My brother, in a fit of rage at our parents, opened the gas valve on the grill. Everyone else got out. I was asleep. The fire took most of my skin, and one of my legs. Mom and Dad walked through those first years in a daze of tears, until the day my brother, Ethan, brought home a girl and a piece of paper. A DNA test. It turned out I was the wrong baby, switched at birth. A stranger in their house. And just like that, their guilt was cut in half. I clung to life until I was eighteen. While they all went to the real daughter’s birthday party, I was in my bed, twisting. It had been a long time since Mom and Dad left on their business trip. Too long since anyone had turned me over. The old bedsores on my back had become infected, breeding something that crawled and itched with a fire of its own. I tried to roll over, a desperate, clumsy push that sent me tumbling onto the floor. As I lay there, a muffled shout drifted from the terrace next door, carried on the wind. “Ethan, aren’t you going to tell them? That you faked the DNA test?” It was like a switch had been flipped. “Shut up! Just shut up! I brought Ava home to fix things, to give them a way out. You want me to tell them now that it was all a lie? That I did it out of guilt? What place would I have in this family then!” His voice dropped, thick with a desperate self-righteousness. “I didn’t want everyone to spend their lives feeling guilty over Chloe. It was a kind lie. It was fair to everyone!” I lay frozen on the floor. Everyone? What about me? 1 I lay on the floor like a stray dog for a day and a night, woken only by the sound of shouting from downstairs. “Your sister is in that kind of state, and you want her to donate bone marrow to Ava? I won’t allow it!” It was Mom. She was back from her trip. When she comes in, I’ll tell her. I have to tell her. I’m not the wrong baby. I’m yours. I’ve always been yours. “Chloe’s a write-off anyway, Mom! Why can’t she do something useful for Ava? Isn’t that the least she can do, after we’ve raised her all these years out of the goodness of our hearts?” Ethan argued his point as if I were a piece of burnt trash, something to be picked over for any last scrap of value. “Ethan Hayes, I didn’t raise you to be this cruel. Have you forgotten who the real culprit is for what happened to your sister?” I could hear the tears in my mother Catherine’s voice, the sheer pain of it all. Her biological daughter was sick, and it was tearing her apart, but her conscience wouldn’t let her hurt me further. “Fine! So I lit the goddamn gas. But none of you went in to save her either! Are we supposed to be trapped in that guilt forever? Donating marrow isn’t a big deal. If you won’t care about Ava, I will!” The slam of the front door echoed through the house, followed by a few muffled sobs. My bedroom door opened. Mom gasped. “Chloe! Honey, you fell! Why didn’t you call out?” Under the gauze, the sores itched and burned. I looked at my mother’s face and cried without making a sound. “Mom,” I started, my voice a broken rasp. “The truth is, I’m…” Before I could finish, her phone rang. The hospital. “Chloe, honey, they found out at her birthday party… your sister has leukemia. I have to go to the hospital now. You be good, okay?” She stroked my hair, her touch frantic. “I’ll take care of this and then I’ll be right back to see you.” She rushed out, a blur of motion and worry. I couldn’t bring myself to stop her. They were all living in a prison of guilt because of me. Now my sister was sick. I couldn’t be selfish. But all I wanted was to be their daughter. The tears carved paths through the scarred, uneven terrain of my face, trickling into my mouth. They tasted bitter. I’ll wait one more day, I told myself. Just one more day. When Mom has a clear head, I’ll tell her everything. I waited with a fragile, fluttering hope. But it wasn’t Mom who came. It was Ethan. “Chloe? You awake?” I was startled. It had been years since he’d used my name with such softness. He was carrying a bag full of gifts, and inside, I could see the plush pink of a stuffed rabbit, my favorite as a child. I hadn’t received a gift from him since the day he brought Ava home. Remembering what I’d overheard, I instinctively recoiled. Ethan’s face darkened at my movement. “Still holding a grudge, Chloe? You always do that. You look at me with those eyes. Every time I try to fix things between us, you ruin it.” I didn’t dare defy him. I just lowered my head, my silence a shield. “Where’s Mom?” “She had to go away on business. Be back in a week. She told me to take good care of you.” He leaned in, his voice conspiratorial and kind. “Don’t you want to get out? You’ve been stuck in this room for months. It must be suffocating. We haven’t done anything together, just the two of us, in forever.” He paused, letting the silence hang. “Please, Chloe. Let me make it up to you. I know I was wrong. Just give me one chance to apologize.” He gently placed the pink rabbit in my arms. The sincerity in his eyes was so overwhelming it felt real. I was born premature. Mom always said it was Ethan who saved me, sitting by my incubator every day after school. When I was a picky eater in kindergarten, he was the only one who could patiently spoon-feed me, the only one who would let me ride on his shoulders when we went out to play. After the fire, all of that became Ava’s. I had seen him through the gap in my curtains, gently stroking Ava’s hair, pushing her on the swing in the backyard, driving her across