They Valued a Guinea Pig More Than Me, So I Left Chapter 07
It started with a side-by-side photo someone posted.
“Doesn’t Elara look kind of like Aria?”
One was a relationship blogger with tens of millions of followers. The other was a lifestyle
YouTuber with tens of millions.
The comments section went crazy.
People started digging. They found an old clip from one of Aria’s live streams. Someone asked if she
had an older sister. She’d said, all breezy, “Oh, she’s not really family.”
Back then, her team had put out a statement calling it “a bit for entertainment. Please don’t
overthink it.”
Now someone reposted that statement. The new comments were savage.
“Holy crap. I really think that’s her real sister.”
“My heart breaks for Elara. If this is true, that’s so messed up.”
“Aria seems so sweet in her videos. No way she’s that mean.”
The whole internet was waiting for an answer.
I was watering my tomatoes.
Later, Aria called.
Her voice came at me like a punch. “Did you do this? Everyone’s talking about us now. Happy?”
“I never mentioned you on the show,” I said. “You said what you said. Did you think nobody would
ever remember?”
Two seconds of silence.
Then a choked “You-“, and the line went dead.
I put my phone in my pocket and turned the hose back on.
Water trickled into the dirt and disappeared without a trace.
The landlady stuck her head out the door, scowling. “How long are you going to water the flowers? You think water’s free?”
I stuck my tongue out at her and turned it off. The yard went quiet.
That night, they showed up.
The Rolls-Royce couldn’t even fit down our narrow alley.
They parked at the corner and walked the rest of the way, stepping over cracked pavement.
I opened the gate.
They stood there staring at the tiny courtyard. A few potted plants. A small vegetable patch. Two
shirts on the line, swaying.
My brother frowned first, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “You live here?”
“It’s cheap,” I said.
Their faces froze for a second.
Then my mom got straight to the point, her voice all business. “Because of you, Aria’s been crying all day. Are you done making a scene? Good. Now go respond.”
I looked right at her. “Respond to what?”
“That I’m not really her sister?”
“Or that she’s always been so good to me?”
My mom’s face went stiff.
My dad frowned, impatient, using that tone I’d heard my whole life-like everything was obvious.
“Elara, what exactly did this family do to you? You lived in a huge house. You had good food. What are you so unhappy about?”
I laughed. Soft.
“A huge house-your house. My room was a north-facing storage closet. No heat in winter, oven in summer. No bathroom. Oh, and it’s a cat room now.” I looked at Ethan. “Forty-five days after I left.”
Ethan’s face changed. He opened his mouth. “You never said you minded!”
¡ kept looking at my dad.
“Good food? I spent every dinner at the far end of the table with a roll on my plate. All the serving platters were out of reach. Nobody ever noticed. Even the dog ate better than me.”
“If you couldn’t reach, why didn’t you just move?” My dad wrinkled his forehead like I was being
ridiculous.
“I did,” I said. “You told me not to. Pixie was used to that spot.”
The words dropped into the courtyard like stones into water. Nobody said anything.
My brother cleared his throat. “You’re going to ruin Aria’s life over little stuff like this? Why do you have to be so petty?”
