At my stepsister’s 500-guest wedding, the same family who threw me out at sixteen let me stand in the back of the ballroom like I wasn’t even blood. Until the bride stormed across the floor, m0cked my dress, s.lapp.ed me hard enough to turn heads, and called me garbage while half the room laughed.

Tessa was beautiful in a sharp way that made adults want to please her no matter what she did. The first time we met, she looked at me with a smile that was not friendly at all, but rather felt like she had already won a battle.

Within a year, my father married Brenda and they began to treat me like a stranger in my own home. Tessa made sure that I was left out of every family photo until I felt like a ghost haunting the edges of their perfect new life.

My father chose to ignore the way Tessa stole my things or the way Brenda replaced my mother’s decorations. It was simply easier for him to look away than to deal with the truth of what was happening to me.

Tessa would come into my room and tell me that if I were more pleasant, perhaps people would actually want to spend time with me. She understood that my father had moved on and that I was a piece of the past that no longer fit the puzzle.

I tried so hard to be perfect by doing all the chores and keeping my grades high so they would finally see my value. But the more I tried, the more they found reasons to be disappointed in me.