1 There was a rule in our house. Whoever was the quietest got the reward. “Girls are supposed to be soft-spoken. That’s how you get people to love you.” My younger sister, Daisy, figured out how to play this game before she could even tie her own shoes. Around company, her eyes were always cast downward, her voice barely a breath above a whisper. I, on the other hand, was born with a booming voice. When I laughed, you could hear it down the street. So, every month, the “Golden Star for Good Behavior” went to Daisy. The prize was a Mommy-and-Me day: lunch at a nice bistro, window shopping downtown, new clothes. My prize was always the same sentence: “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” Desperate for just one golden star, I started practicing the art of shutting up. I stopped raising my hand in class. I ate dinner in total silence. When the mean girls at school pushed me around, I just bit the inside of my cheek and swallowed the hurt. Three months later, I finally earned my first golden star. Mom glanced at her watch and sighed. “It’s too late in the day, Harper. We’ll go next time.” Daisy leaned into Mom’s side, cupping a hand over her ear. “Harper’s faking it, Mom. She’s super loud at school.” The scolding I got that night was so severe I didn’t dare open my mouth to defend myself. During a blistering September heatwave in eighth grade, I passed out on the track. Daisy told everyone I was faking it to get out of running the mile. So, when a routine physical my junior year of high school picked up a heart murmur, I kept my mouth shut. When I went into shock at a college blood drive my freshman year, I didn’t say a word. By the time the doctors finally told me I had severe heart failure, I felt surprisingly at peace. At least when I’m dead, I thought, I’ll finally be the quietest girl in Mom’s eyes. … “Harper, that new pillbox you bought is so pretty. Can I use it to hold my hair clips?” I had just pushed the front door open. The official diagnosis of end-stage heart failure was still a heavy, folded square of paper burning a hole in my pocket. Daisy was standing in the foyer, her eyes locked onto the moisture-proof, cherry-blossom pink pill organizer in my hand. I had spent twenty dollars on it, hoping the cheerful color might make swallowing my bitter, life-saving medications a little more bearable. “No.” I pulled my hand back. “I need this.” Instantly, Daisy’s eyes welled with tears. She dropped her chin, her voice shrinking to a pathetic whisper. “Are you still mad at me, Harper? I just thought it was pretty. I didn’t mean anything by it.” Mom walked out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. The moment she saw us, the crease between her eyebrows deepened. “You’ve been home for five seconds and you’re already making your sister cry. Can you ever just give it a rest?” I looked at my mother. A familiar, suffocating tightness bloomed in my chest. “I didn’t do anything. She asked for my things, and I said no.” I focused on keeping my voice perfectly level. “The doctor said I need to keep my stress down…” “Don’t you dare bring up the doctor with me!” Mom slammed a ceramic fruit bowl onto the coffee table. The glass rattled violently. “You just had to pick a fight with that girl in your sociology class the other day, didn’t you? Now everyone at Daisy’s high school is laughing at her for having a psycho for an older sister!” She marched toward me. “So, what did the doctor say? Let me guess—did he say you have an anger management problem?” I parted my lips. The words—The doctor said my heart could stop at any minute—turned to ash in my throat. Daisy scurried over, clutching the hem of Mom’s blouse. “Mom, please don’t yell at her. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have asked for the box. It’s the perfect size for my new pearl clips, but… Harper is holding onto it so tightly. She must have something really important in there.” Mom let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “Important? All she does is waste my money on flashy, useless garbage.” She closed the distance between us and thrust her hand out. “Give it here.” Instinctively, I shielded my pocket. “Mom, please, I really need this for my—” “I said hand it over!” Her voice spiked into a shriek. She lunged, grabbing my wrist and yanking it hard. Because of my failing heart, my muscles had atrophied. I had no strength left. She pried the box from my fingers effortlessly. Click. The latch hadn’t