By the time I collapsed in calculus, I had spent so many years being called dramatic that my first thought wasn’t that I might be dying. It was that my father was going to be furious about having to leave work. As the classroom tilted and the equations on the board dissolved into black, I remember thinking that passing out was going to be one more thing my sister had somehow done better than me.
Chapter 2
The next three months passed like a fever dream. Caroline studied, graduated, and collected honors while my world narrowed to dark rooms and handfuls of cheap pain relievers. The blind spots in my vision widened. My right hand began trembling so badly that I sometimes had to hold a fork with both hands.
I stopped telling anyone.
Silence had become a survival skill.
When Caroline’s final scores came in, she ranked among the top students in Ohio and received a scholarship to Columbia University. My parents reserved a private room at a downtown restaurant and invited nearly every relative they had ever wanted to impress.
Mom found an old navy dress in my closet.
“Wear this,” she said. “And try to look happy tonight.”
The banquet was everything my parents loved: polished silverware, linen napkins, expensive wine, and an audience. Aunt Diane praised Caroline’s discipline. Uncle Mark said great children were the result of great parenting.
Then Aunt Diane glanced at me.
“Poor Leah always looks so tired.”
Mom sighed.
“She’s sensitive.”
Everyone understood what that meant.
Defective.
Caroline came around the table carrying two glasses of champagne.
“Come on, little sister. Toast with me.”
“I can’t drink.”
Dad appeared beside me. “Don’t start.”
“I’m taking medication.”
“You are going to congratulate your sister.”
He pressed the glass into my hand.
Around me, twenty people were smiling.
I drank.
The champagne burned my empty stomach. The room swayed, and the blind spots in my vision grew until faces became floating pieces.
I left without saying goodbye.
Nobody stopped me.
At home, I was sick in the bathroom for nearly an hour. When I looked into the mirror, I could barely see the right side of my own face.
I returned to my bedroom and opened the bottom drawer of my desk.
Inside was an old utility knife.
I’d first hidden it years earlier during one of the darkest periods of my childhood, when a school counselor had suggested therapy and my parents had reacted as though I’d accused them of murder. I had never used it. Sometimes simply knowing it was there had given me the illusion that one thing in my life still belonged to me.
That night, I placed it beside the notebook and waited.
Close to midnight, my parents came home laughing. I heard them walk toward Caroline’s room.
Then Mom screamed.
Caroline was gone.
She had left a letter on the bed saying she was finished with the family, finished with their expectations, and finished being the daughter they displayed like a trophy.
Dad exploded.
Doors slammed. Something shattered downstairs. Mom sobbed that Caroline couldn’t do this after everything they’d sacrificed.
I sat on my bed in the dark.
Part of me admired her.
Part of me hated her.
Mostly, I understood.
Then Dad shouted from the hallway.
“Get Leah! She knew. She had to know.”
His footsteps came toward my room.
Something primitive and hopeless took over.
I picked up the knife.
The door flew open just as I dragged it across my wrist.
The cut was shallow. My shaking hand had betrayed me.
Mom screamed.
Dad did not rush to help.
His face twisted with rage.
“You planned this!” he shouted. “Caroline runs away, and now you have to make everything about you?”
I opened my mouth.
No words came.
Then something inside my skull seemed to burst.
The pain was so sudden and enormous that the room disappeared. My body folded sideways, hitting the floor between my bed and desk.
“Stop it,” Dad said.
My muscles began jerking.
“Leah, get up.”
I couldn’t breathe.
Mom stared at my face.
“David.”
Dad grabbed my shoulder.
My body convulsed harder.
“David, look at her eyes.”
He stepped back.
“She’s pretending.”
“Her lips are blue.”
“She knows what a seizure looks like.”
“Call 911!”
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Even while I was dying, my father was deciding whether an ambulance in the driveway would embarrass him.
Then everything went black.
I remember pieces of the hospital.
Bright lights.
Wheels rattling beneath me.
Voices calling numbers I didn’t understand.
“Sixteen-year-old female.”
“Nonresponsive pupil.”
“Pressure is critical.”
“Page neurosurgery.”
Then my father’s voice.
“You don’t understand. She does things like this. She’s emotional.”
A woman answered him.
“Sir, your daughter’s brain is being compressed inside her skull.”
Silence.
The woman’s voice became sharper.
“If we don’t operate immediately, she may not survive the night.”
For once, my father had nothing to say.
Someone leaned over me.
“Leah, I’m Dr. Morgan. We’re taking care of you.”
A mask covered my mouth.
“You’re safe now.”
Those were the last words I heard before the world vanished.
