They Valued a Guinea Pig More Than Me, So I Left Chapter 03

My sister Aria never treated me like family.

When she was in elementary school, I watched her fill out a family information form.

For “Household members,” she neatly wrote the number five.

My parents laughed and asked her who that included.

She counted on her fingers, all sweet: “Daddy, Mommy, Derek, Ethan, and me.”

Everyone burst out laughing. I was sitting right there.

No one corrected her.

One time, a package came for me.

She stared at the name on the box for three seconds, then tossed it straight into the trash.

Inside was a signed album from my favorite artist—I’d waited a whole year for it.

I dug through the dumpster for hours. When I came back and confronted her, she just held her guinea pig and blinked at me.

“Isn’t that garbage?” she said.

Standing there with that crushed box in my hands, I finally understood. To her, I was just a piece of trash in the way.

My older brother Derek was better than her. Slightly.

At least he remembered he had a sister.

He’d play games until three in the morning, then text me: Make me some soup.

I’d heat it up and bring it to him. He wouldn’t even look away from the screen. “Just put it there.”

Not even a thank-you.

Like that was just my job.

And not just him.

In that house—getting the mail, hanging laundry, taking out the trash, walking the dog, cleaning the litter box.

Everything no one else wanted to do.

That was my job.

Back in middle school, my classmates were obsessed with esports.

They were talking nonstop about the pros, and I blurted out, “That’s my brother.”

The whole class cracked up.

“Yeah right. You think just because you have the same last name you can pretend you’re related to Wild King?”

“Elara’s so quiet usually. Didn’t know she was this desperate for attention.”

I went home crying and asked Derek for an autograph.

He didn’t even look up. “What would you even do with it?”

I went to my mom next.

She didn’t let me finish. “Elara, why are you so vain?”

My dad put down his magazine. “We send you to school to study, not to show off in front of your classmates.”

I went back to school with nothing. Kids made fun of me for that all the way through junior high.

Later, when I was cleaning Derek’s room, I saw him writing on a signed photo: To Snowball.

Snowball. The neighborhood dog. Max’s best friend.

I stood there holding the broom and smiled a really sad smile.

Turns out my dignity meant less to him than a dog’s.

And my younger brother Ethan?

He was the one who hated me the most.

He won a national coding competition at seven. Published his first research paper at ten. Took gold at the International Physics Olympiad at fifteen.

Standing next to him, I might as well have been invisible.

Once, he stood in the living room and just stared at me for a long time. Not mean—just genuinely confused.

“Elara,” he said, “I think you might have been switched at birth. You don’t really fit here.”

Later, I found a DNA test report on his desk. Ninety-nine point nine nine percent match.

He’d written in red pen in the margin: “Phenotype deviates significantly from family mean. Further investigation required.”

I slammed the report down in front of him. He didn’t look guilty at all.

“I was just checking,” he said. “Don’t you feel different from us?”

When he won his international gold medal, the school held an assembly. He stood on stage, took the microphone, and said, “I want my family to come up.”

My dad went up. My mom went up. Derek went up. Aria went up.

Then he crouched down and lifted Snowball onto the stage.

The host looked at me in the third row and asked, “Anyone else?”

Ethan said, “No. That’s our housekeeper.”

The crowd cheered. Cameras flashed everywhere.

They all smiled, their eyes sliding past me like I wasn’t there.

I looked down and dug my nails into my palms.

I didn’t cry.

I was used to it.