Chapter 2

The year I turned twelve, the illness struck for the first time.

My family drained their savings, sold my father's beloved black stretch limousine, and moved out of our house with its yard and apple tree.

Because my father took so much time off to bring me to appointments, his company's cash flow also collapsed.

Overdue bill notices stuffed our mailbox month after month.

"If every cent goes into this bottomless pit, what happens to Vivian? How are we supposed to live?" my mother sobbed one night, her face buried in her hands.

My parents would sit across from each other at the dining table and argue past midnight over a single medical bill.

My illness had dragged the entire family into ruin.

In the midsummer of the year I turned fourteen, Vivian was preparing to audition for American Ballet Theatre's youth company.

But I brushed against the ultraviolet sterilizing lamp in the living room and ended up rolling on the floor in pain.

My mother rushed down from upstairs and held on to me.

As a result, Vivian missed her flight.

She lost that chance to perform.

That night she cut every pair of her pink ballet shoes to pieces and threw the scraps in my face.

"I hate you!" Vivian tore the posters off her bedroom wall, smashed every ceramic cup in the room, then rushed over and pounded my chest with her fists. "I hate that you were ever born into this family!"

I stood amid the scraps of paper, my face as white as a sheet.

So in the late autumn of that same year, my mother, having reached her breaking point, finally found an expensive psychologist.

The psychologist, wearing gold wire-rimmed glasses and a Rolex, frowned, adjusted his frames, and delivered his verdict with absolute certainty.

"Mrs. Ashford, this child is trying to steal the attention from your younger daughter in a warped way.

"She wants to control the whole family by being sick."

From that day on, every look my mother gave me seemed to carry a knife's edge.

She never made pottery mugs with me again, nor did she take me out for our nighttime walks.

I often stood alone at the window, watching my mother and Vivian chase each other in the sunlight beneath the sycamore tree.

Afterward, I tried everything I could to prove the illness was real. I printed page after page of research, highlighted the symptoms of porphyria and xeroderma pigmentosum, and laid photographs of my flare-ups in front of my mother.

But she only crumpled the pages, threw them in the trash, and shot me a cold sideways glance.

"To prove you're not making this up, you've even learned to forge medical information?

"Stop putting this filth in front of me."

I remember the sharp contempt in that look.

My mother took Vivian's hand.

"Let's go check on Iris in a little while." She looked exhausted, her voice scraped raw.

Vivian sighed, turned, burrowed into her arms, and held her tightly around the waist.

"Doesn't Mom want to be with me anymore?"

My mother pressed her lips together and swallowed whatever she had been about to say.

Then she turned and walked away with sudden resolve.

"Wait here for me."