My Sister Was Their Princess,I Was Their Scapegoat

1: 1

The year my parents divorced, I went with my wealthy mother, and my sister went with our unemployed father.

My mother lived in a two-thousand-square-foot place downtown, but she wouldn't let me use the hot water.

In the dead of winter, she dragged me out of bed at four every morning.

Your sister's out in the countryside. She probably doesn't even have running water. What makes you think you get to sleep in?

I carried two plastic buckets on a pole and walked nearly two miles to the riverside to haul water.

The ice cut my hands, blood dripping into the snow, and all my mother did was complain that I was too slow.

"Edwina Fox's done farm work since she was little. Why are you so soft?"

My sister wore an old padded coat, so I wasn't allowed a down jacket.

My sister ate stale bread with pickles, so even on my birthday all I got to gnaw on was a cold dinner roll.

My sister dropped out after middle school, so when I tested into a top high school, my mother tore up the acceptance letter on the spot.

"She ruined her whole life following your father. What makes you think you get a future?"

I went to my father, crying.

He stood in the rain in his delivery gear, his face full of guilt, and handed me a bank card.

"All these years, your mother's been sending your sister fifty thousand a month in support money."

I froze.

Then he told me my sister had been sent abroad to study long ago.

That morning at four, my mother threw the water buckets down at my feet as usual, and for the first time, I didn't go to the riverside.

Instead, I pushed open the door to my sister's bedroom, the one that was always locked.

Inside, the walls were covered with photos of her skiing, riding horses, celebrating birthdays out in some other state.

On the back of every photo, in my mother's own handwriting.

"My Edwina has suffered so much. Mommy will make it all up to you with the very best the world has to offer."

So it wasn't that she couldn't bear to let me have a good life.

She just thought I didn't deserve one.

When I turned over the last photo, I heard keys hit the floor out in the hallway.

My mother stood in the doorway, her eyes locked on the album in my hands.

"Who said you could come in here?"

In one photo, my sister wore a white helmet, sitting on a small brown horse.

The date in the bottom right corner was July, three years ago.

That was the month my mother told me my sister had broken her leg hauling bricks on a construction site.

To make me feel her pain, my mother tied my right leg to a dining chair and wouldn't let me move for a whole day.

But my sister had never broken her leg.

She was learning to ride horses at a French estate.

"Where is my sister, really?"

My mother reached out her hand.

"Give me the album."

"She was never in the countryside, was she?"

I held the photo up in front of her face.

"And she never hauled bricks either, did she?"

My mother lunged at me.

The hard corner of the album slammed into my brow, and she grabbed my hair and dragged me out of the room.

"You go through my things, you go see your father, and now you dare to question me?"

"I just want to know where my sister is."

"What gives you the right to know?"

She kicked the back of my knee.

"Edwina knew how to earn money at ten. What were you doing at ten?"

"Hauling water for you at the riverside."

Her hand came down hard across my face.

My mother grabbed the two plastic buckets by the wall and shoved open the balcony door.

"You didn't want to haul water?"

"Then you can stay out here."

She pushed me onto the balcony.

The glass door locked behind me, and the heavy curtains slid shut.

Four in the morning, and the whole building was still sunk in darkness.

I had only my pajamas on, and the melting snow soaked through my pant legs fast.

My hands and feet went numb, my knees stiffening with pain.

I beat on the door again and again, my voice going from a shriek to a rasp.

"Mom, I was wrong."

"I won't ask about my sister anymore."

"I'll go haul the water. Please, open the door."

At last her cold voice came from inside.

"Edwina was younger than you back then, and she was never this soft."

Behind the curtains, everything went still again.

Near dawn, a neighbor in the building across the way spotted me.

Before long, building management was knocking at the door.

Only then did my mother pull back the curtain, but first she raised her phone to take pictures.

"Edwina slept under a bridge as a kid and didn't die. You can't handle a little while on the balcony?"

Once the door opened and I'd barely stepped into the living room, my legs gave out under me.

My neighbor Renata Chavez wanted to call an ambulance, but my mother pressed her hand down over her phone.

"I've worked in family education for years. I know how to handle a child."

"She's just had it too easy. She doesn't know how to be grateful."

Renata still tried to stop her, but my mother had already dragged me into the storage room and tossed a thin blanket onto the floor.

I slept for a full day.

When I woke, my knee was swollen too badly to bend.

My mother's gentle voice drifted in from outside the door.

