Chapter Two

Audrey's POV

I stood in the doorway staring at my buried cot for a long time before it really sank in.

Raegan's soaked swimsuit and her cheer team jacket were spread across the top of the pile. Sand was trickling off the edges and landing right on my pillow.

Down the hall, the laughter in the living room just kept getting louder.

I turned around without thinking and caught Mom's eye.

She was standing in the living room doorway with a plate of pizza. She'd obviously seen what my room looked like, and what a mess I was.

She paused for one second. Then she turned away and smiled, asking Raegan if she wanted more dipping sauce.

Honestly, I wasn't surprised.

Up until three years ago, I'd had a room of my own. It was at the end of the upstairs hallway, and the window looked right out at the old oak tree in the backyard.

Then Raegan figured out Brody's room had its own bathroom and hers didn't. She cried until midnight, saying Mom and Dad played favorites.

They couldn't calm her down, so they finally decided to split my room in half and turn one side into a walk-in closet for her to make up for it.

When Brody found out, he didn't say a word. He just grabbed his car keys and walked out, and he didn't come back until the middle of the night.

The next day, his computer and gaming chair moved into the other half of my room.

And I carried a few cardboard boxes down to this storage room next to the garage.

The gutter on the roof leaked, so rainwater seeped down the corner of the wall and pooled on the concrete floor.

I looked at the lawn mower in the corner that had been broken for years, and it hit me that we weren't all that different.

It was only still here because nobody could be bothered to throw it out. No one actually cared about it.

First they'd taken my room. Now even the tiny spot where I slept was buried under their stuff.

I quietly closed the door and shut out all the noise from the living room.

I didn't touch a single thing on that cot that night.

I went back to the garage, climbed into the SUV I'd spent all night cleaning, and curled up in the back seat until morning.

The car still smelled like cleaner.

A few hours earlier, there hadn't been a seat in here for me at all.

At eight in the morning, my phone buzzed me awake.

It was the advisor from my school's study abroad office.

"Audrey, congratulations! You got the exchange spot at the art school in Melbourne."

I sat straight up and almost hit my head on the roof of the car.

"There's just one thing we need to take care of fast," she said, then paused. "The program needs your parents to sign a financial sponsorship form. It basically says they're okay with you going abroad and they'll cover part of the cost. I'll go ahead and apply for an emergency grant for you, but this form has to have a parent's signature."

"That shouldn't be a problem with your parents, right?"

I gripped my phone. My throat felt tight.

"No problem. I'll handle it."

After I hung up, I changed into clean clothes and took the bus to campus.

When the advisor handed me those few pages, my palms were sweating.

I knew this was my one shot at getting out of here.

The second I walked out of the office building, I spotted Mom's car in the parking lot.

Raegan had summer cheer practice that day, and Mom always drove her there and picked her up herself.

Raegan was leaning against the car door, her eyes red and puffy from crying, hanging on to Mom's sleeve and refusing to let go.

"Brody got MVP again. His post already got hundreds of likes this morning."

"And what about me? I've got nothing! We're twins. Why does he always get to be the star?"

Before, seeing her cling to Mom like that would've stung for a long time.

Now I just wanted to walk around them and get out of there.

But Mom had already seen me. She marched over and grabbed my wrist.

"Audrey, didn't you win first place in some photography contest last month?"

I froze.

"Give the trophy to Raegan," she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Let her take some pictures with it and post them. At least then she'll have something. You know she can't stand losing to Brody. If she doesn't get this, she'll be upset for days."

I thought I'd heard her wrong.

"Mom, I spent three whole months on those photos. I was out the door before sunrise every single day..."

"I know you worked hard." She cut me off, clearly impatient. "But what's a trophy going to do in that storage room of yours besides collect dust? Why can't she just use it for a while?"

"If you say no, you're basically asking for another blowup at home."

Anger shot through me so fast my eyes burned.

In this family, every bit of peace was bought with something of mine.

My room. My bed. And now they couldn't even let me keep the award I'd spent three months earning.

So what was I to them?

I opened my mouth, but then my fingers brushed the corner of the sponsorship form in my bag.

Just like that, all the anger went cold.

"Fine." My voice came out so calm I barely recognized it. "She can have the trophy. But you need to sign something for me first. It's for a school grant. They won't take it without a parent's signature."

Mom didn't even ask what it was.

She pulled the papers out of my hand, flattened them on the hood of the car, flipped straight to the last page, and signed. Her eyes stayed on Raegan behind her the whole time.

She never even glanced at the bold words across the top: Financial Sponsorship Form.

"Okay, okay, sweetie. The trophy's yours." She turned and wrapped her arms around Raegan, her voice soft, like she was soothing a little kid.

Raegan stopped crying instantly. She pulled out a mirror and touched up her eye makeup.

Before getting in the car, she shoved past me on purpose and knocked her shoulder hard into mine.

"Couldn't you have just said yes sooner? You made me cry my makeup off."

She said it like she had every right to.

As far as she was concerned, half of everything in this house was hers to begin with.

I ignored her. I folded the signed form in half, tucked it carefully into the inside pocket of my jacket, and pressed my hand against it through the fabric.