1

The cot was hard as a board, and the damp crept through the edges of the blanket, seeping into my bones.

The charred skin on the back of my hand had turned septic. Pus had fused the wound to the bedsheet.

But I couldn't feel the pain anymore.

My body felt lighter and lighter, so light that even the faint warmth lingering from the fireplace couldn't reach me.

I tried to touch the wound, but my fingers passed straight through the gaunt body below me.

I froze in midair, looking down at myself lying on the cot with my eyes shut.

Was I dead?

For as long as I could remember, I had spent every day calculating how to survive in this house.

I couldn't afford to get sick. I definitely couldn't afford to die.

Because under my father's auction rules, even holding a funeral would probably require a winning bid.

Now, floating near the ceiling, my mind was still running the numbers out of sheer habit.

How many family credits would the cheapest urn cost?

Would my confiscated eight thousand credits be enough for half an urn's worth of ashes?

What a joke.

I was dead, and I was still worrying about his damn rules.

Two days earlier, I had plunged into the fireplace to save my grandmother's necklace.

The red-hot coals seared against my skin with a sizzling hiss.

The smell of burning flesh filled my nostrils. I rolled on the ground in agony, shaking uncontrollably, begging my father for help.

My father calmly pulled out a wet wipe, cleaned his hands, walked over to the whiteboard in the center of the living room, and wrote a few lines.

"Burn treatment aid. Starting bid: five thousand family credits. Minimum increment: five hundred."

I clutched my hand, biting through my lip.

"Dad... my credits... they're all on the table..."

"Rules are rules."

My father kicked aside the eight thousand family credits I had laid out earlier.

"You seized an auction item after bidding closed. That's a violation. Your eight thousand credits are confiscated as a penalty. You have zero assets now. No bidding privileges."

Melody snuggled up against him, giggling.

"Claire's so dumb, she can't even remember the rules. Daddy, she scared me. I want compensation for emotional distress."

My father immediately pulled out two thick stacks of credits and tucked them into her arms.

"Melody got scared. Go get yourself something good to eat and calm down. Ignore that little jinx."

The front door slammed shut, shaking plaster from the walls.

And so I lay in the unheated storage room, burning with fever, my wound festering.

I didn't even have enough credits to bid on a cup of hot water.

In the end, my body held out until it could not draw another breath.

Click.

The sound of the lock turning pulled me back to the present.

My father and Melody were home.

Melody was carrying five or six designer shopping bags, her heels clicking sharply against the floor.

"Daddy, that dress really does match my new bag, doesn't it? It was just so expensive. I spent thirty thousand family credits bidding on the shopping allowance."

"As long as you like it. My daughter deserves nothing but the best."

My father hung up her coat and patted her head with a doting smile.

"Financial skills have to be cultivated early. If you can get your father to invest in you, that's talent."

In this house, my father fancied himself a perfectly fair businessman.

Want meat? Starting bid: a hundred credits. Highest bidder wins.

Want to use the washing machine? Fifty credits per load.

Want to turn on the desk lamp to do homework at night? Ten credits, up for bidding.

To earn credits, I washed dishes at a fast-food joint and collected cardboard from recycling bins. I slept three hours a night.

My hands and feet cracked and swelled from the cold, and I still barely scraped together enough credits to stay alive.

Melody never had to work a day.

All she had to say was "Daddy, I'm so tired," or squeeze out a couple of tears, and my father would hand over what he called "emotional support funds" and "growth grants."

Then she would use the credits he gave her to crush me at the auction table and take everything.

My father hadn't always hated me.

The day my mother died in a car accident, Melody had a high fever.

My mother had promised to stay home and take care of her, but then she got my call.

I had left the forms for a college campus visit at home and called my mother in tears, begging her to bring them to school.

It was pouring.

Her car was hit by an out-of-control truck at an intersection. She never came home.

After that, my father decided I was the one who killed my mother, and that Melody was the child who had nearly been abandoned by everyone.

He piled all his resentment onto me and doubled the love that should have been mine, pouring it all into Melody.

"Whatever she wants, you give it to her."

Those were the words my father repeated most often after my mother died.

Then he created the so-called family auction.

He said he refused to feed and house the worthless girl who had gotten his wife killed.

He said I had to pay for every bite of food I ate and every bit of electricity I used.

I told him over and over that I had no idea there would be an accident that day.

But he just looked at me coldly.

"If you hadn't insisted she bring you those papers, she'd still be alive."

Eventually, I stopped trying to defend myself.

My father kicked off his shoes, his gaze sweeping across the closed storage room door.

"Claire's still not out?"

He let out a contemptuous snort and loosened his tie.

"Too stubborn for her own good. The girl's got nothing, and she still won't bend."