Cerita Pendek Plot Twists & Novel Independence Biological Family

The day my admissions results came in, I ran into the living room with my laptop still open in my arms. "Mom, Dad, I got into Bedford University. Now I'll finally be in the same city as Derek and Grayson." No one answered. The living room was empty. A city-shaped magnet from Bedford was stuck to the fridge door. Grayson Whitfield had given it to me the year before. "Once you get in," he'd told me, "I'll take you all over the city." I'd held on to that promise like a lifeline, using it to push through one sleepless night after another. But now, three plane ticket order receipts sat tucked beneath that same magnet. Mom. Dad. My sister. Destination: Bedford. I stood there for a long moment before I noticed the new video posted in the family group chat. My brother, Derek Radley, was pulling my sister's suitcase along, smiling in a way I hadn't seen in a while. "Welcome to Bedford, Amber. Time to get you started on the Foundation Program." Grayson stood beside her, holding out a bouquet of sunflowers. "Is Claire going to be mad at me?" Amber asked, sounding small. Grayson only laughed. "She won't. She's sensible. She always is." My fingertips went cold, one degree at a time.

Ever since Mom loses the baby, Dad has been spending his time keeping his late classmate's wife company. So I take scissors to our family photos, cutting him out of every single one. When Mom receives a call from my school, she overhears me telling a classmate that my dad is dead and asking if I can borrow theirs instead. Mom freezes for a moment before admitting, "Yeah, he died young." When family sports day rolls around, Mom catches me slipping a ten-dollar bill to the school guard, begging him to pretend to be my dad for the day. Instead of stopping me, she quietly hands the guard 200 dollars, making sure he attends the parent-teacher conference with me. Whenever an event requires a father figure, Mom simply lets me rent one. Eventually, it dawns on Dad that he hasn't heard anything from us in a long time. He clears his entire schedule for the afternoon to pick me up from school, but my teacher stops him at the school gate. Dad heads back home in confusion. The second he steps through the front door, he overhears me speaking to the maintenance guy. "My dad's dead," I tell him. "Do you want to be my new dad?"

On the day my family buys a new car, everyone excitedly starts making plans for the future. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, they'll drive my brother, Jake Walt, to the science museum. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, they'll take my mom to the gym. Most importantly, they'll drive my younger sister, Emily Walt, to and from college every day. Even though she's required to live on campus, my parents can't bear to let her commute alone, so they'd rather make the six-mile round trip every single day. They map out everyone's schedule except mine. When I leave for graduate school, I take a rideshare by myself. But after Emily uses my payment account to buy herself a new phone, I no longer have enough money to pay the toll and the driver abandons me at a highway rest stop. Stranded under the blazing sun, I call home, hoping for help. Instead, I'm met with nothing but blame. My parents scold me for inconveniencing them. "We're taking Emily to school. You expect us to turn around and waste all that gas?" My childhood friend, Patrick Green, says I brought it on myself. "I warned you not to go so far away for grad school. This is your own fault." Jake mocks me. "You made good money over the summer, didn't you? You're old enough to figure this out yourself instead of expecting everyone to rescue you." Looking at the money left in my wallet—the rest of my summer earnings already "borrowed" to buy Emily's college supplies—I finally realize the truth. In this family, I'm never treated like a daughter. When the elevator is overloaded, they push me out without hesitation. When the new house's fingerprint lock only allows five users, they give the last spot to Emily's dog instead of me. If there's never been room for me in this family, then it's time to stop trying to force my way in.

