Even at thirty, I still couldn't make sense of it. Both my parents were dual-income factory workers. So why had my childhood been nothing but suffering?

One day I posted about it online, just on a whim. The post blew up. The top comment read: "I'm guessing you're a girl, right?"

"Back then, dual-income couples were only allowed one child. They were hoping you'd get sick and die so they could try again for a boy."

"I bet they treated some male cousin of yours a whole lot better."

I sat frozen for a long time.

I thought about how I'd coughed until I was spitting blood, and my mother never once bought me medicine.

I thought about how I'd been hit by a car, fractures all over my body, and they only took me to some back-alley clinic to get bandaged up. That was how I ended up with a permanent limp.

I thought about every holiday, every New Year, when my parents would buy my cousin brand-new clothes while I shivered in rags.

I thought about how I'd sobbed, begging them to believe me when my cousin framed me for things I didn't do. They told me I was lying. That I was just jealous.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the dead of winter the year I turned eighteen. I was crouching in the kitchen, gulping cold water to soothe my cough.

"Cough, cough, cough! For God's sake, are you going to let anyone sleep? What are you, some kind of curse?"

Listening to my mother's complaints, I quietly found the bottle of paraquat she'd hidden away.

In my last life, they'd resented me for being so hard to kill. This time, I'd give them what they wanted.

——

"Sophie Harding, what are you sneaking around doing in the kitchen?"

My mother walked over and grabbed a fistful of my tangled hair like she was snatching up a stray chick.

Ice-cold water splashed across my flushed face. My throat felt like something was lodged inside it, raw and swollen. The taste of blood filled my nose.

I wanted to cry. But when I saw the impatience on her face, I knew that if I cried, she'd only get angrier.

"I asked you a question. Gone mute? Are you breaking things again? When are you going to learn to behave like your cousin?"

I clutched my aching throat and rasped, "Mom, my throat hurts..."

There wasn't a flicker of concern in her eyes. She let go, and I crashed to the floor.

"Serves you right. Normal people know to dress warm in the winter. Not you. All you care about is looking pretty. You get sick, that's your own damn fault."

The thirty-year-old soul inside me wanted so badly to speak up for the girl I was now. I didn't care about looking pretty. She had never once bought me a decent coat for winter.

But I knew that one word of protest would earn me a beating.

So I just looked up at those furious eyes. In thirty years of life, I had never once seen a trace of warmth in them.

"You little brat. What's that look supposed to mean? Got a problem with me?"

She let out a cold laugh, slapped me across the face, and dragged me into the little room in the basement without a glance at the tears streaming down my cheeks.

It was freezing in there. Pitch black. Even with thirty years of memories in my head, I couldn't stop the fear from crawling in.

"Mom, please, don't lock me in here. I'll be good..."

By the end, my throat hurt too much to make any sound at all. I could only watch as she shut the door.

In the darkness, I curled up on the floor in despair.

I never imagined I'd come back to the year I was eighteen. All those tragedies I could never escape were playing out in front of me all over again.

In my last life, I'd fought tooth and nail to get into college. My family refused to pay a cent. I had to work to scrape the money together, but the disability from the car accident meant almost no one would hire me. I ended up on the streets, collecting scrap to survive.

When my parents saw I was useless to them, they tried to marry me off for the bride price. The only taker was some middle-aged bachelor out in the mountains.

I'd confronted them so many times. Why were they so heartless? Why, when they had two steady incomes and money was never the problem, had they never been willing to spend a single extra dollar on me?

But they only ever met me with silence. They never answered.

It wasn't until I turned thirty that I learned the truth from a stranger online: dual-income factory workers were only allowed to have one child. They wanted me dead so they could try again for a boy.

The moment that truth hit me, all I wanted was to confront my parents. I wanted to scream at them until my voice shattered, to demand answers for trapping me in that hellhole of a family for thirty years.

But in the next instant, I was reborn. Back to the same nightmare I already knew.

Bang! I was still lost in the storm of my thoughts when the door was kicked open.

It was my cousin Kevin Abbott. The same age as me. The same person who'd tormented me for years in my previous life.

He walked over and drove his foot into my side.

For as far back as my blurred memories stretched, he'd always loved snatching things from me. Whenever he was in a bad mood, I became his punching bag. There was rarely a patch of skin on my body that wasn't bruised.

"Get away from me!"

I screamed, refusing to submit to this monster ever again.

My defiance lit a fuse in him. He lunged forward, pinning me down with his full weight, and snarled, "Did you steal my yogurt? You greedy little bitch, can't keep your hands off anything!"

I wasn't strong enough to push him off. All I could do was sink my teeth into his arm as hard as I could.

He yelped in pain and let go.

"Filthy whore—"

He spat in my face, then hammered his fists into my body a few more times before his anger finally cooled. He left without closing the door.

I dragged my battered body across the floor, crawling to the storage cabinet in the corner of the living room.

Inside was a bottle of paraquat. Dad kept it for his plants.

I twisted off the cap. The smell was sharp enough to burn, but I didn't care. I tipped it back and poured it down my throat.

Then I crawled back to the basement and waited for death.

