Chapter 2

That night, Mom stayed glued to Betty's side, fetching her tea and refilling her water. Only there, next to her, did Mom ever act like a real mother.

It brought back a memory from when I was fifteen, the time I came down with a raging fever, my whole body burning up.

Betty had pressed her palm to my forehead out of curiosity, then yanked it back the second she felt how hot I was.

I curled into myself, miserable, and Mom slapped me across the face without a word of warning. "Don't you know your sister's already fragile?" she demanded. "If you're sick, stay away from her, you little jinx."

The blow left me dizzy, my whole body drained of strength. Mom spat on me, then scooped Betty into her arms and walked out.

From down the hall, I heard her mutter, "Stay away from that jinx. Come on, I'll buy you something good to eat."

The only reason Mom bothered with me at all that day was her fear that if I died, it might somehow hurt Betty's recovery. Left to her own instincts, she wouldn't have looked at me twice.

It was in that moment, closer to death than I'd ever been, that I finally understood: I wasn't loved. I existed for my sister, to keep her life going.

Morning light spilled through the window, and I was still trapped in that memory, drowning in it.

Betty, lying in her hospital bed, blinked and let tears spill down her cheeks.

She called softly for Mom, and once she learned the surgery had gone well, mother and daughter traded a warm smile.

If I hadn't already been dead, I imagined my presence in that room would have been an eyesore.

Mom held Betty close, telling her stories, already planning where they'd go once she'd recovered.

Maybe some flicker of conscience stirred in her, because Betty lowered her head, looking guilty.

"Mom, where's Zoey? Is she all right? This is all my fault."

Betty had always been delicate and pretty, and with those tears streaking her face, she looked exactly like someone who'd been wronged.

Mom stroked her hair, dismissive. "You're too kind-hearted. She doesn't even realize that if it weren't for you, she wouldn't have had the right to exist in this world at all.

"And look at her, ungrateful little wretch, too much of a coward to donate her marrow because she's scared of dying. I'm not letting her get her way. Don't worry about her. She needs to learn her lesson."

Word after word out of Mom's mouth, every one of them aimed at tearing me down. Betty hid the satisfaction in her eyes and let out a sob.

"Mom, she just doesn't like me. You can't force her. How am I supposed to face her after this?"

She was a viper dressed up as a saint, and I stood there with my fists clenched, unable to say a word.

The day before the marrow donation, Betty faked a medical episode and drained more than a pint of blood from me, far past what a body could safely spare. I sobbed and begged her to stop.

She just gripped my chin and smiled.

"What are you crying about, Zoey? This body of yours exists for me. It's only a little blood. What's the harm?"

With that, she dropped the blood bag straight onto the floor and started wailing.

"Zoey, I just want to live. What did I do wrong? Why are you doing this to me?"

When our parents pushed the door open, what they found was me on top of Betty, because I hated her, hated that she'd tortured me and tried to drain me dry.

But in their eyes, saving myself from her had turned into some act of rebellion, and I'd smashed the blood bag meant to save her life.

In our house, that counted as an unforgivable sin. Mom, still in her high heels, kicked me again and again until I was barely conscious, then had me dumped at the hospital without a second thought.

Later, to finish the marrow transplant as fast as possible, she ignored my injuries completely and dragged me straight to the operating table. That was what killed me.

Mom never loved me. She despised me, called me worthless down to the bone.