The year I turned twelve, I was learning to swim when the lifebuoy was snatched from me by my little sister Mia Lawrence. By the time they pulled me out, the oxygen deprivation had taken my hearing for good. The incident made me the new family’s darling, in Mia’s place. My big brother Josh Lawrence kept the shotgun seat of his car off-limits to all but me. My second brother, Ethan Lawrence, reserved a front-row seat in my name at every single one of his concert. And Samuel Lawrence, the youngest of my brothers, would accept Mia’s gifts only to toss them in the bin the moment she turned her back. Even Brian Ferguson, betrothed to her since childhood, spent three painstaking years learning sign language so he could communicate with me. For a decade, I was convinced I was the apple of everyone’s eye. How foolish of me, as I learned the fateful day the Fergusons came to discuss the pending union. Mia’s eyes were rimmed red. “I’ve given up all that’s mine for ten years,” she said. “Not this time, not Brian. I can’t give him up too.” Mom reached for her hand at once, choking back tears as she turned to me. “Elaine, please. Let this one go. Whatever Mia owed you, it’s been more than made up for." Dad’s voice was low, final. “This union has always been meant for Mia, not you.” Josh’s jaw tightened. “You’ve taken over a decade of her life. Isn’t that enough?” Ethan quietly agreed, “She’s been left out in the cold all these years.” Samuel lifted the ring from where it sat before me and set it down in front of Mia. “Time to put things back in their places.” And last of all, Brian, who would not meet my eyes, signed the verdict. “I only stayed close to you to make it up on Mia’s behalf. It was always her I wanted as my wife.” The truth hit me then. Ten years of being adored, of being first, none of that had been love. All had been but a grand performance, a debt dressed up as devotion. I shredded the marriage agreement that night. By morning, I’d signed away my old life for a teaching position in a far-flung village. With me out of the picture, now everyone could shower love over Mia, guilt-free at last.

After the scores are out, I head home with my results slip, which indicates that I'm a top scorer in the entire city. My heart's brimming with excitement as I'm ready to share the good news with my family. I'm about to push the door open when I unexpectedly receive a video call from my future self from four years later. The me on the screen looks utterly haggard. I freeze for a moment, but I still can't stop myself from chirping like a child who's asking for a piece of candy, "Are you really me four years from now? Are Mom and Dad finally proud of me? Do they love me as much as they love my sister now?" My future self smiles, yet she can't keep her tears at bay. "Whatever you do, don't tell them your score! They won't be proud of you. They'll only use your sister's failure to get into college and her threats to end her own life as an excuse to force you to give up your place at college for her!" All of a sudden, I feel as though I've plunged into an icy abyss. On the day I reunite with my family, Mom and Dad take my younger sister, Winona Fairchild, out for fine dining while they hand me a plate of stone-cold leftovers. They tell me that after years of fending for myself, my stomach's too weak to handle anything too fancy. Naively, I believe that if I become good enough, I can bridge that ten-year gap and make them look at me the same way they look at Winona. As it turns out, blood ties can never outweigh years of companionship. As I listen to Mom and Dad comfort Winona over her poor performance on the exam, I fold my results slip neatly and tuck it deep into my pocket. Since they only view me as a cash cow, I have no reason to tell them that I've been accepted into Pennington College.

When I touch someone else's personal belongings—things they have had direct contact with before—I can hear the items voicing their owner's thoughts. The day of my grandma's funeral, I clutch the emerald bracelet she wore for over 30 years and hear it shout, "The house mustn't go to Michael! He hit me!" Michael? That's my uncle's name, and right now, he's bawling his eyes out in front of Grandma's casket, seemingly grieving even harder than everyone else.

My family was going on a beach trip for summer. My mother came up with the whole itinerary two weeks earlier. My father booked a room with a view of the sea. My brother picked the surfboards, while my sister went with the dresses for socials. I was helping them pack up the night before the trip when I saw the tickets on the coffee table. There were only four of them, and they were for my father, mother, brother, and sister. They didn't get one for me. My mother saw me, and she froze. "Oh, I forgot all about you." My brother didn't even look up. "She can just stay at home." My sister said quietly, "Maybe I shouldn't go, then?" My mother quickly took her side. "No. You've been looking forward to this." My father clapped my shoulder. "You can't go this time, but we'll bring you along for the next trip." I smiled bitterly at the tickets. They went to the beach the next day. I grabbed the 10 million from my lottery winnings and went to Aocity, a place more than a thousand miles away. Our choices marked the day we went our separate ways, forever.

For ten years, I woke at three every morning to knead dough for my breakfast stall, all so I could put my daughter through college. Hot oil splattered across my arms day after day, leaving scars on my forearms that would never fully fade. But today, just when I desperately needed the money to keep my stall open, I discovered that the $200,000 in my bank account was gone. It was not until I got the bank statement that I learned the truth. My daughter had reconnected with her biological mother back in middle school. All these years, she had been secretly transferring money to her. When I confronted her over the phone, I cried so hard I could barely breathe. "That money was our retirement savings!" But she only laughed impatiently. "Stop saying you raised me. You didn't even give birth to me. My biological mother is the one who gave me life. Consider the money you spent on me your way of showing her respect." The call ended with a cold beep. It felt like a blade had been driven straight through my heart. I rushed home like a madwoman to find my husband. I thought he would at least feel sorry for us losing our retirement savings. Instead, he sat calmly on the couch and took a sip of coffee. "Blood runs thicker than water. Stop being so selfish." That $200,000 was the money we needed to survive. And he was actually lecturing me about blood ties, when he was nothing more than her adoptive father too.

