The night before the SATs, my mom slipped sleeping pills into my brother’s milk, just so he could get a good night's rest. I tried to stop her in time, but she scolded me for having ulterior motives. "If you hadn't ruined Tyler's sleep, would he have bombed the test?" Later, I was forced to drop out of school to work, and then forced into an engagement with a wealthy idiot just so she could use the money to buy my brother a house. The day before the wedding, I tried to escape through a window, but accidentally fell six stories to my death. Given a second chance at life, I returned to the night before my brother’s SATs. I stood there and watched as the sleeping pill dissolved into his milk, releasing a rapid stream of tiny bubbles. 1 Mom frowned at the bubbles in the baby bottle, added a spoonful of honey, and finally nodded in satisfaction. Yes, my brother was nineteen years old, but he still drank his milk from a baby bottle. My mom spoiled him rotten, claiming that drinking straight from a glass might make him choke, and a bottle was much safer. "Mom, are you prepping milk for Tyler?" My mom shot me a nasty glare. "Keep your voice down! Don't wake your brother." I looked at the blister pack of sleeping pills next to the bottle, two pills visibly popped out. I asked in a hushed whisper, "Did you put sleeping pills in his milk?" Our house was right next to a busy highway. Even at night, you could hear the piercing sound of car horns. My mom wanted my brother to sleep soundly, so she took it upon herself to come up with this brilliant idea. Sleeping pills might knock a person out fast, but they also slow down neural reaction times, causing the side effect of sluggish thinking. In my past life, I forcefully poured the spiked milk down the drain and ran out in the middle of the night to buy noise-canceling earplugs for him. Unfortunately, even if good sleep could magically add points to your SAT score, my brother still wouldn't have qualified for anything better than an unaccredited strip-mall college. The day the scores came out, Tyler hung his head in anger. Mom hugged him, heartbroken, and then aggressively slapped the apple right out of my hand. "Eat, eat, eat, all you know how to do is eat! Your brother is devastated, and you still have an appetite?" Of course I had an appetite. He usually scored an 800, and this time he scored an 850. It wasn't exactly a miracle, but you could at least call it a stroke of luck. "Your brother has a habit of drinking milk every night. If you hadn't poured it out, he wouldn't have performed so poorly!" From childhood to adulthood, I had heard things like this countless times. "Your brother only likes the tips of the strawberries. You can eat the rest." "Your brother likes the room that gets the morning sun. You can sleep in the study." "Your brother likes it quiet. Stop talking so much." I was so angry I actually laughed. "If you love your precious son so much, why did you even give birth to me?" "If it wasn't so Tyler would have someone to support him later in life, I would have thrown you out ages ago. You wretched little girl." I've seen plenty of families that favored sons over daughters, but treating the son like a literal god and the daughter like a slave? My mom was truly one of a kind. 2 I always had better grades than my brother, but my mom never praised me once. Instead, she constantly hyped him up, claiming that boys were late bloomers and he would eventually surpass me. Maybe. Maybe when he was buried in the dirt, the grass on his grave would grow a little taller than me. "You still want to go to college? What use is reading so many books for a girl? While you're young, you should be waiting tables. By the time you're thirty, even the back of the kitchen won't want you." My mom went to my high school and officially withdrew me, completely ruining my bright future. Then she spent a fortune registering me as a VIP on an elite matchmaking site. Did you think she was trying to find me a good husband? Of course not. she wanted to find some rich idiot to extort a massive financial settlement from, all so she could buy her precious son a house. Thinking of everything from my past life, I couldn't help but hate myself for playing the villain for nothing. "Tyler loves his milk with honey. After drinking this, maybe he'll get a perfect score and get into an Ivy League," I said smoothly. In this life, I turned a blind eye to the sleeping pills next to the bottle. My mom could dig her own grave for all I cared. The wrinkles on Mom's face smoothed out as she beamed. "Your brother has always been smart. If he over-performs tomorrow, I'd be perfectly happy with a top-tier state school." I smiled along, suppressing the sharp retort that almost slipped out. Hot tip: Scoring an 850 on the SATs does not get you into a top-tier school. 