Chapter 1

𝘼𝘽𝘽𝙄𝙀

I stood beside my window, fingers pressed lightly against the cold glass, watching the world outside. The world that could never be mine… no matter how desperately I longed for it.

My eyes were fixed on Lara Harvard. She lived next door, and from my window, I could see everything that happened in her vast compound, almost identical to ours, yet somehow so different. Hers felt alive. Mine felt like a cage.

Lara was everything I secretly wished to be... outspoken, confident, effortlessly popular. The kind of girl who laughed without fear and moved like the world belonged to her.

I was nothing like Lara Harvard.

We had lived on the same street since I was thirteen, yet I had never spoken to her. Mom made sure of that.

"Girls like Lara are a bad influence," she would say, as if Lara carried a contagious disease. As if happiness itself was something dangerous.

I wanted to be Lara's friend. I wanted to know what it felt like to stand beside her and not behind a window. But I was too afraid of my mom to even try.

My life has always been a straight line... home to school, school to home. No detours. No pauses. No fun. I wasn't even allowed to breathe outside of her shadow.

Other girls my age went out with friends. They went shopping, to movies, to cafés. I went nowhere. Mom said it was a waste of time.

The only times I stepped out of the house were with her—and it was never for fun. Never mother-daughter bonding. It was always business. Always her hospital.

She knew how much I hated the suffocating smell of antiseptic. The white walls. The metallic scent of blood that made my stomach twist and my head spin. Yet she kept dragging me there, forcing me to stand beside her like some silent trophy.

She wanted me to become a neurosurgeon, just like her. But I didn't want that life.

I didn't want to become a surgeon. I was terrified of blood, it always scared the life out of me, but Mom didn't care.

"You'll get over it," she would say coldly. "When you become a surgeon, it won't bother you." And like the obedient puppet she molded me to be, I obeyed.

I even applied for the college she wanted and not the one I dreamed of. I had barely made it in, and for that, she starved me for three days.

Three freaking days... that's the kind of Mom I have.

She wasn't someone I could go against. She always loved to wield power and control everyone around her. My dad couldn't stand her anymore and asked for a divorce.

My mom, on the other hand, didn't hesitate to sign the divorce, almost as if she had been waiting for the divorce paper to be shoved in her face.

I was thirteen when they decided to go their separate ways. I couldn't go with my dad. Mom had  fought with my dad to the core to make sure she was the one who got to keep me.

My dad was just a driver who barely got customers. Mom was the one with the money, so she won custody over me.

I don't visit my dad on spring breaks. Not on Thanksgiving. Not on Christmas. Mom said it wasn't necessary. So I only talked to my dad on the phone, and whenever I did, I wished he had taken custody of me. He understood me and would support what I wanted for myself.

I dared not say it out loud what I wanted to become. Mom might kill me.

I'm eighteen years old… and I still can't speak for myself. That's what she turned me into... a careful, obedient girl.

Laughter suddenly erupted from Lara's compound, pulling me from my thoughts.

She was having a pool party with her friends. Music played. Water splashed. Her friends laughed freely under the cresent moon. Her boyfriend was there too, his arms wrapped around her waist as they kissed in the pool.

I stared, my chest tightening. I've often wondered what it would feel like… to have a boy's lips on mine.

How does it feel to be kissed?

To be wanted?

To be touched without fear?

I have never had a boyfriend. Mom would probably gouge my eyes out if I tried. She claimed that a successful woman doesn't need to have a man in her life.

I could still remember from last year when a boy from my class had written a love letter to me. It was my first time receiving a love letter from a boy because boys in my class usually called me "nun" because of my long skirts and high-neck dresses... clothes my mom forced me to wear.

I was overwhelmed by his love letter, and every night, I would take it out and read it again, debating whether I should say yes.

Unfortunately for me, Mom found the letter. She went to my school, publicly humiliated him, and, through her influence, got him expelled.

After that, no one talked to me... not even the girls. I became a loner until I graduated from high school.

"Stop it, Tyla!" Lara laughed as her boyfriend tickled her.

I smiled, almost as if I was the one being tickled. For a second, I pretended it was me in that pool. Me being held. Me laughing. I want to feel all of that. To be kissed, hugged, and touched.

"What in God's name are you doing?!" Mom's voice sliced through the air like a whip.

I froze.

Slowly, I turned around, my heartbeat thundering in my ears. Before I could answer, she stepped beside me and looked out the window. Her eyes landed on Lara and her boyfriend, who were still kissing.

Her face darkened instantly. When she turned to me, her expression was filled with disgust. I couldn't even look at her in the eye. I was scared.

"Is this the kind of behavior you want?! To be like Lara who's nothing but a slut!"

She didn't lower her voice.

She never does.

She never hesitates to condemn Lara... not just Lara. She always condemns people's daughters, calling them all sorts of names.

"How many times have I told you not to waste your time watching that girl? She's a corrupt whore, and her parents are letting her throw her life away!" she added harshly.

Since when did having friends and a boyfriend mean throwing your life away? But this was Regina Summers... my mom.

I didn't say anything. I never talked back to her. Whenever she screamed or scolded me, I never talked back.

"Listen to me, Abbie," she said, pointing her finger inches from my face. "Let this be the last time I'll catch you peeping at that girl. The next time, you try it, you won't even imagine what I'll do to you. Do you understand?"

I nodded quickly, my throat too tight to speak.

"Good." She straightened her blazer. "Now get dressed. We're going to a party. A surgeon's party. Since you'll be attending the best college in California in a month and a half, I need to introduce you to my colleagues."

I don't want to go.

I don't want to meet her surgeon friends.

I don't want this life.

But I don't have a choice.

"I will get dressed," I whispered, forcing a weak smile.

"I'll be downstairs. Don't waste my time." She patted my head like I was a pet and walked out.

As soon as she left, I looked out the window again. Lara's friends were no longer in the pool. She was the only one there, and she looked up… straight at me. Then she raised her hand and gave me a hateful middle finger.

I wasn't surprised.

Mom was too loud... of course, Lara must've heard Mom calling her a whore. 

Lara hated me, not just her, everyone in my neighborhood hated me, and it was all thanks to my mom.

Swallowing the ache in my chest, I slipped into a gown that stopped at my kneecaps. My chocolate-brown hair went into its usual tight ponytail.

Mom never lets me wear it down. 

My clothes were always on the perfect length. Never too short. Never too tight.

"Dressing this way will keep you away from bad boys," she would always say.

But sometimes… I don't want to be kept away. I want to live like every other girl... like Lara.