They Chose Her Over Me In Two Lives Chapter 03
I swam to shore myself.
The lifeguard who’d come for me froze mid-step, one hand still reaching for the water. He turned and smiled at my parents and Ryan, relief loosening his shoulders.
“Don’t worry. See how well your daughter swims? She’s fine.”
Before they could breathe, another lifeguard shouted from across the pool deck.
“Another girl is drowning! Why won’t you let us save her first?!”
They turned. Jade had been pulled from the water. Her skin was colorless, her lips tinged blue.
She lay still on the tiles. Her chest barely moved.
Mom nearly collapsed. Her knees buckled, and she grabbed at the air for something to hold on to.
Dad’s eyes filled with tears.
They rushed Jade to the hospital as fast as they could.
The doctor looked at Jade and shook his head, mouth pressed into a hard line.
His voice was grim.
“The drowning was severe. Whether she pulls through is up to fate. One more minute underwater, and no one could have saved her.”
The paramedics couldn’t help but say something, their voices tight with frustration.
“Your family is strange. Two daughters in the water, and you told us to save the one who could swim.”
Ryan’s eyes were swollen from crying.
Mom knelt on the cold hospital floor, praying to the sky, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles went white.
“Please, save my Jade. I’ll give you anything. Just save her.”
This time, no one mentioned the security footage.
No one asked how Jade and I ended up in the water.
They sent me home with a driver, the car silent the whole way.
But I saw the coldness in my parents’ and Ryan’s eyes.
They blamed me.
I stayed up until midnight, fighting sleep, sitting on the edge of the narrow bed in the storage room.
I heard them when they got home.
“Jade is terrified of water. In her past life, she framed Lily so many times. She never used this trick.”
“Jade was vicious in her past life. But Lily wasn’t exactly innocent either.”
Mom let out a tired sigh, long and heavy.
“We’ve been trying so hard to make it up to Lily this life. Why isn’t she satisfied?”
“Maybe this child was never meant to be ours.”
When I heard that last sentence, my heart clenched.
I couldn’t breathe.
Tears fell, hot and silent.
Onto the Model Magic figures in my hands.
I’d spent most of the night making them, fingers clumsy and sore, pressing each small shape into place.
Four figures: Mom, Dad, Ryan, and Jade.
I wanted to give them to my parents and Ryan and say: don’t worry about me.
Mrs. Walsh had already told me the overseas couple was coming back to get me.
I wanted to tell Jade: stop talking about past lives and being reborn. I don’t understand any of it.
This family—who never truly loved me—I wasn’t going to fight for them.
But as the disgust in their voices deepened, I clenched my teeth and hid the figures in the corner of my room, behind a loose floorboard where no one would look.
Jade was in the hospital for three days.
She survived.
But she came home with asthma.
After that, my parents and Ryan changed.
No one told her to give in to me anymore.
My things were still taken to the storage room.
Mom explained, her voice cold and flat, “Jade’s cough is bad. I don’t want you catching it.”
I didn’t argue.
I nodded.
But the warmth in her eyes dimmed, and she turned away before I could say anything else.
I heard her sigh to Dad, low enough that she thought I couldn’t hear.
“Look at her. So indifferent. She has no feelings for us at all.”
“In our past life, no wonder we favored Jade.”
I didn’t defend myself.
I just counted the things in my old bag, over and over, until I lost track of the numbers.
I was leaving tomorrow.
Where I slept didn’t matter anymore.