"Edwina, the new skis I ordered for you are all set."

"Your little sister's doing great. She even went out on the balcony on her own today to look at the snow."

I braced myself against the wall and stood.

On the shoe cabinet by the entryway, a camera glowed with a red light.

The lens was aimed at the balcony.

My mother woke me at four every morning not just to make me haul water.

She'd been filming the whole time.

And all those cries for help I thought no one would ever hear, she had saved long ago and sent to someone else.

2: 2

Three days later, it was my fifteenth birthday.

Ever since Edwina and Dad left, Mom hadn't allowed my birthday to be celebrated in the house.

The year I turned six, I asked her why, and she dumped my birthday dinner into the trash.

"The day you were born, Edwina was running a high fever. I stayed to take care of you instead of being with her. What right do you have to celebrate a birthday?"

All these years, my birthdays meant gnawing on a cold dinner roll.

But today, the table held pork ribs, sweet-and-sour fish, and a cake covered in mango.

Mom propped her phone up on the table and started a video call.

No one answered on the other end.

She scooped out a slice of cake anyway, still smiling.

"Edwina, today is your sister's birthday. Mom is celebrating it with her for you."

I didn't open my mouth.

The year I turned six, a bite of mango nearly suffocated me.

The doctor warned me again and again never to touch it.

"I'm allergic."

"Your sister loves mango most of all."

"But today is my birthday."

Her smile faded.

"When Edwina was little, she never even saw a cake. What's wrong with you eating one in her place, just once?"

She gripped my chin and shoved the cake into my mouth.

I fought with everything I had, and the chair crashed to the floor.

"Swallow it. She never got to have this. What gives you the right to turn your nose up at it?"

My lips and throat started itching almost at once.

I spat out the cake and stumbled toward the medicine cabinet.

The epinephrine pen was gone. Only the empty box was left.

Mom held up her phone and filmed.

"Don't put on a show. Edwina washed dishes all night with a high fever. You eat two bites of cake and you're dying?"

I fumbled for my phone to call for help, and she snatched it away.

She aimed it at my swollen face and pressed record.

"Edwina, your sister ate your favorite cake today."

"She's learned to behave, too."

I threw the door open and fell out into the hallway.

Renata heard the noise and came running, putting herself between me and Mom, who was chasing after me.

"She can't even breathe. And you still want to drag her back inside?"

By the time the paramedics arrived, I'd already lost consciousness.

When I came to, there was a needle taped into the back of my hand.

The doctor said ten more minutes and they wouldn't have been able to save me.

Renata covered my medical bill. She held my hand and asked, low, whether I was treated like this often.

Before I could answer, the door to the room opened.

Mom brought in a man named Lambert.

He ran the teen behavioral training center, and he was also a consultant for Mom's company.

"Summer, your mother says you deliberately ate food you're allergic to, to scare your parents?"

"She forced it into my mouth."

Consultant Lambert wrote only a few lines in the chart.

"Adolescents often mistake discipline for harm."

Renata stood up, furious.

Mom, though, played a video.

It started from the moment I began struggling, so you couldn't see her prying my mouth open.

On the screen, I knocked over the chair, clawed at my neck, ran for the medicine cabinet. It looked exactly like someone suddenly losing control.

Renata insisted on calling the police, but Mom cried right there in front of the doctor.

"Her sister isn't here, and this child has always been jealous. I was only afraid it would blow up and ruin the rest of her life."

Mom took me home that same day and locked the emergency medication in the safe.

"Run again, and I'll have Consultant Lambert come collect you."

Passing the trash can, I saw a delivery bag from France.

Inside were a blue scarf, a birthday card, and a voice recorder.

The card was in Edwina's handwriting.

"Summer, happy fifteenth birthday."

"Mom said you don't want anything from me, but I wanted to try one more time."

I pressed play on the recorder. First came Edwina's broken sobbing, then nothing but harsh static.

That recording had been edited.

The water in the bathroom cut off.

Mom came out and spotted the scarf at once.

"Give it here."

"If Edwina was reaching out to me, why did you tell me she hated me?"

Mom didn't answer.

She grabbed the scarf and reached straight for the gas burner.

I lunged to grab it back, and the flame licked the back of my hand, raising a row of blisters in an instant.

"You're never to take anything from her again."

I caught her wrist, and she twisted my arm back and pinned me against the edge of the stove.

The firelight lit her face, and there wasn't a trace of hesitation in her eyes.

The scarf burned down to a charred lump.

Edwina hadn't forgotten me.

Mom was the one who'd been turning us away from each other all along.

3: 3

Monday, I brought the torn-up acceptance letter to school.

My homeroom teacher, Mr. James, fit the pieces back together on his desk.

The spot at Riverside Central is still yours. As long as you turn in the guardian paperwork, you can still enroll.

But all my documents were locked in my mother's safe.

Mr. James was just about to walk me home when the office door swung open.

My mother came in with the principal and someone from the admissions office, a document folder in her hand.

Inside were chat logs and transfer screenshots from around the time of the placement exams.

Some stranger's account had sent me the answers, and the name on the receiving end was mine.

This isn't real.

My mother pressed her fingers to her brow.

Summer, stop lying.

She ran a family-education company and worked with plenty of training institutions.

Faking records and transaction histories was nothing to her.

She even produced a photocopy of the bank card my father had given me.

I'd had it for a single day before she snapped it in half.

Now it was proof that I'd cheated.

The admissions office froze my acceptance.

Word spread through the school fast. When I passed through the hallway, a few classmates dropped their voices.

It's her own mom. She wouldn't really do that to her, would she?

The graduation ceremony was that same day.

My mother shoved an apology statement into my hand.

Go up and read it.

The page said I'd been jealous of my sister, that I'd cheated for years, and that I'd framed my own mother.

I didn't cheat.

Your sister didn't even finish middle school, and here you are standing on a stage getting an award. How do you think she'd feel seeing that?

Her nails dug into the burn on the back of my hand.

Go up. Or I'll have Consultant Lambert come get you.

I walked to the microphone.

The first line read I admit that everything I'm good at was stolen.

My mother sat in the front row, phone raised.

She wanted to send the video to my sister again.

I folded the page.

My grades weren't cheated.

The auditorium went silent at once.

The chat logs, the transfers, the answers, none of them are mine.

I'm willing to be investigated. But I won't apologize for evidence that was faked.

My mother rushed up onto the stage, hand already rising to hit me.

Hundreds of phones went up at once below.

Her palm stopped in midair.

A few seconds later, she slowly lowered it, and the tears came anyway.

The crowd started whispering.

She knew exactly how to play the mother destroyed by her own daughter.

I gave up everything to raise you.

And now, over one high school, you'd trample your own mother into the ground?

People below sighed. Some started saying I was ungrateful.

My mother wiped her tears, but behind the phone the corner of her mouth curved up.

Back home, she took the door off my bedroom and threw all my textbooks into the bathtub.

You like to read?

Then read.

She grabbed my hair and pushed my face down into the swollen, sodden pages.

The smell of ink and rotting paper flooded my nose. I clutched the rim of the tub until two of my nails broke off.

Edwina never even got the chance to study. Who are you to be picky?

She didn't let go until I was nearly out of air.

A statement voluntarily giving up my acceptance landed in front of me.

Sign it.

From now on you'll wait tables at a restaurant. Whatever Edwina did, you'll do too.

She never waited tables.

I lifted my head.

She's studying abroad. She even sent me a gift.

A glass grazed my temple and shattered against the wall.

My mother's voice suddenly went soft.

Sign it, and I'll be nicer to you from now on.

For over a decade, every time she wanted me to give something up, she'd promised the same thing.

I picked up the pen and wrote four words at the bottom of the statement.

Evidence is forged.

My mother dragged me into the laundry room and chained the door shut.

I was locked in the dark for two days.

The third night, she got a call and left.

I felt around under the washing machine for the screwdriver I'd hidden ahead of time.

The old lock was rusted. It took me almost an hour of grinding just to work one screw loose.

When I reached my arm out through the gap in the door, the metal edge cut it open.

Blood ran down my arm. I wrapped it any which way with the hem of my shirt.

I didn't stop.

I was going to get those videos.

Only by proving she'd lied did I have any chance of getting out alive.

4: 4

The photos were gone from my sister's room.

I went through every drawer, and finally, behind the panel under the desk, I found a hidden compartment.

A dozen ledgers were crammed inside.

I opened the earliest one. The first page read:

"From the day you were born, Edwina had nothing left."

"If it weren't for taking care of you, she never would have gone with your father."

After that came line after line of accounts.

"Edwina received a new backpack. Expense: three hundred eighty dollars."

The next line read: "Summer's backpack worn until torn, to offset the shame Edwina suffered as a child scavenging used bags."

"Edwina enrolled in piano lessons."

"Summer's after-school programs stopped, electronic keyboard smashed."

"Edwina attended summer camp in France."

"Summer locked in the storage room for seven days."

Every single thing my sister got was followed by a punishment I endured.

My frostbite, my hunger, my allergic reactions, my scars, all of it written up in neat little columns as expenses.

On the far right was another column: "Settlement status."

Almost every entry bore a red stamp.

Paid.

The page for my sister's riding lessons read:

"Edwina, four riding lessons."

"Summer's right leg immobilized for one day, to offset the grief Edwina felt falling with no one to care for her."

Those photos weren't keepsakes. They were invoices.

There was a portable hard drive under the desk too.

The folder was named: "Fair Education Records."

In the video, five-year-old me was picking up the pieces of a torn picture book.

Off camera, my mother's voice was gentle. "Edwina had no books as a child, so her little sister can't either."

In another clip, I was chipping at the ice on a frozen river for water.

When I fell, my mother didn't help me up. She only filmed my bleeding hand.

"See that?"

"Every hardship you went through, she won't miss a single one."

In the newest video, my sister sat in a room I didn't recognize.

She was much thinner than in the photos, her eyes red and swollen from crying.

"I don't want your money, and I don't want to watch you torture Summer anymore."

"She's been begging for help this whole time!"

My mother's voice was calm.

"If you don't watch it to the end, everything she suffered means nothing."

"This is abuse! I'm calling the police!"

"You can call the police."

"But don't forget, you're the one who abandoned me and chose that useless father of yours."

"What Summer paid off is the debt you owe me."

My sister rushed up to the camera.

"She was only four that year!"

"I'll give you back the school and the money, just please, don't touch her again."

The video cut off.

So my sister had known all along that I was being punished.

But my mother had never once let me hear her cries for help. She'd left only those polished photos, so I would believe my sister was enjoying everything with a clear conscience.

Pressed beside the hard drive was an application for long-term confinement training.

The receiving institution was Consultant Lambert's center.

It wasn't registered as a hospital, but as a residential behavioral training center.

The contract said nothing about "treatment" or "medication." Everything was written as "lifestyle management" and "behavioral intervention."

As long as a guardian signed, they'd lock a child inside.

The assessment was already written out: "Summer Fox exhibits jealous delusions, aggressive tendencies, and self-destructive behavior. Confined intervention recommended."

Attached were screenshots of me refusing to apologize at the graduation ceremony, of my allergic reaction, of me pounding on the balcony door.

Every act of resistance, edited into evidence that I was mentally unwell.

The second document was an accident insurance policy.

The insured was me.

The beneficiary was my sister.

On the last page of the ledger was a new settlement entry.

"Edwina returns home."

"Summer permanently removed from competition."

"Method of settlement: long-term confined intervention."

Below it, a line of small print.

"In the event of an accident during intervention, payout funds transferred to Edwina's education account."

I stared at that word, accident, and a cold crept through my fingers in waves.

She didn't want me to withdraw from school.

She wanted me gone from everyone's life, and she wanted my sister to believe it was for her sake too.

The lock clicked softly.

My mother pushed the door open, two men in white coats standing behind her.

She glanced at the computer and actually smiled.

"Perfect. Saves me the explanation."

I grabbed the ledger and ran for the window.

My mother caught me by the hair and forced me to the floor.

Restraint straps snapped around my wrists.

I kicked and struck at anything I could, and the lamp and picture frames crashed to the ground.

My mother held up her phone.

"Get it clearly. She's attacking staff on her own."

A wet towel suddenly clamped over my nose and mouth.

She dragged me into the bathroom, twisted on the cold water, and pushed my face into the tub, again and again.

"Admit you were jealous of your sister, and I'll make them leave."

Every time I was about to lose consciousness, she hauled me back up.

The camera never left me.

She wasn't going to kill me outright.

She meant to break me first, drive me out of control, then prove I'd been a lunatic all along.

There was less and less air in my lungs.

Every time I nearly blacked out she lifted me again, so the camera could catch me clawing and kicking.

The stretcher wheels rolled over the floor.

My mother wiped the water from my face.

"Don't be scared. Your sister comes home tomorrow."

"Before she gets back, I have to settle the last account."

A needle jabbed into my neck.

As they lifted me onto the stretcher, I saw her pick up the ledger.

The red stamp came down.

"Paid."

Those words pressed down over my name, like a headstone carved in advance.