Chapter 4The Body She Left Me

My academic advisor said it was too late. My major, a specialized fine arts program, was impossible to transfer back into once you’d left.

I walked to the Business School in a daze. I sat in a cavernous lecture hall, listening to jargon about market caps and shareholder equity that sounded like a foreign language. The room buzzed with the chatter of strangers. I felt like I was on another planet.

I endured the class and then, with the sun still high in the sky and no desire to go home, I just walked. I wandered the campus aimlessly, my thoughts a tangled mess. But one thing was clear: Stella had been planning this. That’s why her journal entries had become so sparse. She didn’t want me to know what she was doing.

My legs ached. I sank onto a bench, exhausted, with no idea what to do next. On one side was a major I knew nothing about. On the other, a family who wanted to steal my life.

I leaned back, letting the sky fill my vision. And then I saw it. Three words carved above a stone archway: University Library.

By the time I left, my arms loaded with books, the sun had set.

When I got home, Mom was setting the table. She saw the stack of business textbooks and her expression flickered with guilt. She knew. Of course she knew. It was probably her and Dad’s idea.

Dinner was silent and heavy. I picked at my food, only taking a few bites of the roasted fish, one of my favorite dishes.

Mom forced a laugh, trying to break the tension. “Look at that, honey. Chloe’s just like us, loves fish. Stella never would touch anything from the water.”

Her words made it worse. The silence that followed was even more profound.

Dad put down his wine glass. “I hear you got some business books. So you know Stella switched your major. Just listen to me, Chloe. Stella’s brilliant. She has the mind for this, for helping me at the company. You, even if you started now, you’d be in over your head. You wouldn't be any help. You understand what I’m saying.”

I nodded, pushing a few grains of rice around my plate.

Seeing my compliance, they brightened. “So you’ve come around?” Dad said, a genuine smile spreading across his face. “Good. I’ll call the hypnotist in a few days. Finally, you can have a normal life.”

I looked up, my eyes meeting his directly. “Will I be normal, Dad? Or will Stella?”

He frowned for a second, then his smile returned, slick and practiced. “She’s your sister. You share a body. Her being normal is you being normal.”

I nodded again. Then, as they beamed at me, I spoke each word with cold, clear precision.

“I would burn this body to the ground before I let her have it.”

The sound of his wine glass shattering against the wall echoed my father’s rage. He pointed a trembling finger at me, sputtering, too furious to form words. Mom rushed to his side, stroking his arm and glaring at me.

I couldn’t stay here. Living with two people who were actively plotting my demise would drive me insane.

I packed a small bag and moved into the dorms that night.