The Exposé: My Ungrateful Ward

"Mom, Dad, Hilda's adoption ceremony next week has to be grand. Make sure the town's big names are there. We can't have her feeling overlooked."

"Exactly, honey. I've already ordered a couture gown for her. It cost a million dollars. And I've invited half the society ladies in town. Hilda will be the picture of grace."

I blinked awake. At the marble dining table, Mom and Dad were deep in discussion about Hilda Oakley's adoption ceremony.

Dad's voice carried the final weight. "We'll need to change your surname, too. From now on, you're a Cooper."

Hilda beamed, sweetness pouring from her smile. "I have family now. Thanks, Mom and Dad. "

The fork slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor, my chest burning with shock and fury.

Dad's head snapped around, the warmth on his face icing over in an instant. "Valerie! What's gotten into you? If you're not going to eat, then leave!"

I stared around the table, dazed, unable to take it in.

I had been reborn at the very moment Mom and Dad were preparing to make Hilda their daughter.

Hilda was the girl our family sponsored through charity. In my last life, after her parents died, we took pity on her, covering her tuition and living expenses.

We gave her the best of it all. While kids her age crowded around display counters just to tap at demo screens, she unwrapped each new device as soon as it hit the market.

My brother, Alex Cooper, was the one who convinced Mom and Dad to let Hilda move in with us and transfer to my school. She ended up living under our roof for three years.

She was all sweetness to my face, playing the doting little sister. However, behind my back, she ripped up my books and even sliced me with a knife once.

When Mom and Dad found out, she shrank behind them, her eyes full of wounded innocence. "I'm fine. Val didn't mean it. It's nothing if I'm the one who gets hurt."

That was when Mom stepped forward and slapped me twice, hard.

When I rolled my sleeve up to show the cuts Hilda had carved into my arm, Dad's face contorted with disgust. He bellowed, "You violent lunatic! You hurt yourself and then try to pin it on Hilda? You're a disgrace!"

Alex, who was a doctor, pressed his thumb into my wound and taunted, "The artery runs right here. Next time, aim for precision."

At school, Hilda and her crew preyed on me without mercy. I'd been fragile my whole life, treading the jagged edges of bipolar swings, so no matter how many times I told Mom and Dad, they never listened.

On the eve of the adoption ceremony, Hilda threw herself down the stairs and blamed me for it. My mania spiraled out of control. I lashed out and hit her.

Mom and Dad were finished with me. She spat that I was a bad seed, a mistake born into the world. Dad formally struck me from the Cooper name.

They turned to Hilda as if she were the true child and shoved me out into the dead of winter. My mood swings unraveled me until, in a frantic blur, I leaped from the rooftop.

The truth surfaced only after I was dead. Hilda had been slipping something into my water every day. I wasn't sick by nature. She'd driven me into bipolar disorder.

I came to, only to find Hilda watching me, her face painted with concern.

'Valerie, you're panicking, aren't you? It's useless. I'm about to be the Cooper heiress!'

Her lips never moved, yet her voice threaded straight into my ear.