“I am so sick of living in her shadow! You look at her like she’s some kind of tragic saint, and you look at me like I’m a shallow burden! I have worked my entire life to be perfect for you, and you don’t even care! You only care about the freak!”
My mother burst into tears.
“Do not call your sister that!”
But Chloe had completely lost control.
“I’ll call her whatever I want! I wish whatever fake, invisible disease she has would just finish the job! I wish she would just die so I could finally have my parents back!”
Silence swallowed the room.
My father covered his face while my mother looked as though every word had struck her physically. They knew exactly why I carried those scars, and they knew the daughter Chloe wished dead had once risked everything to keep her alive.
As I watched my sister through tears, something inside me finally changed. For twelve years I had believed silence was protecting her, but now I understood it was only feeding resentment and turning the truth into poison. If I continued hiding, Chloe would spend the rest of her life hating both me and our parents for reasons she could never understand.