been secured. Dozens of tiny pills—some white, some red—spilled across the hardwood floor, scattering like broken beads. Mom froze. Daisy let out a theatrical gasp, covering her mouth. “Harper, why are you taking so many vitamins?” Daisy crouched down, using a manicured fingernail to poke at the tablets. “Wait, these have weird letters stamped on them. Did you buy those sketchy, unregulated diet pills online again?” Mom’s face contorted with pure disgust. She lifted her heel and brought it down hard on the scattered pills. With a sickening crunch, the medication turned to dust against the floorboards. “What have I always taught you about respecting your body?” Mom spat. “Look at how bloated you’ve gotten! Instead of actually exercising and watching what you eat, you resort to this back-alley weight-loss poison!” I stared at the crushed white powder. That was a thousand dollars’ worth of imported, specialized cardiac medication. The only thing that could stop the angina from killing me when an attack hit. “That was my medication.” I forced myself to meet my mother’s eyes. “For my illness.” She scoffed, utterly unconvinced. “Illness? You’re built like a linebacker, Harper. You barely even catch a cold. The only thing sick about you is your head!” She tossed the empty pink box to Daisy. “Wash the dust out of this and put your hair clips in it.” Daisy caught it with a radiant smile. “Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Harper!” She turned to me, her expression practically dripping with innocence. “You really should stop taking those diet pills, Harper. They’re so bad for your liver. If you’re really that desperate to lose weight, I can start giving you half of my salads.” My heart began to hammer erratically against my ribs. A loud, rushing static filled my ears. Every breath felt like razor blades scraping down my windpipe. I wanted to scream that I wasn’t fat. The bloating was edema—fluid retention from severe heart failure. But I knew it wouldn’t matter. They would just think I was lying. Another pathetic attempt to play the victim and steal the spotlight. I turned away. Using the wall for support, I dragged myself toward my bedroom. “Oh, so you’re deaf now? Your sister is talking to you!” Mom’s voice cracked like a whip behind me. “You have zero class. I don’t know how I raised such a cold-blooded monster!” I didn’t look back. I stepped into my room, shut the door tight, and slid down the wood paneling until I hit the floor. I pressed the palm of my hand flat against my sternum, feeling the chaotic, terrifying flutter of the dying organ inside. It’s okay, I told myself in the silence. I won’t be around much longer anyway. Soon, they won’t have to look at me ever again. 2 “What kind of stunt did you pull while I was gone?” That was the first thing my father said to me after being out of town on business for two weeks. I was sitting at the kitchen island, forcing down a bowl of plain oatmeal. My fingers mindlessly traced the rim of my glass. “I didn’t pull a stunt.” I didn’t even lift my head. Ever since I got sick, the desire to explain myself had been thoroughly drained out of me. Dad tossed his leather briefcase onto the sofa and yanked at his tie, clearly irritated. “Daisy called me crying last night. She said you tried to hit her over some cheap plastic container. Harper, you’re a sophomore in college. Can you stop acting like a feral animal for five minutes?” Daisy drifted out of the hallway. She was wearing a brand-new white sundress, her hair perfectly styled. Holding her bangs back was the pearl clip—resting right where she had taken my pink pillbox. “Dad, please don’t yell at her,” she murmured, slipping her arm through his. “It was my fault. I know how explosive Harper’s temper is. I shouldn’t have touched her things.” Dad patted her hand, his eyes instantly softening. “You’re too sweet for your own good, Daisy. That’s why she always walks all over you.” He snapped his gaze back to me, his features icing over. “Apologize to your sister.” I set my spoon down. The metal clinked sharply against the ceramic bowl. “I’m not apologizing. I didn’t try to hit her.” “Don’t you dare talk back to me!” Dad slammed his hand flat against the granite countertop. My bowl rattled. “Your mother already gave me the full report. Not only are you bullying Daisy, but you’re popping shady diet pills. How did I end up with such a vain, vindictive daughter?” A dull ache flared beneath my ribs. I took a