3 Tyler always used to say that Mom had a hard life, and told me I shouldn't argue with her so much. Heh. He was the sole beneficiary of the system, so naturally, it was easy for him to sound so high and mighty. If Mom stopped favoring him, if her sacrifices suddenly cost him his own privileges, would he still be so magnanimous? After drinking the spiked milk, my brother, predictably, couldn't wake up. In the morning, Mom paced nervously outside his bedroom door. It was 8:20 AM, and she still couldn't bear to wake her baby boy. At 8:40 AM, Tyler was finally woken up by his own bladder. Sporting a severe case of bedhead, he stumbled out of his room. "Mom, what time is it?" he mumbled groggily. Mom dipped a mini dumpling in soy sauce and literally carried it all the way to the bathroom for him. "It's 8:30, honey. Quickly, take a few bites, and then your sister will bike you to the testing center." To ensure he ate peacefully, Mom deliberately lied, shaving ten minutes off the actual time. I followed right behind her holding a glass of juice. "Yes, exactly! You need a full stomach to have the energy to ace the test. Mom woke up at 5 AM to make these for you. She even hid a lucky silver coin inside one of them so you'd pass with flying colors!" Gag. My brother dry-heaved, his eyes rolling back. "What the hell, are you trying to choke me to death?!" He spat the silver coin aggressively onto the floor, knocking the plate of dumplings out of Mom's hands. "Look what time it is! Why didn't you wake me up earlier?!" Mom's expression instantly morphed into that of a scolded child. "Mom just wanted you to get some good rest..." "Can you use your brain for once instead of just doing whatever pops into your head?!" The more he thought about it, the angrier he got, his words absolutely merciless. He was the only one allowed to speak to her like that. If it had been me, I would have been slapped across the face. "Tyler, Mom was just doing what's best for you. How can you talk to her like that?" Wow, so this is what it feels like to be a saint. Being generous at someone else's expense was truly exhilarating. Tyler shot Mom a hateful glare. "Hmph. 'For my own good.' If I don't get into college, are you going to take responsibility for it?!" SLAM. Tyler stormed out of the house. Mom stood there, tears pattering down onto the bathroom floor. 4 The day the scores came out, Tyler held his 850 score report and sighed heavily. You have to hand it to him. He might have been dumb, but he was remarkably consistent. Even with a fresh start in a new life, it was the exact same familiar 850. This time, I was smart. I didn't sit there eating an apple. Instead, I wore my neat school uniform and sat primly on the couch, my face twisted into an expression of deep, thoughtful sorrow. Snore... snort... In the dead-silent house, Dad's booming snores from the bedroom felt incredibly jarring. Mom's explosive anger finally found a landing spot. Taking three steps at a time, she kicked open the master bedroom door and slapped Dad right across the face. "Sleep, sleep, sleep! Is that all you know how to do?! Tyler's future is ruined, and you can still sleep?!" My dad, Robert, was a safety engineer at a local plant. He had worked the night shift and only gotten home at 6 AM. He hadn't been asleep long before Mom woke him with a slap. He groggily sat up, a mix of sheer exhaustion and rage twisting his face. "Are you crazy?! What the hell are you screaming about now?!" "You're the crazy one!" Mom threw the printed score report directly at Dad's face. "Take a good look! These are Tyler's SAT scores. An 850! He can't even get into a community college." Mom cried as she spoke, grabbing Dad's collar and pounding her fists against his chest. "Are you done yet?! You lunatic!" Dad forcefully shoved her away. He didn't use much strength, but Mom used the momentum to throw herself onto the floor, slapping the wood planks as she wailed. "You hit me! I gave you a son, and this is how you treat me?! Oh my god, I was blind to marry you..." In our house, Mom had the highest combat power. I had already tasted the benefits of picking the right side, so if I didn't jump in now, when would I? "Dad, even though you earn the money, Mom works incredibly hard running this house. You can't just ignore her sacrifices." I helped Mom sit up and confronted Dad with absolute, righteous indignation. "Running this house?! Good, fine! Let's ask your mother exactly how she runs this house." "In March, she spent $800 on 'genius focus gummies' for your brother." "In April, she spent $2,000 enrolling him in an elite SAT boot camp." "In May, she spent another $1,500 paying a