After graduating from high school, my twin sister, Ella, and I were both accepted to Newland University. My parents put eighty thousand dollars in Ella's college fund and gave her a three-thousand-dollar monthly allowance, but put only eight thousand in mine and gave me three hundred a month. They took it for granted that I would move to Newland to look after her. The day the whole family threw a graduation party for my sister, I boarded a flight to the West Coast with a single suitcase and a full scholarship to one of the country's top engineering schools. What they didn't know was that the reporter who showed up that afternoon to interview "the outstanding Ashford graduate" had never been looking for my sister. The person they wanted was me, the daughter they'd already pushed out the door.

My parents, Leander and Valentina Rhodes, were cutthroat capitalists through and through, bringing the company’s toxic corporate culture right into our home. Eating a serving of pork ribs meant a performance deduction. Using the washing machine required paying a depreciation fee. Just to survive, I spent day and night coding and developing software. Finally, a photo-editing app I developed completely on my own went viral, earning my parents’ company $7 million. At the celebration dinner, my eldest sister, Sienna Rhodes, who managed HR, received a $70,000 bonus. My youngest sister, Delphine Rhodes, who worked in business development, walked away with a brand-new Porsche. Meanwhile, my paycheck showed nothing more than my unchanging $600 base salary. “Sienna hired two cleaners for the company. That’s called building talent pipeline infrastructure—she deserves a reward!” “Delphine took a client out for a steak dinner and secured the distribution deal. That’s expanding our territory—she deserves a massive bonus!” Finally, my parents shoved a supermarket gift card into my hand. “As for you, Evangeline, all you do is sit at your desk, tapping away on a keyboard in the air conditioning. There’s really nothing to reward.” “Still, Sienna and Delphine spoke up on your behalf, so take this gift card.” Ever since we were kids, Sienna was the family decision-maker; everything she said was taken seriously. Delphine was the baby of the family, showered with love—even when she made a mistake, it was always someone else’s fault. As for me, stuck in the middle, it felt like I was born to be forgotten. Even though I was supposed to be the star of this celebration dinner, no one remembered. No one cared. Watching the four of them laughing and enjoying their happy family moment, I silently put down the gift card. Then, I opened a text message from a rival tech giant offering me an $8 million annual salary package.

While on a car trip, our car is struck by falling rocks and breaks down on a remote mountain road. My sister, Renee Olsen, is terrified. We wait three hours before a passing vehicle finally comes. The driver rolls down the window. "I can only fit three people in my car. How many of you are there?" My mom, Penny Ziegler, lets out a relieved sigh and smiles. "Great, there are three of us." My dad, Leonard Olsen, immediately shifts slightly to the side, completely blocking me from view as I cower in the back seat. They get into the car with Renee and leave. Ten minutes later, Mom sends me a message. "Renee is in shock. We're bringing her to the hospital for a check-up first. You stay right there with the car and wait for us to pick you up." I glance at my leg that is bleeding from cuts caused by shattered glass and reply, "Okay." I wait from day into night until my phone battery dies, yet my parents never return. They never pick up my calls or reply to my messages. A team conducting geological surveys nearby discovers me, barely conscious. They arrange for a tow truck and rush me to the hospital, as I'm burning up with a fever. The doctor frowns when he sees my leg. "Why did you wait until now to come in? Young lady, your wound is infected. You need surgery to debride it. Where is your family? Get them here quickly to sign it." I slowly unclench my stiff fingers and take the surgical consent form. Calmly, I pick up the pen and sign my name. "I can sign it myself. They've already forgotten about me."

