They Sued the Wrong Daughter

Chapter 3

After I came home from the hospital, I became easy to please.

When my mother asked if I had taken my medication, I said yes.

When my father asked if I still felt bad, I said I was fine.

Eden deliberately left her new shoes outside my bedroom door, but I refused to give her the reaction she wanted.

My silence made her restless, so she tried to provoke me. "Nemo, why have you been acting like this lately?"

I glanced at her and went back to my homework.

She lingered in the doorway for a while, got bored, and left.

I used to believe that if I found the right words, my parents would eventually see how unfair they'd been.

I no longer believed that.

College application season was a little over three months away.

I started adding up the cost of college, tuition, housing, and day-to-day expenses.

'How much could I borrow? Did the schools offer work-study? Could I earn enough over school breaks?'

I used a college application guide to narrow my list to several out-of-state schools.

When my guidance counselor collected our college preference forms and saw my choices, she asked, "Are your parents on board?"

"They don't know yet, and I don't need their permission."

She didn't press. She pulled a student loan application guide from her desk drawer and handed it to me.

"Choose the school and program first. If money is the problem, there are loans and scholarships. Don't rule yourself out before you've even started." I nodded, carefully folded the paper, and tucked it into my textbook.

I stayed in the classroom for a while after school that day.

A teacher who barely knew me had made the impossible sound ordinary in just two sentences. If money was the problem, I could find a way. Not having money didn't mean I couldn't go.

My mother soon found my application materials. She dug them out and slammed them onto the coffee table.

"Why do you need to go so far away?"

"Because I want to."

"There are colleges here."

"Okay."

She must have mistaken that for agreement. Her expression softened at once.

For a while, everyone at home suddenly treated me better.

One day, my father brought home a bag of apples and set it on my desk.

"You should eat more fruit."

I glanced at the bag, completely unsurprised. "I'm allergic to apples. Eden likes them."

He froze, then rubbed his nose, looking guilty.

"You are?"

"I always have been."

He took the bag away. The next day, it appeared on Eden's desk.

That bag of apples answered one question. I never had to wonder again how little my parents knew me.

A month before the application deadline, I put copies of my state ID, debit card, and SAT admission ticket into a folder and buried it at the bottom of my backpack.

I also changed the password to my application portal to a string of numbers they couldn't guess.

Then I worried I might forget it, so I wrote it down and slipped the paper into a textbook.

I was giving myself a way out.

I also sold my old art supplies to a classmate. It wasn't much, but it was the first money I'd saved.

I had loved drawing as a child. My mother called it a waste of money.

Eden wanted dance lessons and cried all night. The next day, she was enrolled at a dance studio.

She got tired of it after six months and switched to piano.

I had bought those art supplies by skipping breakfast and saving the money a little at a time.

When it came time to sell them, I had trouble letting go.

My classmate asked, "Are you giving up drawing?"

"I'll buy another set someday."

The used supplies sold for $15.

I tucked the money into my college application guide.

$15 wouldn't get me far, but it was the first money I'd ever saved for my own future.

With those $15 in my pocket, my future felt real for the first time.