I wrenched free of him.
"Whether I mean anything to you, you know that better than anyone."
"Edmund, I thought you were different from other men. Turns out I was wrong about you."
His brow knotted, and something flickered deep in his eyes before he pushed it back down.
"So it's that the gift I gave you was too cheap?"
"Fine. In a couple of days I'll buy you a Bulgari bracelet. Happy now?"
His voice dropped, coaxing.
"You're about to start at the New York university soon, and I'm heading back to New York to take over the family business right around then. We'll have all the time in the world together. Stop throwing a tantrum."
A moment later he added one more line.
"I honestly thought you weren't the type to care so much about material things."
I lifted my head and looked at him, not blinking.
Every sentence was exactly like before, and back then I never caught it. Every word out of him was a put-down.
The joke of it was, the old me hadn't even felt anything wrong.
"I said, we're done."
Then I turned and walked away.
Behind me came his voice, grinding through his teeth.
"Effie Pruitt, you're going to regret this!"
Back in my dorm, I opened my laptop. My application to the Western research program had been approved.
The place was remote, the conditions rough, no signal of any kind, hardly anyone willing to go.
Which suited me. I didn't want anyone to be able to find me either.
The days that followed were packed. Thesis defense, project paperwork, busy from morning to night.
Edmund didn't come looking for me again, and I stopped thinking about him.
Until one day, someone kicked the dorm door open.
Edmund stood in the doorway, eyes bloodshot.
"Effie Pruitt, get out here!"
I stared at him, thrown.
"Is something wrong?"
He didn't say a word. He seized my wrist, dragged me out, and threw me into the car.
He floored it.
At the hospital, he shoved me into a ward.
He pointed at Flora Pruitt lying in the bed.
"If you've got a grudge, take it out on me. Why hit your own sister with a car?"
I had no idea what he was talking about.
"What are you talking about?"
In the bed, Flora lay with her right leg in a thick cast, her face bone-white.
Two police officers sat beside her, taking a statement.
Flora's voice was faint.
"I was crossing the street when I saw a car coming straight at me. I tried to dodge and still got clipped. I got one look, and the person in the driver's seat... looked like my sister..."
The instant my parents saw me, the hatred in their eyes came at me like knives.
"Effie Pruitt! How could you be so cruel?!"
"She's your own sister, and you ran her down with a car?!"
"She's about to leave for her overseas tour. You're trying to ruin her whole life!"
Then the police spoke up too, saying the security footage had caught a blurry figure whose build was a close match to mine.
Flora's voice drifted out, light as air.
"Don't blame my sister... I'm sure she didn't mean to..."
I stood where I was, cold all over.
My throat felt stuffed with cotton. I couldn't get out a single word.
Just then, the phone in my pocket buzzed.
A message from a friend.
"Effie! Go look online, now! Something's happened!"
I opened the link she'd sent. The headline was glaring.
The article read like it had all the details too, claiming I'd used my disability to milk sympathy, that I'd cozied up to a professor to trade for a project slot, and that I'd frozen out and bullied the other students in my group.
Below it hung the story about me hitting my sister with a car, along with a blurred private video.
The face was fuzzed out, but anyone who knew me would recognize me in a glance.
