Every Wish I Made Came True Twice for My Stepsister

All my life, whenever I wished for something, my younger stepsister got twice as much. One doll for me meant two for Chloe. One bedroom meant she got a bigger room plus a study. Even my own mother seemed to love her twice as much.

Then a strange interface appeared on my phone and confirmed the rule.

So I stopped wishing for good things.

I wished for a twenty-six-year-old boyfriend. Chloe got a fifty-two-year-old stranger at our front door. I wished to lose ten pounds. She dropped twenty so fast she landed in the ICU. When my stepfather begged me to stop, I made one more wish.

I wished to lose six hours of sleep every night.

And Chloe got double.

...

A line of text appeared across the top of my phone.

"SYSTEM ONLINE. USER MAY MAKE ONE WISH PER DAY."

I stared at it for three seconds, locked the screen, and rolled over.

I had seen stranger ads.

By morning, though, the message was still there.

There was no close button and no hidden links. Just stark black letters floating inside a harsh white strip, burned into the display like a digital scar. I tried to prove I was seeing things. A screenshot captured nothing but my default wallpaper. When I grabbed my tablet and snapped a physical photo of the monitor, the strip simply didn't exist in the camera's viewfinder.

A cold knot formed in my stomach. I sat on the edge of the unmade bed, eyes locked on the screen, and decided on a test. Something small. Low stakes. I pulled the keyboard onto my lap and typed:

"I WANT ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS."

I hit Enter. Nothing happened. The cursor just blinked back at me.

Thinking it might be a matter of semantics, I backspaced and changed the approach.

"I WISH FOR ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS."

"WISH ACCEPTED."

I waited all day. No cash appeared beneath my pillow. No surprise deposit hit my checking account. By dinnertime, I had decided the whole thing was an elaborate glitch.

Then my mom came home, pulled a hundred-dollar bill from her wallet, and slapped it onto the kitchen counter.

"Here. Buy yourself a decent coat. That old thing makes you look homeless."

She said it without looking up from her phone.

I picked up the bill. They were still warm from her wallet.

"Oh, and I ordered Chloe a new puffer—your sister's winter coat too," she added. "It was $200, but it looks amazing on her."

My fingers tightened around the money.

One hundred for me. Two hundred for Chloe.

Mom finally glanced up. "Don't start. Hers was on sale. It was over $300 originally."

I hadn't started anything. I was remembering.

When I turned seven, I wished for a Barbie doll. Mom brought me one the next day. And Chloe got two from an aunt.

At nine, I finished at the top of my class and wished for new sneakers. Mom bought me one pair at the mall. Chloe pointed at some she wanted. Mom checked the price tag and bought her two.

At twelve, I wished for my own room. When we moved that year, I ended up in the smallest bedroom. Chloe got the bigger one next to the master, plus the little study across the hall.

"She needs somewhere quiet for school," Mark reasoned.

I was starting middle school, too. No one mentioned that.

By itself, every excuse sounded reasonable. A gift from an aunt. A random sale. A school necessity. Line them up, though, and it just became arithmetic.

There were smaller examples too, too petty to complain about without sounding jealous. I wished for a slice of chocolate cake after a bad week, and Mom brought home a two-layer cake for Chloe's club fundraiser. I wished for enough money to see a movie with friends, and Mom handed Chloe twice that amount for a weekend at the mall. Whenever I tried to describe the pattern, the details defeated me. Adults could explain every item. What they could not explain was why the explanations always favored the same person.

I had trained myself not to want things out loud. Wanting was humiliating when Chloe's reward arrived brighter, newer, and doubled. By high school, I stopped telling Mom what I wanted for Christmas. She called me difficult. Chloe produced color-coded lists and was praised for being easy to shop for.

One for me. Two for her.

Every time.

I opened my phone again.

"SYSTEM ACTIVATED. USER MAY MAKE ONE WISH PER DAY."

How long had it been active?

I thought of birthday candles. Every year, Mom had told me to close my eyes and make a wish. I always had. Quietly, earnestly, I had asked for a toy, shoes, a phone, a room.

Every wish had come true.

And Chloe had always received double.

I had never connected the two things because I had already accepted another explanation: Chloe was sweeter. Easier. More lovable. Mom favored her because Chloe deserved love, and I didn't.

Now, watching those words glow on my screen, I felt fifteen years of swallowed resentment shift inside me.

Maybe I had never been the problem.

Maybe the rule had always been rigged.

The thought should have comforted me. Instead, it made my skin prickle. If the system was real, then some invisible mechanism had been listening to the most private moments of my childhood. It had heard every hopeful little request and answered in a way that taught me I mattered less. I didn't know who built it or why it chose Chloe, but I knew who had paid for its lesson.

Yet the system called me the user.

From the bedroom next door came Chloe's laugh. She was on a video call with Mom, modeling her new puffer and saying her new winter coat was really warm.

I lay back and closed my eyes.

For the first time, I knew how I wanted to use the rule.