CHAPTER 2

My name was Clara Vale. I was twenty-two.

My mother, Elaine, divorced my father when I was six. A year later, she married Martin Hale. Martin brought a daughter with him, Mia, one year younger than me.

Mia had been sweet from the beginning. That was not an insult. She knew how to be sweet the way some people knew how to breathe.

The first week we lived together, she called my mother "Mom" in a bright little voice and leaned her head against Mom's arm.

Mom melted.

"Look at Mia," she told me while combing Mia's hair. "So polite. So thoughtful. Why can't you learn from her?"

I stood beside them and said nothing.

Learn what? How to call a stranger Dad? How to hand my own mother to another girl and smile while doing it?

Martin did not care what I called him. He cared only about Mia.

Over the years, the rules in our apartment settled into something nobody had to say out loud.

At dinner, Mia picked first. If I reached for the ribs before she did, her chopsticks paused, her eyes lowered, and Mom would give me that look.

You are the older one.

When we shopped for clothes, Mia tried three sweaters and Mom bought all three. When it was my turn, Mom checked the tag first.

"That one's too expensive. Try something simpler."

Mia would point to the cheaper rack. "Clara would look better in that one."

Mom always agreed.

There were too many moments like that to count. Too many for me to know which were Mia's design and which were just the shape of our house.

But one memory stayed sharp.

On my fifteenth birthday, I wished for a phone. Everyone at school had one. I was still borrowing Mom's when I needed to check the bus.

The next day, Mom gave me her old phone.

"It still works," she said. "Don't play with it at school."

That same week, Mia came home with two brand-new phones. Martin bought one. The other, she said, came from a school raffle.

Two new phones for her.

One used phone for me.

Back then, I did not understand. I only thought this was what my life was supposed to be.

Now I made a list in my notes app.

Left column: my wish.

Right column: Mia's result.

One hundred dollars. Two-hundred-dollar jacket.

I needed one more test.

That night, I typed into the system: I wish someone would send me a bouquet tomorrow.

Wish accepted.

At noon the next day, a courier dropped a bouquet at my office. The card said it was a customer appreciation gift from a shop where I had once ordered planters.

I took a picture.

That evening, two bouquets sat on our coffee table, roses and baby's breath in a new glass vase.

Mom beamed. "Mia's coworkers sent them. She's so popular."

Mia took photos for social media. When she saw the flowers in my hand, she smiled.

"You got flowers too, Clara? What a coincidence."

I looked at her smile and said nothing.

One bouquet to two.

Another line on the list.

The rule was clear.

When I wished for something, I got one share. Mia got double.

No exceptions.

That night, I lay awake and thought about what she had taken for fifteen years.

But if the rule doubled good things, what happened when the wish was not good?