After my family abandoned me—I sold my emotions for 800,000 Chapter 01
The day my entire family abandoned me, I overheard a conversation on the street about a deal.
“One million dollars, in exchange for all your capacity for normal human emotion. Do we have a deal?”
I stepped forward, “What about mine? I’ll take just eight hundred thousand dollars.”
I took the eight hundred thousand dollars and headed home.
My parents still stared at me with unmasked disgust.
My brother curled his lip and asked why I hadn’t just dropped dead.
Yvonne ran up to me, feigning concern, “Sis, you can take all your anger out on me, just please stop making everyone worry so much…”
I smiled sweetly and slapped her hard across the face.
“Are you still worried now?”
***
That marked the third hour I had spent scrambling to borrow money from anyone I could reach.
On the phone, I explained and pleaded over and over again.
“The surgery costs eight hundred thousand dollars. Just help me this once, okay?
“I can write an IOU, treat it as a loan from the family. Please, if we delay any longer, I really will die…”
But all I got in response was my parents’ cold, impatient voices.
My father cut me off again and again, questioning me suspiciously, “Cut the crap. Be honest with me, did you go gambling?”
“Don’t deny it. Yvonne said she saw you hanging out with shady people!”
My mother’s disappointment was palpable.
“Hazel, I thought you were just less sensible than Yvonne, but I never expected you to become such a compulsive liar. You’ve completely broken my heart…”
My brother’s impatient yell drifted over from the other room, “Mom, what’s the point of talking to this worthless mess?
If you ask me, it was a total waste of police resources to rescue her back then. She should have just died in the Blackpine Mountains.”
They really hated me, hated me so much they wished I was dead.
But it hadn’t been like this when I was little.
Back then, Mom and Dad would take me to the amusement park, read me bedtime stories, and tell me they loved me more than anything.
My brother would stand in front of me when someone bullied me, snarling, “If you so much as lay a finger on my sister, I’ll fight you to the death!”
It was because I believed in their love that I held onto hope all those years I was held captive after being kidnapped.
When the girl who was taken with me tried to kill herself out of unbearable despair, I held her hand and encouraged her over and over.
“Don’t give up. Our families are definitely looking for us. We’ll get home safely, I promise!”
It seemed like the heavens had really heard my prayers.
When I was ten years old, the police caught the human traffickers, and all the girls taken with me were rescued and sent back to our respective families.
I thought I would live surrounded by love for the rest of my life.
However, when I tried to throw myself into my parents’ arms with tears streaming down my face, I caught the faint awkwardness flashing across their faces.
Dad even took half a step back.
My brother covered his nose immediately, scowling, “Didn’t we tell the nanny to give her a bath? Why does she still reek of something off?”
Hiding behind my brother was a little girl who looked around my age.
She wore an expensive princess dress, her hair as smooth as satin, looking at me timidly.
The second she saw Mom reaching out to hug me, she burst into tears.
“What if once sister comes back, you don’t want me anymore…”
The mom who had been about to pull me into her arms immediately let go of me, turned around, and gathered Yvonne into a tight hug.
“Don’t cry, Yvonne. You’re my daughter, how could I ever not want you?”
My brother glared at me with open hostility.
“Yvonne is my only sister. No one can make her leave our family.”
The full-length mirror in the living room reflected two distinct figures.
There was Yvonne, fair and pretty, surrounded by every member of the family.
And there was me, standing on the edge of the room, with dry, yellowish hair, completely frozen and at a loss.
That was the first time Yvonne and I met.
This girl, who my parents had adopted in their overwhelming grief after I went missing, had taken my place over the years, and earned every bit of the love that was supposed to be mine.