slow, deliberate breath, trying to force oxygen into my lungs. “Dad, those pills were for my—” “Enough. I don’t want to hear your excuses.” Dad cut me off, holding up a hand. “The Hendersons are hosting a dinner party tonight at the club, and they specifically asked for our whole family. I was going to bring you along to do some networking, but looking at you now, you’d just be an embarrassment.” Mom walked in, handing Dad a glass of iced tea. “Why would we bring her? The last time she came, she practically screamed the roof off arguing with the Henderson boy. I was mortified. Daisy is the one we should take. Everyone adores Daisy.” I stayed quiet. The argument they were talking about happened because Kyle Henderson was spreading vicious rumors at the country club, telling everyone that Daisy was a two-faced tease who slept around. I had been so furious I dumped my ice water right in his lap. But when we got home, Daisy burst into tears, claiming I was ruining her social life by picking fights with the wealthy kids. My parents made me stand on the back patio in the cold for half the night as punishment. “Right. You’re staying home,” Dad finalized the verdict. “Take the night to think about how awful your behavior has been.” By six o’clock, the three of them were dressed to the nines, ready to leave. As they put on their shoes in the foyer, Daisy paused and looked at me. A subtle, triumphant smirk ghosted across her lips. “Dad said Mr. Henderson ordered Alaskan King Crab for tonight,” she chirped. “Too bad you’ll miss it.” The front door clicked shut. The sprawling suburban house was suddenly utterly silent. I unlocked my phone. An Instagram notification popped up. Daisy had just posted a story. It was a selfie of her in the backseat of Dad’s SUV, looking flawless. The caption read: “Off to dinner with the two people who love me most in the world! 💕” The location tag was the most exclusive country club in the county. A mutual friend replied in the comments: “Is Harper not going?” Daisy replied: “Harper said she’s aggressively dieting and refused to come. 😔” I swiped away the app with a numb thumb. I stood up to go to the kitchen for a glass of water. Suddenly, a violent, agonizing spasm ripped through my chest. It felt like a massive, invisible hand had reached through my ribs and crushed my heart in its fist. The edges of my vision blacked out. My knees gave way. I hit the hardwood floor hard. The glass slipped from my hand, shattering violently against the floorboards, sending sharp shards tearing across my forearm. I lay there, my mouth opening and closing like a suffocating fish, desperately trying to pull in air. Cold sweat instantly soaked through my shirt. My trembling hands scrambled blindly for my pockets. Nothing. The medication that could stop this was gone—crushed under Mom’s shoe and swept into the trash. I had nothing left to do but grip the fabric of my shirt above my heart, curling into a tight, agonizing ball on the cold floor. Just survive it, I told myself, the pain blinding me. It’s always like this. If I can just survive the wave, I buy myself a few more days. The grandfather clock in the hallway ticked away the hours. It wasn’t until deep into the night that the vice grip on my chest finally began to loosen. I dragged my battered body off the floor, found a broom, and swept up the blood and broken glass. As if nothing had ever happened. 3 The warmth of this household was now completely walled off from me. The three of them had formed an unspoken pact: I no longer existed. If I was sitting in the living room watching TV, Dad would walk right past me and click the screen black. “Electricity isn’t free.” If I started cooking a meal, Mom would take the ingredients right off my cutting board and dump them into the garbage disposal. “The groceries in that fridge are for Daisy. If you want to eat, buy your own food.” But I didn’t have a dime. My bank account had been drained. Because I refused to use last semester’s merit scholarship to buy Daisy the designer handbag she wanted, my parents completely cut off my allowance. For the last few days, I had been surviving on plain boiled pasta. In the past, this kind of psychological warfare would have broken me. I would have screamed, cried, demanded to know why they hated me. But now? I was just relieved. Because if they ignored me, I didn’t have to waste my breath talking. And when I didn’t talk, my heart didn’t hurt as much. Saturday was Daisy’s