Chapter 3

3 The big mansion instantly felt empty. My head was spinning.

I felt tears prick my eyes, and finally understood. Love and indifference, they felt totally different.

It was a good thing my real parents had found me. In two weeks, I'd be leaving this all behind.

Jake, I'm not gonna love you anymore.

The fever hit hard, and fast. I felt like I was being roasted alive. I could barely breathe.

I managed to dial 911 and ended up alone in an ambulance, taken to the hospital.

After I finished the IV, the sky was starting to turn gray.

I pulled the needle out of my arm and went to the bathroom. Just around the corner, I heard a voice I knew.

"Jake, it's my fault. I'm such a mess, with these cramps. I can't believe you stayed up all night with me here."

I froze. Through the window of the room, I saw Sarah.

Jake was holding a thermos, carefully feeding her some broth, blowing on each spoonful before offering it.

His eyes…they were full of a kindness that I had never, ever seen before.

"You suffered a lot as a kid. That's why you're so fragile. It's ok, I'll be with you. We'll get you healthy, okay?"

Sarah giggled sweetly, and it made me sick. "Jake, you've been gone all night. Is Ashley gonna be mad?"

Mentioning me, Jake's face got cold. "She doesn't have the right to be mad."

I already knew Jake's feelings for Sarah were nothing like how he felt about me.

Still, that sentence felt like a punch to the gut.

I didn't have the right. I'd loved him for eleven years, been his girlfriend for three.

All of it, boiled down to not having the right.

I leaned against the wall, defeated. A shadow fell over me, and I looked up to see my foster brother, Mark.

Mark's eyes went straight to me, cold. He looked like I was some kind of enemy.

"What are you doing here? Trying to hurt Sarah?"

Sarah had been back in the Smith's family for all of three days, before she got hit by a car.

Everyone thought that I did it, no matter how much I tried to tell them I didn't.

In the eyes of the Smiths, and of Jake, I was a conniving user, willing to do anything to stay on top.

They all looked at me with cold, judgemental eyes.

"Mark," I whispered.

Mark didn't reply, just looked past me, at the scene in the room.

He saw Jake and Sarah leaning close, looking at a book. He got the picture.

He grabbed my arm, not caring how I felt, and dragged me to the far end of the hallway.

"Ashley, I know what you're doing. You're jealous of Sarah and Jake, aren't you?"

I laughed, which was a little bit crazy. I was supposed to be Jake's girlfriend, and now I was getting interrogated?

"Shouldn't I be jealous? Jake is my boyfriend!" I said through gritted teeth.

"Ha!" Mark scoffed. "Ashley, you're so delusional! You came into the Smith's family, took over Sarah's life for eleven years. Do you think that's just something you can do without any consequences?"

"You should wake up! Everything you have, it all belongs to Sarah, so you better back off. If you just do that, then we can treat you like we used to."

Like they used to? They adopted me and made me feel like I wasn't good enough. They always blamed me for everything.

No matter what I did, it was never good enough, because I wasn't Sarah!

My eyes burned, and I asked the question that had plagued me for so long.

"It wasn't my idea to come to the Smiths. Your parents chose to adopt me. Now that Sarah's back, I'm okay with leaving, giving everything back. So why won't you let me go?"

Mark stared at me like I was an idiot.

"Why? You think we like having you around? Of course it's not because we care about you, it's about the Smith's image!"

My head was spinning. I almost fell.

So that was it… The Smiths didn't want to look bad by booting their foster daughter out now that the real one was back.

They were just going to keep me stuck here, watching Sarah take everything I had, with my family.

They'd always seen me as a stand-in, a substitute without a heart.