Chapter 3The Body She Left Me

Maybe it was the pure force of my resentment, but I could feel Stella deep inside me, sleeping soundly. It was a relief, but then I remembered my parents’ words, and the air I’d just inhaled caught in my throat.

After yesterday’s explosion, my mind was unnervingly clear. I’m not explosive by nature; that’s Stella’s territory. The rage was an aberration, born of pure terror.

I showered and dressed, knowing what I would see when I went downstairs. The disappointment.

I steeled myself and opened my bedroom door. And there it was. In the instant they saw it was me, Chloe, the hope in their eyes died and was replaced by a flat, weary resignation. To be rejected by your own parents is a unique kind of pain, a blade that twists in your very core.

The wreckage from yesterday was gone. The house was clean, broken things replaced with new, unfamiliar ones.

I walked downstairs, trying to look calm. Dad snorted and turned away, staring pointedly out the window. Mom opened her mouth to speak, then just sighed.

My nose stung. And beneath the smell of my own silent grief, another scent filled the air. Flowers.

There was a vase of lilies on the dining table. Another on the coffee table. More in the bathroom, and even a small bouquet on the kitchen counter. Lilies everywhere. Stella’s favorite. It was a passive-aggressive welcome mat for a ghost, and a clear message for me: You are not the one we want.

I could almost hear the sound of their love for me cracking, the sound of my own heart breaking right alongside it.

The cloying, funereal scent and the suffocating silence were too much. I grabbed my bag and ran.

It wasn’t until I was outside the neighborhood gates that I realized my face was wet with tears. I got on the bus for school automatically, my body moving while my mind was stuck. Sobs shook my shoulders as I watched the scenery blur past the window, a perfect metaphor for the last three years of my life.

When I walked into my art history lecture, my classmates stared. “Chloe? What are you doing here? We heard you transferred.”

In that moment, a fire I didn't know I had burned away the last traces of love I felt for my sister.