Chapter 4

My mother pitied me with that fake, syrupy voice.

My father crushed me with his authority.

One played the kind one, the other the villain.

They gave me what looked like fair treatment, when they had never once meant to let me win.

If it had really been fair, they would have kept their promise and given me the BMW.

Not staged another round.

"Enough. It wouldn't matter how many times we did it over."

I lifted my chin and wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth.

"I'm done playing this fairness game with you."

Seeing me walk out in anger, Maxine yelled after me, "You quit on your own, nobody forced you out. Now the car's mine, so don't go crying to Mom and Dad about it later."

After they handed the BMW to Maxine, they signed her up for driving school right away.

I shut myself in my room all day, avoiding them.

When I'd gone several days without speaking to them, my mother flew into a rage at me.

"What is it you want? Say it, then. Are you trying to kill me, keeping silent like this?"

"Hmph."

I let out a cold laugh and shot back, "And if I say it, will you actually give it to me?"

She fell silent.

"I'm not asking you to favor me. I only want to be treated fairly.

"At the start you said the back-to-school gift would be one for each of us.

"But in the end you'd rather spend over three hundred thousand on a BMW for Maxine than a thousand on a laptop, tablet, and phone for me.

"You know I'm starting college any day now, and I'm still wearing a kids' smartwatch. Do you really think that's okay?

"There's homework, papers, course registration—every bit of it needs a computer. Is that request of mine really so outrageous?"

"Shut up. You're giving me a headache."

My mother cut me off and rubbed her ear, impatient.

"Don't come at me with this guilt-trip nonsense. Giving birth to you was a kindness, raising you was a kindness. You're eighteen now. We don't owe you anything.

"As for the laptop, tablet, and phone, that was just your bad luck. Don't blame the world for it."

She glared at me, her eyes full of disgust.

My heart went cold, all the way through.

"You say I have bad luck?

"That day I slipped a folded slip into your pocket. Two blank, one with writing.

"You drew two out at random, and I picked one of those two myself.

"Those aren't even fifty-fifty odds, and I still drew the one with the writing. You tell me—is that bad luck?"

I laid out the whole truth of that day in one breath.

My mother's hand flew across my face.

"So it was you. I kept saying I'd prepared two blank slips—how did an extra one with writing end up in there.

"Your father even blamed me for being careless.

"You really are a scheming little thing.

"Ah—"

She let out a shriek.

Realizing what she'd let slip, she clapped a hand over her mouth in horror.

"You finally admit it. There was never any good luck or bad luck. From the day we were born, you were the ones rigging it all along."