. “You still have four days left on your clock.” I shook my head. My throat felt as though it were lined with crushed glass. “No need.” “I accept the recall.” “I don’t want to be their daughter anymore.”
🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “622607”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel
Leave a Reply