I was fourteen the day my father died.
Everything after that felt like a blur—black dresses, quiet whispers, the smell of flowers that made my stomach turn. But what I remember most clearly wasn’t the funeral.
It was her voice.
“Pay me $400 rent,” my stepmom said, standing in the doorway of my room just a week later. Her arms were crossed, her expression cold in a way I had never seen before. “Or I’ll send you to boarding school.”
I thought she was joking. I actually laughed.
Then I realized she wasn’t.
“I don’t have that kind of money,” I said, my voice shaking.
“Then I guess you’d better start packing.”