On Thanksgiving, after I got off work, my younger brother, Nate Anderson, left an update in our family group chat about having moved to a different address. I had to take five different public transport connections before I finally reached the location he had sent me. However, when I arrived, I found that I was in a deserted area. Nate sounded smug over the phone. “Got you! My prank was successful! The last bus has left. What’re you going to do now?” I was dumbfounded, but my parents were laughing. “Why did you believe such an obvious lie? Who did you inherit your dumbness from?” “We’re having our Thanksgiving dinner soon. You can walk home.” My girlfriend, Gwen Smith, was chuckling. She said mockingly, “Oliver, you should come back on your own, just like your parents said. “It’s not the first time you’re getting pranked like this. Don’t be a sore loser!” After that, she hung up on me. In the past, I would have called them and begged them to pick me up. However, this time, I was overwhelmed with exhaustion as I gazed at the distant city lights. Nate loved to play pranks on me, and my entire family enabled him to do so. Two years ago, he put peach fuzz into my drink, and I suffered an asthma attack because of it. Last year, he swapped my shampoo with a hair removal gel, and I failed an interview because of it. My entire family knew that I was terrified of the dark, but they conspired with him and lured me to a deserted area. They were betting on when I would call them and beg for their mercy at the dinner table. I did not cry or beg. In the dark, I walked in the opposite direction from where my home was. I was going to put an end to these pranks.

Mom raises me and my brother, Cameron Joyner, by herself after she gets a divorce. Cameron was born with congenital asthma and has to take medication every day. Although I'm healthier, Mom treats me better than Cameron. She always says, "You're the apple of my eye, Cassie. I don't want you to feel troubled because of Cam." From the very beginning of my life, I've always been number one in Mom's heart. However, the year I turn 15, Cameron suddenly disappears. Mom completely changes after he goes missing.

I have a congenital heart defect, and the doctors say I won't make it past 18. When I am ten, my parents bring home a blind child, saying she is my twin sister, Everly Wallace. My family spoils me rotten, but they treat Everly like a ghost. Everyone says Everly exists only to give me her heart. I try so hard to be good to this sister who shares my face, desperate to ease my guilt. When I reach 18, I lie on the operating table. Except they don't take my heart. They take my corneas. I die after that, while Everly finally sees the light.

I have always been the type to take people at their word. In fact, I've never been good at reading between the lines. Back in middle school, a girl deliberately slipped a cheat sheet into my hand. "Hold this for me. The teacher's coming," she whispers. She probably expects me to panic and stuff it into my pocket. Instead, I raise my hand. "This belongs to her. She just put it in my hand," I declare. Years later, after I start working, a new manager begins auditing the accounts. My colleague, Wendy Boyer, keeps stomping on my foot under the table. Lowering her voice, she whispers, "Just take the blame for now. You're still new, so he won't come down too hard on you." I nod, stand up, and look straight at our manager. "Wendy's the one who's been taking kickbacks. She said newcomers wouldn't be punished too harshly. You're new too, aren't you? Why don't you take the blame for her?" From that day on, no one in the office ever tried whispering anything to me again. That lasted until my biological parents finally found me and brought me home. They even threw a belated homecoming banquet to formally welcome me into the family. My supposed sister, Adeline Holmes, completely ignores the place card with my name on it and takes the seat between my parents. She loops her arm through Mom's and smiles at me. "I've sat here for the past 21 years. You don't mind if I sit here, do you?" she asks. Everyone waits for me to take the hint and quietly move to another seat. Instead, I look at her in all seriousness and ask, "Why would you think I'd mind? Is it because this is where the biological daughter is supposed to sit?" She presses her lips together and says nothing. So, I continue, "If that's the case, you've already had it for 21 years. Isn't it about time you gave it back to me?"

On the day my grandfather, who was the wealthiest man in this state, died, the entire family got into a huge fight over the inheritance. My father could not stop the fight, so he requested my mother’s support. When I arrived, my grandfather was lying motionless on the bed. He was not even changed into his funeral suit. My aunts were pulling on each other’s hair as they fought over the ownership of a building. My uncles were fighting over the Rolls-Royce car keys. The entire family looked like hooligans as they fought. My mother was holding gold bars as she yelled at me, “What are you waiting for? Take that gold ring off your grandfather’s finger!” I rubbed my hands and was just about to take the ring off. I had just crouched down when I saw my grandfather’s pinky move.

