It wasn’t until later that I understood. They hadn’t told me on purpose. They didn’t want others to know they had an ugly, stupid daughter. They were ashamed.
They had forgotten that before my brain burned, I was the top student in school.
In high school, my teeth started to jut out more. Relatives kept urging my parents to take me to the dentist. After being nagged several times, they finally found the time to bring me in.
The dentist took one look and said it was skeletal protrusion, a genetic issue. I needed orthognathic surgery, and the sooner, the better. But I was about to start my final year of high school, and my parents said I could save up for surgery myself once I got to university.
They didn’t make the same mistake with Fiona. They got her braces early, fitted her with orthokeratology lenses to prevent nearsightedness, arranged for double eyelid surgery, and removed every little mole or blemish that appeared on her face.
Everyone who met her believed she was a natural beauty. They envied her flawless skin, free of even a single acne scar.
Now, I am eighteen. She is sixteen. I am in my final year of high school. She is in her first.
I am ugly, quiet, slow, unwanted. She is beautiful, sweet, clever, adored by everyone.
I feel like an experiment. Every mistake they made with me, they corrected on her.
…
I have parents. I am almost eighteen. Of course, I can’t go to an orphanage.
In the end, my grandmother was the only one who took pity on me. She looked at them and said, “If none of you want Jolene, then I will take her. Don’t come crying to me later, saying you want her back.”
