I Hid My Perfect Score novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: Surviving My Twin

"No," I said. "And I don't care."

"You will." Cade pulled out his phone, then remembered it was dead.

"I'll send it from the hotel. She sent it to me before she submitted. I kept a copy."

"Why would you keep a copy?"

"Because I'm not an idiot." He stepped out into the snow. "Read it, Joss. Then tell me who the witch is."

Emory pulled the bay door down behind him.

The email came at 11:52 that night.

No message. Just an attachment.

Weston_Essay_FINAL.pdf

I was in my bunk. Dodie was snoring below me in a way she swore she didn't.

I opened it under the blanket.

Surviving My Twin

By Paisley Carmody

I read the first line.

Then I sat up so fast I hit my head on the ceiling.

"I learned to be small in my own house, because my sister needed all the air."

It was six hundred and fifty words.

I read it four times.

At fifteen, the essay said, my twin won the state science fair.

She kept the trophy on our shared windowsill so I would have to look at it every morning.

That same spring, she locked me in the upstairs bathroom for six hours, while our mother pleaded with her through the door.

Every game we played as children, she forced me to be the witch.

She quit cross-country to make me feel guilty for being faster.

On our eighteenth birthday, she made sure no one remembered it was mine.

She told our family she scored lower than I did, so the truth would humiliate me in front of everyone I loved.

And then she left without saying goodbye.

And I learned that I could survive anyone.

Even the person who shares my birthday.

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