Chapter 3

I knew my parents. When they said they wouldn't pay for my college, they meant it, down to the last cent.

So early the next morning, I headed out into the blazing ninety-degree heat.

Right after the SATs, students hunting for summer jobs were everywhere, and the good part-time positions had already been snapped up.

I went down the shopping street asking at every storefront.

"Are you hiring for the summer? I can do anything, wash dishes, wait tables, whatever you need."

After being turned down by over a dozen places in a row, an upscale seafood restaurant finally agreed to take me on.

"Eighty dollars a day, one lunch included, ten in the morning to ten at night. You in?" The manager looked me over.

"I'm in!" I nodded without hesitation.

Eighty dollars a day, two months of work, would just barely cover my first year's tuition and housing.

The job was harder than I'd imagined.

I was on my feet the whole shift, hauling heavy trays back and forth between private rooms.

The kitchen smoke stung my eyes until I could barely keep them open, and my hands blistered more than once from the heat.

But I gritted my teeth and kept going, because I had no other option.

Two weeks later, my college acceptance letter arrived.

I'd gotten into a top-tier university, exactly as I'd hoped.

Bridget, meanwhile, had only managed to get into a bottom-tier, unaccredited college.

But when my parents got back from their trip to Europe, they never once mentioned that I'd gotten into a top-tier university.

That afternoon, the restaurant was slammed with customers.

The manager rushed into the kitchen and shoved a freshly finished plate of the restaurant's signature garlic butter king crab into my hands.

"Penny, quick! Take this to the Windsor Suite!

"That's our biggest client today; they booked the whole room for a graduation banquet. Don't you dare mess this up!"

I wiped the sweat off my forehead with my shoulder and carried the heavy tray down the hall toward the most luxurious private room at the end.

"Excuse me, your garlic butter king crab..."

I put on a smile, ready to announce the dish, and froze the moment I saw who was inside.

The room blazed with light, packed with two full tables of people, every one of them a relative I knew all too well.

My parents sat at the head of the table, with Bridget between them, dressed up like a little princess.

So... they'd thrown Bridget a graduation banquet after all.

They'd invited every relative under the sun, and the only person they hadn't told was their own daughter.

My aunt, Judy Rhea, spotted me first, gasping in surprise.

"Oh my, isn't that Penny? Today's your sister's graduation banquet. Why are you here waiting tables?"

The room, full of laughter a moment ago, went dead silent. Every pair of eyes locked onto me at once.

I was standing there in an ill-fitting server's uniform, my hair damp with sweat and plastered to my cheeks.

Next to Bridget's polished glamour, I looked shabby and pathetic, a brutal contrast.

But I gritted my teeth and forced myself to walk to the table, setting the crab down steadily.

Before I could say a word, my mom shot up out of her seat.

"You shameless wretch! Did you dress like a beggar on purpose just to embarrass us?!"

She turned to the relatives, putting on a look of bitter disappointment.

"Everyone here knows we gave both our daughters a 100,000-dollar education fund, split fair and even!

"Bridget took her share abroad to broaden her horizons, and look how well that turned out.

"Meanwhile, Penny took her hundred thousand dollars and ran around with a bunch of small-time hoodlums, in and out of internet cafes and nightclubs, and blew through every cent of it in no time.

"Now that she's burned through all her money, she's come here to wait tables and play the victim, just to humiliate us in front of everyone!"