My family believed in democracy. Every decision was settled by a family vote. Dad, Mom, my brother Dylan Conley, and my sister Tessa Conley each got one vote. So did I. The problem was, four against one meant I never won. During my junior year of high school, my brother wanted a new computer. The vote was four to one. The money I'd saved for three years of tutoring was gone. In senior year, when it was time to submit college applications, I earned early admission to Northbridge University, but Tessa cried and said she couldn't stand the thought of me moving so far away. So the family held another vote. Dad pinned my application form beneath his hand. "Majority rules. You're going to the local teachers college." I told him I'd worked myself to the bone for that spot at Northbridge. Mom frowned. "Why do you have to be so stubborn? Northbridge is so far away. Who's going to take care of you if you get sick?" Later, when Dylan needed money for his startup, Dad held my college acceptance letter and said they'd use my tuition money to tide him over. Tessa looped her arm through mine with a cheerful smile. "We all voted on it. Don't kick up a fuss just because you didn't get your way." I stared at the acceptance letter they'd just voted away from me and suddenly found the whole thing almost funny. So this was what they called democracy. Just the four of them deciding, by majority vote, what I had to lose next. That night, I stopped arguing. I went online instead and filled out an application for a classified research program at a remote facility in the Northwest desert. From now on, the only person who got a vote in my life was me.

I am directionally challenged. I don't remember routes well, and I get lost quite easily. Wyatt Zimmerman, my best friend, refuses to believe me and insists on helping me fix this problem. He even gets Queenie Jackson, my foster sister, and Yvonne Lambert, my childhood sweetheart, on board to put me through "special training". They get off the subway before I do whenever we travel, leaving me alone at the station. They quietly leave through another entrance whenever we go shopping, leaving me wandering alone like a fool as I search for them. They always say it's to train my sense of direction. I step away to use the restroom during lunch today, and by the time I return, the three of them are gone again—even the table is completely cleared. I am about to make a call when I realize I have given my phone to Wyatt to hold on to. I walk to the front desk to ask about them, and the receptionist hands me a note from Wyatt. It merely states, "We've taken you along this route twice already, Scott, so I'm sure you remember it by now. You can do it! We'll be waiting for you at home!" I suddenly realize how pointless this whole training is. There's honestly nothing wrong with having no sense of direction. I can find my way without anyone's help as long as I have my navigation app on my phone.

I come home for the holidays to find four pairs of slippers beside the shoe cabinet. There's a pair for my dad, Dean Pratt, a pair for my mom, Nancy Kerr, and two pairs for my sister, Luna Pratt, including a spare. Mine isn't there. Although my sister attended school in another state, kept her room exactly as it was. Even her slippers sit by her bedside, waiting for her return. I had been away from home for three years. When I returned, I discovered that my belongings had disappeared one by one. And now, they hadn’t even kept a pair of slippers for me. I stand in the entryway, my feet bare. "Where’s my pair?" Mom pokes her head out. "You hardly ever come back, so I threw them away. They were taking up space." But the soles of my sister’s spare pair had already been worn smooth, and they were still neatly sitting in their original place. The next day, I buy a new pair for myself at the supermarket and put them beside the shoe cabinet. That night, I check the shoe cabinet and find them gone. Dad is watching TV on the couch. "Luna's classmate came over, so I gave them to her." "I just bought them." Dad doesn't even turn around. "It's just a pair of slippers. Get another one." Luna pauses. "Huh? I thought Mom had bought them for guests." It makes sense. Guest slippers were supposed to be thrown away once the guest had left.

I host a late-night campus radio show and have been on the air for three years. I take calls about cheating, scandals, and even people threatening to end their lives. The final night to submit college choices is also my last night on the air before graduation. At 11:30 pm, an anonymous call comes through. It's a guy. "Host, I changed my sister's college choices for my mom tonight," he says. "I have two sisters. Ever since we were kids, the older one has been better at everything than the younger one. "She gets better grades, she's prettier, and even strangers praise her. "This year, my younger sister is just 20 points short of the cutoff, while my older sister is certain to get into a top university. "So I changed all my older sister's college choices to schools she can't get into. That way, she has to wait a year and apply again. "She's smart anyway. If she takes the exam again and reapplies, she can get into an even better school. It all works out in the end." He pauses. "We just want my little sister to win for once. That's not too much to ask for, is it?" I grip the microphone but say nothing. Suddenly, another guy's voice comes through the line. "Host, I'm the older sister's boyfriend. We've been together for three years. Honestly, I do feel bad about this. "Could you play her a song? She listens to your show every night. If she hears it and comes to see me tomorrow, we can still talk about which schools she should apply to. "If she doesn't hear it, then I guess it doesn't matter." I take a deep breath and reach out to end the call. Suddenly, the producer cuts to a piano piece. I freeze, my blood running cold. It's the song I taught my childhood best friend to play, note by note, back when I was 16 years old. Only the two of us know this song.