psychic for a manifesting crystal to guarantee he'd get into a top school." Dad seemed desperate to vomit out all his built-up bitterness. He couldn't stop. "Every single cent of my hard-earned blood money was wasted by your mother! I haven't even started crying yet, but here she is throwing a tantrum!" Hearing this, Mom refused to back down. "Isn't Tyler your son too?! You're so stingy about spending a few bucks on your own child, it makes me sick!" They went back and forth, throwing spectacular insults at each other. Meanwhile, I stood to the side, my mind floating in outer space. In my past life, my heart broke for Dad's exhaustion, Mom's labor, and my brother's confusion. But none of that empathy brought me any good; it just made me the family's eternal scapegoat. In this life, I chose to stay out of it. By refusing to intervene in their karma, the resentment buried deep in their hearts finally found a different outlet. "ENOUGH! Stop arguing! From today on, I'm never spending another dime of your money! I'll go get a job myself!" Tyler jumped up from the couch in irritation, dropped his dramatic ultimatum, and slammed the front door on his way out. 5 The atmosphere in the house was terrifyingly suffocating. Taking advantage of the fact that my parents were too busy fighting to care about me, I slipped out the door. I had a part-time job as a barista at a coffee shop near my school. It paid a few hundred bucks a month—not much, but it was a safety net. With my brother failing his exams, whether he repeated his senior year or went to a shady private college, it would cost a fortune. Sooner or later, I was highly likely to be forced down the same path of dropping out. In this life, I couldn't just sit and wait to die. I had to save up enough for my own tuition and living expenses so I could keep studying. "Why is a pretty girl like you working so hard? If you need cash, I can give it to you." As I was wiping down a table, a clammy hand covered mine. I looked up. It was a guy around twenty years old. He had a bleached-blonde bowl cut, spoke with a raspy fuckboy voice, and was aggressively winking at me. I was naturally very pretty. Back at school, creepy guys always tried to harass me. In my past life, I asked my mom for help. She told me that flies don't bite seamless eggs. "Why are they targeting you and not anyone else? Seducing men at your age, have you no shame?!" Now, having lived a second life, I decided to protect myself. I kept my right hand completely still while my left hand picked up a half-full cup of iced coffee, ready to splash it right into his flat face. "Little girl, are you thinking about throwing that coffee on me? Friendly warning: this T-shirt cost $300." The blonde guy looked me up and down. Seeing my cheap thrift-store clothes, he assumed I was an easy target. He smirked confidently, his acne-scarred face leaning in closer. "That's a good girl..." "Oh... SPLASH." Before he could finish his sentence, his face was met with two cups of murky brown coffee. One was from me. "Three hundred dollars is a bit steep. Go ahead and call the cops. If they say it's my fault, I'll pay you back full price." The other cup came from a guy sitting at the next table. He had just ordered an espresso and poured the entire thing onto the blonde punk's head without taking a single sip. My eyes trailed down his rolling Adam's apple, past his grayish stubble, all the way up to his hair, which was tied into a high ponytail. "Are you blind?! I'm sitting right here looking this gorgeous, and your eyes are glued to this scrawny girl?! You have zero taste!" Terrified, the blonde guy fell backward onto the floor, screamed "Freak!" and scrambled out of the coffee shop as fast as he could. I never expected to meet such a uniquely helpful civilian in our isolated little town. I bowed to the guy. "Thanks a lot, man." "No problem." He stared at me, slightly dazed. "I had a younger sister. If she were still here, she'd be about your age." He explained that his sister was a year younger than him, but she went missing as a toddler. The trauma completely shattered his mother's mental health, so she frequently coped by dressing him up like a little girl. Kidnappers deserve to rot in hell. For their own selfish greed, they destroy entire families. "Don't worry," I comforted him. "Since they stole your sister, they obviously wanted a girl very badly. She's probably living a great life right now." The guy nodded, the tight crease between his brows relaxing slightly. "If bad people try to bully you again, try acting completely unhinged." "There's no point reasoning with people like that. It's better to just give them a taste of their own medicine."
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