Chapter 1

The day I was diagnosed with cancer, before I could even tell my parents, a childless tycoon said he wanted to adopt me.

I looked around our home, where you couldn't find a single decent piece of furniture, at my sister lying paralyzed in bed.

Life was already hard enough for this family. It couldn't be dragged down by a dying son on top of everything else.

Just as I was about to agree to the tycoon's adoption, rows of floating notifications drifted past my eyes.

"Don't agree. Your parents are worth hundreds of millions. This is only a test."

"Poor guy. He didn't want to burden his family, so he agreed to the adoption, and then his parents decided he was greedy, that he loved money over them."

"Sad part is, nobody believed a word he said. They threw him out, and he died sick and alone in the snow."

"He doesn't even know he has a younger brother. The family gave all the money to the brother and played poor with him, just to see which kind of upbringing turns out the better person."

I stared at the notifications hanging in the air, my eyes slowly filling.

Every day before dawn I got up to wash my sister. After school I collected bottles and picked up odd jobs to ease the load on my parents.

I only ever let myself eat expired food, and it gave me stomach cancer this young. And all of that was just my family's test?

Seeing me say nothing, my family pressed me. "Do you want to be adopted or not?"

...

The sheer weight of it hit me until my head spun. My throat closed up, and for a long moment I couldn't force out a single word.

I looked at my parents, gray creeping in at their temples, and wanted to demand, right then and there, whether everything the notifications said was true.

I wanted to ask my sister, Eunice Wiley, whether the legs she'd lost saving me in that car accident were fake too.

But the words reached my lips and I choked them back down.

I had no proof. All I had was what I'd seen in those notifications. My family would either deny it or decide I'd lost my mind.

Watching me stall and stumble over nothing, my father lost his patience and slammed his hand down on the table. "What is it you actually want?"

I flinched on reflex, the way I always did. He saw me cringing and shrinking.

That set him off. "Say something. Are you mute? You can't hold a candle to—" A useless thing like you, no comparison to—

He caught himself before the rest came out. But the notifications finished it for me.

"To his little brother, right!"

"But they raised him from the start telling him the family was poor, don't compare yourself to others. The younger son never wanted for a thing. How was he supposed to compare?"

I looked at my mother and my sister sitting there watching it happen, and my heart dropped like a stone.

Then Lee Rodriguez, the man who'd said he wanted to adopt me, spoke up.

"Never mind. If the boy's hesitating, then his family clearly means something to him. We won't push."

He'd given me a way out. He folded up the adoption papers.

Lee and his wife stood and said their goodbyes.

The notifications were still celebrating, cheering that I'd passed my parents' test.

They said it was only a matter of time before I got my rich young heir's identity back.

But inside I felt myself going cold, inch by inch.

My parents were still studying me with those measuring eyes.

And Eunice came right out and asked, "When you hesitated, was it because you couldn't bear to leave us, or were you weighing what you'd get out of it?"

Their eyes, their tone, sent a crawling numbness across my scalp.

The notifications panicked on my behalf.

"Uh oh, uh oh. Every time they decide he doesn't cherish the family enough, they pull something."

"Last time the sister faked getting hurt saving him in a crash. Now what are they cooking up?"

I dropped my head so I wouldn't see the notifications, forced a smile, and said, "I just felt bad that you let them in at all. When someone says they want to adopt your child, wouldn't any normal parent shove them straight back out the door?"

A few words, and my parents' faces went awkward.

They laughed it off. "Benjamin Wiley, we only do it for your own good. All right, all right, let's drop it."

I pressed a hand over my throbbing stomach and said nothing more.

With what strength I had left, I barely managed to get myself into bed.

I gripped the blanket, worn so thin the threads were pulling loose.

And I swore to myself, silently: first, I would find proof that my family was faking the poverty. Second, I would find a way to cure my illness.

By the moonlight I looked at my parents, snoring now, and at the wall covered in certificates and awards.

Deep down I still couldn't believe none of it was real.

Because poor as this house was, there had been too many warm moments in it.

For my school fees, my mother would go door to door begging to borrow money.

Sometimes people sneered at her. "Kids from poor families are lucky to make it through junior high."

And she would only smile awkwardly and explain, "This boy of mine is smart. We're his parents. We can't be the ones to hold him back."

To make my daily walk to school a little easier, my father took the whole family through half a year of scraping and saving before he had enough to buy me a bicycle.

To celebrate my coming of age, my sister, paralyzed in bed for years, still got someone to bring back a little rabbit for me as a birthday present.

I slept badly that night, and by the time school let out the next day I was still fogged and heavy all over.

Then one line in the notifications snapped me wide awake, and cold shot straight up my spine.