"Enough!"
Mom cut me off, Jade wrapped in her arms.
"Sophia Matthews, how did I ever raise a daughter as vicious as you? Your sister went missing as a child. Do you have any idea what she suffered?"
"You can't feel pain. When there's danger, protecting your sister is the least you can do. And now, just to fight her for attention, you actually have the nerve to claim you're cured!"
"Mom, don't blame my sister. It's all my fault. If they'd never found me, none of this would have happened. Then I wouldn't have come between you and your daughter."
Her tears looked so genuine. And when she lifted her hand to wipe them away, she made sure everyone caught the bandage on her finger.
Dylan didn't miss it. He caught her hand gently in his.
"What is this? How did you hurt yourself again?"
"It's nothing. I was just making soup for my sister when—"
She pulled her hand back. "Dylan, I only wanted to do something nice for her. And in the end I made a chicken soup she doesn't even like."
His face went dark in an instant.
He hauled me off the hospital bed without a word.
He pointed at the soup splattered across the floor and roared at me, low and hard:
"Drink it!"
I hit the floor. The wound in my stomach tore open, the pain boring straight through me.
I tilted my head up at him. "How am I supposed to drink it? It's all spilled!"
"Do you not have a tongue? Jade slaved over that soup for you. She cut her own finger doing it! You are going to lick every drop of it off that floor today!"
Watching Dylan lose his mind like this, I looked to my parents for help.
Dad, who hadn't said a word, gave a cold snort, his eyes freezing on me.
"About time you learned a lesson. We raised you too well, spoiled you rotten. That's the only reason you'd dare act like this."
The moment he finished, Dylan lunged forward and shoved my head down into the soup.
The spill on the floor reeked of grease. I thrashed against him, every part of me on fire.
He only stopped when he saw the fresh blood seeping from my wound, torn wider by the struggle.
Something complicated flickered through his eyes.
Then he stood and looked down at me from above.
"I'll give you two choices. One, kneel and apologize to Jade, admit you were wrong. Two, lick this soup off the floor yourself."
I raised my head out of the grease, a complete wreck, and looked at the four of them standing over me. Jade, curled into Mom's arms, flashed me a taunting little smile.
I let out a cold laugh. Then I bent down and, in that humiliation, opened my mouth and ate a piece of chicken that had landed by my foot.
Dylan clenched his fist and kicked the food container clear across the floor.
"You stubborn fool!"
Mom's fingers were shaking with rage. "You'd rather eat filth off the floor than apologize to your own sister!"
"Mom, it's all right. It's all my fault."
Jade shook her head and sobbed into Mom's arms.
I stayed sprawled on the floor, head hanging for a long time. In the end I heard Dad throw out one last line: "We spoiled you rotten, that's what we did!"
They all left. Only I was left there, wound split open, lying wretched in a mess of spilled soup and filth.
I don't know how long I held myself in that position, face to the floor.
It was the nurse, coming to check the rooms, who finally helped me up and arranged for a doctor to restitch the wound.
Once everything in the room had been dealt with, I took out my phone and dialed a number an ocean away.
