Chapter 3

The school transfer went through in no time.

Unsurprisingly, I became an instant celebrity on campus.

*The Davis family's elder daughter is crazy, with severe self-destructive tendencies.*

That was the narrative Mia and her friends established for me within twenty-four hours.

Girls clustered around Mia at lunch, loudly offering their sympathy.

"Mia, you're so unlucky to be stuck with a sister like that."

"I heard she locked herself in a haunted house at the theme park and smiled at a ghost doll! She almost gave the worker a heart attack!"

"Stay far away from her, Mia. What if she snaps and hurts you?"

Mia wore a look of saintly, helpless sorrow.

"Don't say that, guys. She just... she needs time to adjust."

The more she played the protective little angel, the more I looked like an unhinged psycho.

My half of the shared lab desk had rude slurs carved into the wood. Trash was shoved into my backpack. In the cafeteria, "accidental" bumps frequently sent my lunch tray crashing to the floor.

I took it all in total silence.

I cleaned out the trash. I wiped down the desk. I sat through afternoon classes on an empty stomach.

No anger. No tears. As calm and still as stagnant water.

My complete lack of reaction eventually bored the bullies.

Until Tuesday afternoon, during a biology lab.

The assignment was frog dissection.

A girl in Mia's group deliberately bumped against the display, knocking the glass container of live specimens off the counter.

Over a dozen large bullfrogs escaped, hopping frantically across the linoleum floor and triggering shrieks of disgust from the girls.

Mia immediately pointed a trembling finger at me, looking terrified.

"Miss Vance! It was Chloe! She glared at me so scary that I dropped it!"

Every pair of eyes locked onto me.

The biology teacher, Miss Vance, was a young woman fresh out of college. She frowned, clearly influenced by the vicious rumors about me.

Pushing up her glasses, she took the easiest path to restore order.

"Alright, settle down. Chloe, clean this up. Catch every single frog and put them back in the tank."

It was a blatant punishment.

Teenage girls hated touching slimy creatures. The teacher just wanted to humiliate me and get on with the lesson.

The entire class leaned back, grinning, waiting for me to cry or make a fool of myself.

I nodded obediently. "Okay, Miss Vance."

I walked up to the teacher's prep station, picked up a sharp, stainless-steel scalpel, and knelt down.

I didn't try to cup my hands around the slippery frogs.

Instead, with practiced, chilling precision, I brought the scalpel down through the skull of the nearest frog, pinning it firmly to the wooden floorboards.

A spray of dark blood and brain matter splattered across the floor.

The frog's legs twitched twice, then went completely limp.

I looked up, offering Miss Vance and my frozen classmates a bright, sweet, obedient smile.

"Is this better, Miss Vance? Now it won't hop away."

"I can pin them all down to the floor first, then collect them one by one. Would you like that?"

The classroom plunged into a terrifying, dead silence.

Everyone stared at me as if looking at a demon straight out of hell.

Miss Vance pointed a shaking finger at me, her voice cracking:

"You... you..."

In the end, I didn't get to pin the rest of the frogs down.

Class was dismissed immediately, and my parents were summoned to the principal's office.

When Dad arrived, his face was so dark it looked like thunder.

After listening to the teachers' exaggerated, horrified accounts of the incident, he didn't say a single word. He just dragged me out of the building by my arm.