For the 5,475th time, my childhood sweetheart threw me into the river to choke on the water, and I stopped fighting it.
He sent his men to fish me out, then slapped me across the face.
"You think playing dead will help?"
"You love faking depression and jumping in the river so much. So jump. Jump until you've had your fill."
My parents stood off to the side without a word, as cold as strangers.
A tearing pain ripped through my lungs. I knelt at the bank, shaking all over, and my mother's voice came colder than the river itself.
"Angela Fox died saving you. This is what you owe her."
I kept my head down, gripping the water-wrinkled cancer test result in my pocket.
I'd wanted to tell them the life I owed her would be paid back very soon.
But I never imagined that the moment I got home, I'd be greeted by the sister who was supposed to have been dead for years.
Seeing how bloodless my face was put her in a wonderful mood.
"Oh dear, didn't they tell you?"
"Isaac Rodriguez and I got our marriage license two years ago, you know~"
"So, how about it? Is your depression all better now? Have you finally learned your lesson?"
Five years ago, driven into depression by my favoritism-blind parents, I stood on the bridge with nothing left inside me and jumped.
My sister jumped in to save me, and the icy river swallowed her.
Every day since, I've been forced to fall from that bridge, choking on the water 5,475 times, repenting to my dead sister.
But now that I knew the truth, an odd lightness settled over me.
At last, I owed them nothing.
...
"So? Choking on that water every day doesn't feel too good, does it?"
She smiled and stepped closer, and I could smell the perfume on her, the exact same scent that used to linger on Isaac.
I ignored her and turned to leave, but Angela grabbed me and held on.
"Want to know why everyone thinks your depression was fake?"
"Because I tampered with your test reports a long time ago."
I stared at her, unable to believe it.
"What did you say...?"
"Why would you do that!"
A piercing pain shot through my hand as she dug her fingers in, her long pink nails almost sinking into my flesh, drawing thin threads of blood.
The smile on her face was one of absolute certainty. "Because Isaac can only ever be mine."
The pain made me shake her off, and Angela used the motion to fling herself hard to the floor.
"Ah!!"
The three of them, just rushing back in, caught the scene at exactly that moment.
"What are you doing?!"
A huge force slammed into me out of nowhere, and my back crashed into the jutting corner of the table. The pain sent cold sweat pouring off me.
"It's her first day back, and already you're bullying Angela like this."
Isaac gently lifted Angela to her feet, his face full of aching tenderness.
When he saw the faint scrape on the girl's knee, he whipped around and roared at me.
"Eugenia Fox, is this how you treat the person who saved your life!"
Angela's face was streaked with tears, her voice small and frightened.
"I know I lied to my sister, but I really did miss all of you."
"If she doesn't want me here, then maybe I should just go back..."
"I told you we never should have let Angela come home."
My mother stood to the side, looking at me like I was her enemy.
"So she wouldn't have to put up with a certain ungrateful wretch!"
In their eyes, I had never been anything but an ungrateful wretch.
To keep from disappointing my parents, I'd tried to live as her copy. Even when I was forced into a major I hated, forced to cut off the long hair I loved, I never complained.
But now, all the guilt and repentance I'd carried for Angela these past five years felt like a joke.
"If that's how it is, then why did you lie to me?"
Hearing my question, my father answered flatly.
"Just to teach you a lesson."
"Faking an illness for sympathy was bad enough, but you nearly got your sister killed."
"Someone like you needs to choke on a little water and suffer a bit before you'll straighten out that rotten attitude of yours!"
Right. Just a little water.
My lung disease was exactly what grew, day after day, out of all that choking, slowly turning cancerous.
All because they wanted to teach me a lesson, they locked me in a cage of guilt, flaying my conscience one cut at a time.
Only if I spent my whole life living in guilt would they be satisfied.
"I won't hold against you how badly you treated Angela before. But she's back now, and I want you to get along with her."
Isaac's eyes fixed hard on me.
"What just happened, I don't want to see it again."
"Apologize to Angela."
I didn't answer him. Instead I asked my own question.
"So all those times you were absent from the moments that mattered to me, you were overseas with Angela the whole time, weren't you?"
Birthdays, our dating anniversaries, my graduation, the graduation trip, even our engagement banquet...
I still remembered that night, when he was drunk, how Angela's name slipped out of his mouth right in front of me.
The man was silent for a moment, then said in a hard voice,
"Don't change the subject."
He didn't deny it. So that was my answer.
Everyone expected me to make a scene, but instead I lowered my head and said,
"I'm sorry."
This family — there was nothing left here for me to hold on to.