When I woke again, my body felt impossibly light.

The wounds on my face didn't hurt anymore. My throat wasn't raw. Everything felt weightless, as if I might float away.

I opened my eyes and saw my body in the darkness. She was curled up in the corner, perfectly still. No breath left in her.

My soul passed through the wall and drifted into the living room.

Mom and Dad were already asleep. Kevin was in his room playing video games. Not a single person had wondered whether I was alive or dead.

I floated to my folding cot on the balcony. Three years ago, when Kevin moved in with us so he could attend a closer school, my parents had generously handed him my bedroom. My sleeping spot became the balcony: a rickety folding cot that froze in winter and roasted in summer.

I couldn't sleep. I sat on the cot in silence the entire night, my mind circling a single thought: when Mom got up in the morning and realized I was gone, would she find my body?

Would she regret it? Would she feel even a shred of grief?

I laughed bitterly at myself.

Her greatest wish had always been for me to die sooner. Now that wish had come true. She was probably going to be thrilled.

I sat there until dawn bled through the windows. Mom emerged from her bedroom and walked into the kitchen.

I watched her prepare a full breakfast. My gaze swept the table.

She had set out three plates.

In this house, I never had my own plate. Every meal, I stood off to the side and waited for the three of them to finish eating. Only then did I get whatever scraps were left.

Years of malnutrition had stunted my growth. I was already eighteen, but I looked no older than a middle schooler.

Soon Kevin woke up too. He sat down with Mom and Dad, laughing and chatting over breakfast as if he were their real child.

It wasn't until every last bite was gone that Mom noticed I wasn't standing in my usual corner, watching them eat with hungry eyes.

"Where'd Sophie run off to?"

Dad glanced over at the balcony. No sign of me.

"Probably already left for school. Didn't she have that fight with you two yesterday?"

Kevin backed up the story, and Mom believed it almost instantly.

"That little brat has some nerve, throwing a tantrum at me now? Fine! If she's got the guts, she can stay gone for good!"

She cleared the table and scraped every last bit of leftover food into the trash.

Kevin saw that Mom was angry and put on his most obedient face. "Don't be upset, Auntie. When she comes home this afternoon, I'll talk her into apologizing. She really doesn't know how to behave. What kind of kid picks a fight with her own mother? She doesn't appreciate how hard you work at all."

That was exactly the kind of thing Mom loved to hear. A satisfied smile spread across her face. "Our Kevin is always the good one."

Dad chimed in with his own praise. "We're counting on you to take care of us when we're old. If we had to rely on Sophie, we'd starve."

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a crisp hundred-dollar bill, and handed it to Kevin as spending money.

I stood frozen. A hundred dollars. When I was little, that was an unimaginable fortune. The only person who ever gave me money like that was Grandma, because she actually loved me.

My parents never gave me a single cent. Every kid in my class could buy snacks after school. I was the only one who stood there watching, swallowing my envy in silence.

It was my homeroom teacher who finally couldn't stand it anymore and slipped me a piece of candy. It was the best treat I'd ever tasted.

Kevin left for school. Dad headed out too. Mom hummed a little tune as she tidied up the house, never once remembering that I was still down in the basement.

Ring...

A phone call shattered the quiet. Mom picked up.

"Oh, Ms. Lambert? What do you mean Sophie didn't come to school?"

My chest tightened. It was my homeroom teacher. The only person at school who cared about me.

I rushed over to the phone, hovering beside it, desperate to hear her voice.

"That's right. Sophie has been absent for almost an hour now. What happened? Is she sick?"

Hearing that familiar concern after so long, something deep inside me trembled. Tears pooled in my eyes, refusing to fall.

Mom's brow furrowed. She muttered under her breath, "That little brat. She's really testing me."

But when she spoke into the phone, her voice turned pleasant and polite. "Oh, don't worry about it, Ms. Lambert. That girl's just throwing a tantrum. I said two words to her and she ran off. There's no controlling her."

"She'll come crawling back once she realizes she's got nowhere to go. Really, don't trouble yourself."

Elena Lambert was stunned by what she was hearing.

"Mrs. Harding, Sophie is just a high school student. Aren't you worried she'll get lost? That something could happen to her? She's a very well-behaved girl. She doesn't seem like the type to just run away from home."

Mom's face twisted with open disgust. "Ms. Lambert, Sophie is not the good kid you think she is. She's got you fooled. At home she's a complete nightmare. Fights us on everything, every single day. I'm done coddling her."

"Mrs. Harding, I really think—"

Ms. Lambert tried to say more, but Mom cut her off. "I have to get to work. If there's anything else, we can talk after my shift."

She hung up.

"Unbelievable. She's my kid. Who asked you to butt in?"

She rolled her eyes and grabbed her things to leave for work.

On her way out, she passed the basement door and glanced at the pitch-black entrance.

My heart seized.

Would she find my body?

"What's that smell?"

She wrinkled her nose, then pulled out her phone and called Dad.

"I think there's a dead rat in the basement. Get someone to deal with it when you have a chance."

It never crossed her mind that I was the one rotting in there.

She left for work. I didn't follow her. I turned and drifted toward Grandma's house.