the city just to chase a sunset. I watched it all like a mouse in the walls, peeking at a life that should have been mine. Seeing me hesitate, Ethan wrapped his arms around me. For the first time in a decade, I felt a hug. It was hesitant, fragile, but it was there. “Chloe,” he whispered, his voice thick. “You’re my only sister. I’m begging you.” As he held me, his hand brushed against my back, and he felt the dampness of the sores through my clothes. His face twisted in rage. He stormed out of the room and unleashed a torrent of abuse on the nurse I had. “Is this how you take care of my sister? Get on your knees and apologize to her! And don’t get up until she forgives you. Then get the hell out of my house!” I watched the sharp line of his jaw as he defended me, a strange, electric current running through me. In that moment, forgetting everything else, I nodded. Because of the extensive burns, I couldn't be in direct sunlight. Ethan wrapped me carefully in a thick blanket and carried me to the car, his movements gentle. Over the years, my brother had cost me so many tears, so much of my heart. And yet, I didn’t hate him. As he drove, a giddy, reckless feeling bubbled up inside me. For the first time since the fire, someone was taking me out of the tiny room that had been my world for a decade. And then, the car pulled into the hospital parking lot. 2 “Ethan, you said we were going out to play.” My voice was a ragged croak. The fire had damaged my vocal cords, and every word felt like swallowing needles. A flash of impatience crossed his face. “We are. But your sister is sick. We’re just stopping to get you tested for a match first.” He looked at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes cold. “Chloe, you can’t be so selfish. I know the fire was hard on you, but Ava is the real daughter of this family. If you do this, the Hayes family will be even more grateful to you. Do you understand?” My world narrowed to a single point. How could I not be selfish? I was their real daughter. The fire wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t… “Mom said… she said I don’t have to.” It was the first lie I had told in a long time. It was the first time I had ever fought back. Ethan exploded. “Mom is just guilty! She’s not thinking straight, and neither are you! It’s not a big deal! If you’re still pissed at me, take it out on me, not Ava!” They held me down while they drew the blood. The results came back quickly. To Ethan’s profound disappointment, I was not a match. How could I be? The chances of a match between two people with no blood relation were minuscule. “Ethan,” I ventured, my voice trembling. “No one in the family is a match for her. Are you sure… are you sure she’s really our sister?” Crack. The slap sent me reeling, nearly knocking me out of my wheelchair. Ethan loomed over me, his eyes red, a cornered animal. “You sick bitch. You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? You love the idea that Ava is a fake, so you can go back to being the center of our guilt.” He leaned closer, his voice a venomous hiss. “Let me tell you something. Dream on. Ava is the real Hayes daughter. If it weren’t for that mistake at the hospital, you never would have had this life.” His words lit a fuse in me. Tears blurred my vision, but I screamed back at him, the sound tearing from my throat. “I wish I wasn’t your sister! If it weren’t for that mistake, the person in this wheelchair wouldn’t be me!” “I’d be normal! I’d have parents who loved me, I’d be able to run and jump and live in the sun!” Another slap cut my words short, silencing the rage. Blood trickled from the corner of my mouth. But the hatred in my eyes didn’t waver. Ethan’s hands were shaking. A flicker of regret, of something broken, crossed his face. His voice was suddenly quiet. “I… I can’t talk to you. You’re an ungrateful…” He couldn’t finish. “Just wait here. The driver will come get you.” He turned and fled, as if escaping a monster. Every eye in the hospital lobby was on me. A child passing by saw my face and burst into tears. “Mommy, that person looks like a ghost! She’s scary.” “Don’t look, honey. How disgusting. Let’s go, let’s go, before we catch something.” “Jesus, I thought I was seeing something out of a horror movie. I’m never coming to this hospital again.” I sat there, in the middle of the lobby, with no phone and no one who dared to come near me. I sat from day until night, until my tears ran dry and I nearly passed out from exhaustion. No one came. Finally, a night-shift nurse took pity on me and managed to contact my mother. When the driver arrived, his face was a mask of annoyance. “Why hasn’t this thing been kicked out of the Hayes house yet? Clinging on like a leech, making me come out in the middle of the night.” If it weren’t for the tiny, flickering hope of my parents coming back, I would have prayed for death. Everyone already thought I was a useless burden anyway. Sometime in the dead of night, I was woken by a hot, searing sensation on my face. The nerves there were mostly dead from the first fire, so by the time I jolted awake, the wax from a candle had already hardened into a crust on my cheek. Ava was standing over me, holding the candle, her face flushed with alcohol, her eyes wild. “You’re happy, aren’t you, sister? The tissue typing failed. Now you can take everything back.” She thrust the candle towards my face, and a scream tore from my lungs. “Fire! Get it away! Get it away from me!” Ava just laughed, a crazed, high-pitched sound. “Let me tell you what my brother said. The real daughter of the Hayes family will always be me!” She jabbed a finger at me. “You… you monster. You half-dead thing. You will never take my place.” She staggered out of the room, leaving the candle behind. She didn’t see the flame catch the edge of the curtains. The fire spread with terrifying speed. I was back in that night from years ago, a night where no one answered my screams. No one knows the pain of a severe burn like I do. It’s the feeling of a million ants chewing you alive, your skin blistering and rotting, weeping pus, stinking. And even after it heals, for a long, long time, the phantom pain remains, a constant, stinging companion.