Chapter 1

Emma's POV

I called the dean, Mr. Robert Whitaker. "Mr. Whitaker, is it too late to apply for that residential research program you mentioned?"

"Of course not! I've been holding a spot for you. As long as you get here by the day after tomorrow, you're fine."

He hesitated for a moment. "But you understand that once you're accepted, you're committing to at least three years. You won't be able to drop out halfway through, and you won't be coming home during that time. Are you sure about this?"

"Yes."

As soon as I hung up, my phone buzzed. At some point, someone had added me to a family group chat.

My twin sister, Clara Winston, had sent a message. "Why didn't Emma come after us? Is she mad because I had too many suitcases and there wasn't room for her in the car?"

Our older brother, Nathan Winston, replied almost instantly, "She's lost some weight and somehow gotten even moodier. Just ignore her."

Then our mother, Sierra Blake, chimed in, "Exactly. She's been too sensitive her whole life."

I stared at the screen. Another message appeared. "I suppose that's what happens when you don't raise a child yourself. They never really become part of the family."

Never really part of the family?

Clara and I were twins.

There were already three children in the family when we were born, and our parents claimed they couldn't handle all of us. So, they sent me away to live with my grandmother, Margaret Heaton, in a small town.

I didn't come home until I was six.

Even now, I could remember how excited I'd been.

I'd told anyone who would listen that my mom was finally coming to take me home.

I washed the outfit I planned to wear three separate times. On the morning I left, I carefully rubbed some of Grandma's cold cream into my cheeks and combed my hair until there wasn't a strand out of place.

I thought my mother would be happy to see me.

Instead, when the front door opened, Mom took one look at me and frowned. "Good grief. You're so chubby and sunburned. What happened to you?"

Then Clara came running out of the living room in a frilly pink dress. She stopped in front of me and stared for what felt like forever. Then she burst out laughing. "Mommy, look! She looks like a pig!"

Back then, I'd stood frozen on the doorstep, too afraid to move. It felt like someone had lodged a block of ice inside my chest.

My phone buzzed, snapping me back to the present.

I looked down and realized I'd been removed from the group chat. Again.

The last message I'd seen was from my father, Daniel Winston. "Who added her?"

I stared at those three words for a moment before scrolling back through the chat.

That was when I noticed the group name. "The Fantastic Four."

Not "The Winston Family," the family chat we'd always had.

So, they'd made another group behind my back—one without me.

I tightened my grip on my phone and suddenly felt like laughing. When I was heavier, I was ugly. Now that I'd lost weight, I was apparently difficult.

It didn't matter what I did. Somehow, I was always the problem. At this point, I could probably breathe wrong, and they would find a reason to complain about that too.

I didn't bother going into the private dining room. I walked straight outside, hailed a cab, and went home.

We lived on the sixth floor of an aging apartment building, the kind that had never been fitted with an elevator.

I hauled my oversized woven moving bag up one flight at a time.

The dim stairwell seemed endless, twisting upward like some dark underground river. By the time I finally reached the sixth floor, sweat was dripping down my forehead, and the back of my shirt was soaked through.

The keypad on our front door glowed a faint blue. I pressed my thumb to the fingerprint scanner.

"Fingerprint not recognized."

I tried again.

"Fingerprint not recognized."

On the third attempt, the lock sounded an alarm.

"Too many failed attempts. Fingerprint access has been disabled. Please contact the administrator."

Summers in Westbridge were brutal. Sweat kept trickling down my forehead and into my eyes, stinging so badly I could barely keep them open.

My phone had died, so there was nothing I could do but wait in the hallway. The motion-sensor light shut off every few minutes, plunging the stairwell into darkness. Each time, I stomped my foot to make it flicker back on.

Dark. Stomp. Dark again. Another stomp.

By the time my legs were covered in mosquito bites and my knees had gone stiff from standing so long, I finally heard voices and laughter drifting up the stairs.

"The garlic butter shrimp was amazing…"

The conversation cut off. Mom had looked up and spotted me standing outside. Everyone went quiet.

She squeezed past me and pressed her thumb against the sensor.

"Access locked due to multiple failed attempts. Administrator authorization required." The same emotionless electronic voice repeated the warning.

Mom wiped the sweat from her forehead and sighed irritably. "You broke the lock again. Why is it always you? You touch something, and somehow it stops working."

It had been like this for as long as I could remember.

Whenever something got broken around the house, it was usually Nathan or Clara who'd done it. But after I came home, things got easier. If no one knew who was responsible, they blamed me.

I almost told her that my fingerprint had never been registered in the first place. But the words died on my tongue.

What was the point?

I probably wouldn't be coming back much after this anyway.