eighteenth birthday. The house was packed with relatives and family friends. The living room was draped in pastel balloons and expensive floral arrangements. A three-tiered custom buttercream cake sat proudly on the dining table. I was strictly ordered to remain in my bedroom. “You constantly look like someone just died. Don’t you dare come out and ruin your sister’s special day,” Mom had hissed at me that morning. I locked my door from the inside, slipped my noise-canceling headphones over my ears, and tried to block out the laughter vibrating through the floorboards. But my heart chose that exact moment to rebel. It was worse than any attack before. A sickening cocktail of dull throbbing, sharp stabbing, and a tearing sensation that felt like my chest cavity was being ripped open. I clutched my sternum and rolled off the mattress, hitting the floor with a heavy thud. The pain was so absolute I couldn’t even force a scream past my lips. I blindly reached for my phone on the nightstand, desperate to dial 911. But just as my thumb grazed the screen, a violent pounding erupted against my bedroom door. “Harper! Are you dead in there?” It was Dad. “Get your ass out here! Your sister is about to cut the cake. Can you not even manage to say Happy Birthday?” I bit down on my lip so hard I tasted copper. Using every ounce of willpower I had left, I dragged my body across the carpet toward the door. My fingers had barely touched the doorknob when I heard Daisy’s voice outside, thick with crocodile tears. “Dad, just let it go. She’s obviously still holding a grudge against me. She’s doing this on purpose to humiliate me on my birthday.” The murmurs of judgment from our relatives bled through the wood. “What is wrong with their oldest daughter?” “I know, right? So incredibly selfish. She acts like a spoiled brat.” “Richard, you really dropped the ball with that one. Thank God your youngest turned out so sweet.” I squeezed my eyes shut. A thick, metallic taste surged up the back of my throat. I yanked the door open. The loud chatter in the hallway died instantly. Everyone stared at my ghost-pale face, my hair plastered to my forehead with cold sweat. Dad recoiled for a second, then his face hardened into a scowl. “What kind of act is this now? Who do you think you’re performing for?” I leaned heavily against the doorframe, my vision swimming as I looked at them. “I’m not… acting…” I forced the words out, each syllable tearing at my throat. “My heart… is failing…” Mom let out a derisive snort. “Your heart? Who do you think you are, some tragic Victorian heroine? With your size, you could go run a marathon right now. Stop playing the sickly victim!” She stepped forward and shoved me hard in the shoulder. “Stop embarrassing us in front of the guests and go tell your sister Happy Birthday!” The shove threw me off balance. I stumbled backward, my spine colliding violently with the edge of my bookshelf. The shockwave sent the pooling blood in my chest straight up. A dark, crimson liquid spilled over my bottom lip, dripping onto my chin. I raised a trembling hand and wiped my mouth. My fingers came away stained deep red. The relatives gasped in collective horror. Daisy let out a piercing shriek. “Oh my god, Harper! Did you eat fake blood capsules just to freak us out?!” She scrambled behind Mom, trembling like a frightened bird. “I know you’re jealous that it’s my birthday, but how could you do something so psychotic? You’re terrifying!” Dad saw red. He lunged into the room, grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, and practically lifted me off my feet. “Are you out of your damn mind?!” he roared, spit flying into my face. “You would sink this low—use this kind of sick manipulation—just to ruin your sister’s day?!” I looked at my father’s face, twisted into something monstrous with rage. Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming sense of absurdity. I stopped fighting. I went entirely limp, letting him hurl me back onto the floor like a bag of garbage. The door slammed shut in my face. The unmistakable click of the deadbolt locking from the outside echoed in the room. “Nobody goes in there tonight!” Dad bellowed to the crowd. “Let her rot in there and think about what she’s done!” I lay on my back on the carpet, staring up at the ceiling fan. I knew, with absolute certainty, that I would never get the chance to explain myself again. 4 The air in my room was growing impossibly thin. My vision was tunneling, the edges blurring into static. My phone had fallen a few feet away. The screen was still glowing. It was my only lifeline left. I dug my fingernails into the carpet and dragged my dead weight forward. Two inches. Four inches. Finally, my trembling fingers closed around the cold metal casing. I unlocked it, swiped to my contacts, and found the number for the specialty pharmacy courier. I pressed call. “Hello, Miss Miller?” “My medication…” My voice was a hollow rasp, lighter than paper. “Did it arrive?” “Oh, yeah, we delivered that yesterday. The tracking shows it was dropped off right on your front porch.” I froze. The front porch? I had been running a low-grade fever all day yesterday and hadn’t stepped foot outside my room. If the package was dropped off, there was only one explanation. They took it. I dropped the phone and dragged myself back to the door, slapping my palms against the wood. “Open the door…” “Give me my medicine…” But the bass from the stereo outside was thumping a pop remix of “Happy Birthday.” No one could hear a dying girl over the music. I don’t know how much time passed. Finally, the deadbolt snapped open. Daisy stood in the doorway. She was holding a large glass mason jar. Inside, swirling in tap water, were the torn remnants of my pharmacy shipping labels and the cardboard packaging of my heart medication. “Oh, you’re awake?” She smiled down at me, her eyes glinting with malice. “Why were you banging on the door? Everyone was trying to eat cake.” My eyes locked onto the jar in her hands. “Where are my pills?” “What pills?” Daisy played dumb, tilting her head. “Oh, you mean that ugly cardboard box left on the porch? It was full of these gross white plastic bottles. The labels were all clinical and ugly, so I just tossed them in the dumpster out back.” She smirked. “It’s not like you’re taking real medicine anyway. You’re just hoarding trash.” A bomb went off inside my skull. The absolute last thread tying me to life snapped. “You threw them away…” I don’t know where the adrenaline came from, but I surged off the floor, lunging forward, and clamped both my hands around her throat. “That was keeping me alive!” I screamed, a raw, primal sound tearing from my chest. “Give them back to me!” Daisy shrieked in terror. The mason jar slipped from her grip, shattering into a hundred pieces across the floorboards. Water and soaked labels went everywhere. “Help! She’s trying to kill me!” Mom and Dad rushed into the hallway. Seeing my hands on Daisy, Dad didn’t hesitate. He took a running start and delivered a brutal, full-force kick straight into my abdomen. The impact lifted me entirely off the ground. I flew backward, the small of my back violently colliding with the sharp corner of my heavy oak desk. An explosive, blinding agony swallowed my entire body. “You animal!” Dad scooped a sobbing Daisy into his arms, shielding her. “Were you actually trying to kill your own sister?!” I collapsed onto my side, curling into a tight, broken ball. The darkness was closing in fast. My lungs couldn’t even remotely keep up with my heart rate now. Every single beat felt like a shotgun blast going off inside my chest cavity. “I… need… my pills…” I reached a shaking, bloodstained hand out toward them, a final, desperate plea for mercy. “Mom… please… I really am… dying…” Mom stared down at me, her eyes chips of ice. “Still acting.” She sneered. “Are you really this addicted to the drama, Harper?” She turned her back on me. “If you love rolling around on the floor so much, then sleep down there forever!” She corralled Dad and Daisy down the hall. “Come on, let’s go. Don’t engage with the psychopath.” The door slammed shut. This time, the lights were flicked off from the outside switch. Total, suffocating darkness swallowed me whole. My consciousness began to fracture. Strangely, my body suddenly felt incredibly light. The agonizing tearing in my chest, the drowning sensation, the profound despair—it all evaporated. In that final second, a memory drifted into my mind. I was five years old, belting out a Disney song at the top of my lungs. Mom had laughed, covering her ears playfully, saying, Our Harper has such a big, beautiful voice. Then they had Daisy. Daisy was quiet. And so, they decided they only loved quiet things. To make them love me again, I shut my mouth. I stayed silent for years. Now, I realized, I could finally be quiet forever.
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