[1][2] I had imagined a thousand ways to die. Any of them were better than being burned alive. Through the thick, rolling smoke, I saw a figure running towards me. Why? Why was it him? Why was it my brother? 3 When I woke up again, it was to the sharp, sterile smell of a hospital. Ethan was there, looking haggard, his arm bandaged, pacing anxiously around the room. I couldn’t understand it. Why him? Why did he always do this to me? He made it impossible to love him, impossible to hate him, impossible even to escape him. When Ethan saw I was awake, the raw worry on his face was so real it felt like a dream. “Eth—” “When Mom and Dad get here, you tell them you knocked over the candle by accident.” Our voices overlapped. I heard the exact moment my own breathing stopped. It was the same nightmare, all over again. I looked down at my body, at the ruined landscape of my skin—the scarred flesh, the dead tissue, the craters and valleys—now freshly seared red and raw by a new fire. I felt nothing. The pain receptors had been destroyed the first time around. I tried to push myself up, to make him look at me, at the heap of ruined flesh that was his sister. “Don’t you look at me like that!” he snapped. “To save you, I left Ava in there! She was hit by a falling beam! Aren’t you satisfied?” His voice cracked, rising with hysteria. “Why is it always you? Why are you the one who always traps people in guilt? I won’t let Ava live with the guilt of burning you, not like I have!” He was rambling, his words tumbling over each other. “It would be better to just die. It would be a mercy.” “Besides,” he added, his voice dropping, “she’s already paid the price. Mom and Dad are giving her blood right now. You know what to say when they get here.” He was about to say more when the doctor rushed in. “Mr. Hayes, your sister is in critical need of blood. The hospital’s reserves are low. We need you to come and donate now.” Ethan flew out of the room with the doctor. Outside the operating room, my mother, Catherine, was waiting anxiously with my father, Robert. “Ethan, what happened? How could your sister be so badly injured?” Catherine was leaning against Robert, on the verge of collapse. “Why does it have to be my children? Why is it always my children in a fire?” Ethan’s expression was a twisted mask of emotions. He swallowed hard. “Chloe… she knocked over a candle in her sleep. The whole room went up. I got to Chloe first, but a burning beam fell and hit Ava.” Catherine and Robert were speechless. A wave of regret washed over them. “If we had just sent Chloe away back then,” Robert murmured, “maybe Ava wouldn’t be going through this.” He shook his head, his voice gaining a bitter edge. “I told you then she wasn’t fit to be kept in the house. You wouldn’t listen. Who knows if she did this on purpose, to get back at Ava.” “Ethan told me before that Chloe and Ava weren’t getting along. He told me to send her away. It’s my fault. I was too soft.” Ethan started to speak, to defend me, but the words caught in his throat. He let his father’s assumptions, fueled by his own previous complaints, fester in the silence. “Family members,” a nurse called out, “the father’s blood type doesn’t match. We need both of you to get tested as well.” Ethan and Catherine hurried after the nurse. Robert walked into my room. When I looked up and saw my father, a dam of grief broke inside me. Before I could even speak, tears soaked through the gauze on my face. “Dad…” My choked whisper was cut off by his cold voice. “You have no right to call me Dad. I know Ethan wronged you in the past, but he has lived with that guilt every single day. He would sneak into your room at night just to watch you, to make sure you were still breathing.” He took a step closer, his face a storm of fury. “You’ve been burned. You know how much it hurts. Why would you inflict that same pain on my daughter? If anything happens to Ava, I will never forgive you.” “As soon as this is over, you will leave this family. We have no room for a jinx.” His figure blurred as the oxygen in the ventilator suddenly felt thin, suffocating. Even though most of my ability to feel pain was gone, a different kind of agony seized me, making my whole body tremble. Robert returned to the surgical waiting area. His son was still being tested; his wife was staring blankly at a piece of paper. “Catherine, what is it? Is something wrong with Ava?” She turned her head slowly, mechanically. The tears had already started to fall. By the time she faced him, her face was streaked with them. “Why is she Type A?” she whispered, the words trembling. “Why is she Type A?”
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "MotoNovel" app ? search for "384525", and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel