This was one of the few times I could beat
Jessica. She always won. I was sick of it.
I got home, and Jessica immediately launched
into a tirade. “Mom! Dad! Look! Ashley’s not
studying! She’s busy flirting with boys! She
should be expelled!” Ethan’s love letter lay on
the coffee table.
<
My mom, shockingly, turned sweet. “Ashley,
honey, what do you want for dinner?”
Dad puffed on his cigarette, greed flickering in
his eyes. “Ethan Miller? The Miller Group?
Ashley, you need to lock this down.” He
scowled at Jessica. “Stop bothering your sister. The Miller Group has Harvard graduates lining
up for jobs. You might need your sister’s help
someday.”
Turns out, my parents didn’t love a specific
daughter. They loved whichever daughter was
useful.
Jessica’s eyes burned with jealousy and rage. I smiled gently. “I’d just prefer no shellfish.”
From that day on, shellfish vanished from our
dinner table. Jessica’s protests
–
“I need fish
for brainpower! High school is so demanding!
What if I don’t get into Harvard?!”
–
were met
with, “Your sister’s allergic, Jessica. If
<
something happens to her, we’re ruined.”
Our positions in the family flipped. At school,
Ethan pursued me with all the flamboyant
tactics of a rich, spoiled playboy. His purple
Lamborghini waited for me every afternoon,
whisking us away to fancy restaurants.
Expensive gifts and designer clothes piled up in
my room. Ethan made his disdain for Jessica
clear, much to my amusement. When the class
rearranged desks, giving students with good
grades first pick of partners, Jessica chose
Ethan. She must have thought he’d finally see
her inner beauty. Instead, he complained to his
mother about Jessica’s “harassment.” The next
day, everyone had single desks. The whispers
started again. Jessica’s carefully constructed
confidence crumbled.
On my seventeenth birthday, Jessica saw the
nearly five–thousand–dollar bracelet Ethan had
given me. She snapped. “Why?! Why do they all
like you?! Ethan, all of them! You’re nothing!
<
You’re just a pretty face!” “How can you be
better than me?! You don’t deserve this!”
I pulled her in front of the mirror. She was twice my size. Thanks to my parents‘ favoritism, I’d
been underfed growing up, while Jessica had
been overfed.
My voice was soft, almost hypnotic. “Jessica, if you were a guy, who would you choose?”
Jessica stared at her reflection, speechless.
The contrast was stark. She turned and walked
into her room.
The robotic voice I’d been waiting for finally
echoed in my head. “Host, Jessica requests to
trade her intelligence for your beauty. Do you
accept?”
“Accept.”
Jealousy had finally driven her mad. This time, I
く
would win. Hard work, combined with natural
talent, was an unbeatable combination.
During winter break of junior year, I started
gaining weight. My clear skin broke out in acne.
At the same time, I experienced the joy of a
photographic memory. I could glance at
multiple–choice questions and the answers
would appear in my mind, no calculations
needed. New concepts clicked instantly. I fell in
love with math, a subject that used to make my head spin. Before, I’d study the same problem
types over and over, but the slightest change in
the variables would stump me. My mind had felt
like it was wrapped in cotton wool. My sister, as
the teachers said, was a true genius. Her
starting point was a finish line most people
would never reach. And she’d squandered it.
