When Lionel opened the door in the morning, I was still repeating the motion, mechanical, empty.
"Moira. Have you learned your lesson?"
He tilted my chin up.
His eyes were threaded with red.
And in those pupils I saw myself: skull cracked open, blood matting my hair, wrecked beyond recognition.
"Don't ever bring up college again. Fay's career is just getting started. If you ruin her, I will ruin you."
"Remember: she is nothing like you."
I stared at the disgust in his eyes and laughed. A thin, hollow sound.
Lionel must have forgotten. I really was nothing like Fay.
Fay had barely scraped past the admission cutoff. I was the department's star candidate.
And Fay destroyed all of it.
When every appeal was denied, I took a scalpel and went looking for her. Lionel stopped me.
His eyes were bloodshot, and he held me with a stubbornness that wouldn't let go.
"Moira, don't do this! You can't throw away your life over someone that worthless!"
"Give me a chance. I'll fulfill your dream of medicine for you."
He proposed to me right there in front of the entire school, ignoring the laughter and the whispers.
And I drowned in his promise.
I was nineteen when I followed him.