Chapter 2

No one remembers that before I turned six, I was an extraordinarily beautiful little girl.

When I was ten, I washed dishes and did laundry in the winter. The water was freezing, and I caught a cold. That night, I burned with fever, tossing and turning in pain. I cried out for my mom.

My parents, woken by the noise, were irritated. They gave me some fever medicine and went back to sleep, thinking it was nothing serious.

I burned the whole night. By the time they realized the fever hadn't broken and rushed me to the hospital, it was too late. The doctor told them my brain had been damaged. I might become slower, duller.

My parents were devastated. They had learned their lesson. From then on, whenever Fiona so much as coughed, they panicked. They would take her to the hospital in the middle of the night just to be sure. If she fell sick, they took turns watching over her, tending to her every need.

But I never had another fever again. I never got to experience that kind of careful, anxious love.

In middle school, I struggled to keep up. My mind was slow, so my grades were always at the bottom. The teachers suggested my parents hire a tutor or set aside time to help me study.

But their business was taking off, and they had no money for a tutor, no time to sit with me. They believed that if someone was truly smart, they would succeed on their own. If I couldn't, it only meant I wasn't trying hard enough.

My grades kept slipping. When the high school entrance exams came, I failed, just as expected, and ended up in the worst school in the city.

Only then did they realize that excellence wasn't something that appeared out of thin air. They turned all their hopes toward Fiona. By then, their business had stabilized. They could afford the best tutors, and they made time to supervise her studies.

She passed with flying colors and got into the top high school in the city.

They were so overjoyed that they hosted a banquet at a five-star hotel. They didn't bother telling me about it.

I was in my school dormitory, buried in textbooks, trying desperately to catch up. I had to work harder than everyone else just to achieve the same results.

A cousin from my school saw me buying a cheap bun for dinner. Thinking my parents had simply forgotten to pick me up, she invited me along.

So I ended up at the banquet, standing in the doorway, holding a plastic bag with two cold buns inside. My parents were in the center of the crowd, proudly introducing Fiona.

The moment they saw me, their faces darkened.

I stood there, suddenly feeling out of place, clutching my cheap dinner in my hands.

It wasn't until later that I understood. They hadn't told me on purpose. They didn't want others to know they had an ugly, stupid daughter. They were ashamed.

They had forgotten that before my brain burned, I was the top student in school.

In high school, my teeth started to jut out more. Relatives kept urging my parents to take me to the dentist. After being nagged several times, they finally found the time to bring me in.

The dentist took one look and said it was skeletal protrusion, a genetic issue. I needed orthognathic surgery, and the sooner, the better. But I was about to start my final year of high school, and my parents said I could save up for surgery myself once I got to university.

They didn't make the same mistake with Fiona. They got her braces early, fitted her with orthokeratology lenses to prevent nearsightedness, arranged for double eyelid surgery, and removed every little mole or blemish that appeared on her face.

Everyone who met her believed she was a natural beauty. They envied her flawless skin, free of even a single acne scar.

Now, I am eighteen. She is sixteen. I am in my final year of high school. She is in her first.

I am ugly, quiet, slow, unwanted. She is beautiful, sweet, clever, adored by everyone.

I feel like an experiment. Every mistake they made with me, they corrected on her.

…

I have parents. I am almost eighteen. Of course, I can't go to an orphanage.

In the end, my grandmother was the only one who took pity on me. She looked at them and said, "If none of you want Jolene, then I will take her. Don't come crying to me later, saying you want her back."