Chapter Four

Celia's POV

In the pitch-black shed, the only sound was the wind moaning through the cracks in the boards.

My fever had spiked dangerously high, and I could feel myself slipping away bit by bit.

All the hurt I'd buried for more than ten years came rushing back as I lay dying, clearer than it had ever been.

When I was ten, I'd gotten straight A's on my finals, and the school gave me an honor roll certificate.

I held it tight and ran all the way home, just wanting to show it to Dad.

He didn't even glance at it. He just swept it into the trash.

"What good are grades going to do you? You think you're gonna take over the family business someday?"

"If you've got that much time on your hands, go help Sloane practice piano."

Then there was the time I was fifteen. My appendix flared up out of nowhere, and I was rolling around in bed from the pain.

But Mom was annoyed that I was making noise in the middle of the night. She was worried I'd wake Sloane, so she just locked me in the basement.

It wasn't until the next morning that the housekeeper found me passed out and took me to the hospital.

Back then, I thought they played favorites only because I wasn't really theirs.

It took dying for me to finally understand. When parents have already picked a favorite, being their own blood doesn't count for anything.

The blood from my nose had dried into a crust on my face.

My breathing kept getting weaker. Every breath felt like swallowing broken glass.

My chest wheezed like an old bellows with a leak in it.

Suddenly, someone kicked the shed door open.

Wade stormed in holding a thick wooden stick, and Charlene came in right behind him.

They'd come to rough me up and drag me out to cook dinner.

But the moment Charlene saw the pool of blood under me and how gray and blue my face had gone, she finally realized something was wrong.

"W-Wade... Why does it look like she can't breathe?"

Her voice was shaking.

Wade froze for a second, then walked over and poked my arm with the stick.

"Hey! Don't you play dead on me!"

I didn't move.

My eyes were half open, my pupils already starting to go wide, and I just stared at them coldly.

Now Wade really started to panic.

He threw down the stick and felt the side of my neck, then jerked his hand back like he'd been shocked.

"Dammit! That rich guy never said she was this sick!"

"If she dies in our house and the cops show up, how are we supposed to explain that?"

Charlene's legs gave out, and she dropped onto the floor.

"What do we do? We gotta get her to a hospital!"

"Hospital?" Wade yelled. "You think that's free? What if those rich people turn it around on us and say we beat her to death?"

"We'll say she got sick and died on her own! Lock the door. Nobody says a word to anybody!"

They rushed out in a panic, and the iron lock slammed shut on the outside again.

The despair was as thick as the darkness in that shed, and it swallowed me whole.

I stopped fighting and quietly waited for the end.

That was when the phone I'd tossed into the corner lit up.

The word "Dad" kept flashing on the screen.

With the last bit of strength I had left, I inched over like a worm and hit answer.

"Celia, how long are you going to keep this up?"

Dad's voice was cold and hard, leaving no room for argument.

"Your mom said you called this afternoon pretending to be sick. You think this is funny?"

"Sure, things are a little rough up there, but those are your birth parents. Who are you to look down on them?"

I opened my mouth, but I couldn't get a single word out.

My throat was full of blood that tasted thick and coppery.

"Tomorrow's Sloane's piano recital. I was actually going to bring you back for it so you could see for yourself how far ahead of you she is."

"But with that attitude, you can stay up there and think about what you've done."

"Your birth parents aren't letting you come home until I say so."

He talked down to me like he always did. As I listened, the tears finally slid from the corners of my eyes and mixed with the blood on my face.

This was my father.

Even now, he had no idea that the so-called "birth parents" he was using to punish me were in the next room figuring out what to do with my body.

"Dad..."

My voice was barely a breath. It took everything I had to force the words out.

"I'm... dying..."

The line seemed to go quiet for a second. Then his anger exploded.

"You ungrateful little brat! How can you even say something like that?"

"You're hopeless!"

He hung up on me, and all that was left was the dead line.

That was the last thing I heard in this world.

My hand went limp. The phone fell to the ground, and the screen went black for good.

My body suddenly felt very light.

It was like a weight that had been crushing me for years had finally lifted. The pain was gone. The cold was gone too.

That night, hundreds of miles away, every light in the Langford estate was on.

Mom was ironing the dress Sloane would wear for her performance the next day when the landline in the living room rang. It was the sheriff's office up in the mountains.

"Hello, is this the residence of Mr. Conrad Langford?"

"This is the Pine Ridge County Sheriff's Office. Your daughter, Celia Langford, has been pronounced dead."