Chapter 2

After leaving the hospital, I decided to call David. I wanted to hear the truth straight from him.

The call went through, but instead of David, it was Emily, his so-called sister, who picked up.

"Hey Claire, are you looking for David?" Emily said. "Sorry, he spent the whole morning with me and finally got some rest. I don't want anyone waking him up.

"If it's nothing urgent, I'm gonna hang up. I know you don't really care about him, but it's okay. I'll make sure to take good care of him from now on."

Right then, David's worried voice came through, but he wasn't talking to me. "Why aren't you resting? You just had surgery, and now you're already running around again?"

Emily laughed softly, "I've been stuck in bed forever. I wanted to get up and walk a bit."

David sighed, sounding totally doting. "Don't do that next time, okay? The doctor said you need to take it easy. You can't be as much of a troublemaker as you were when you were a kid.

"So, what do you want for dinner? I'll cook whatever you like. I remember clam chowder is your absolute favorite."

The laughter and happy voices coming from the phone cut deep.

After thirteen years together, David never bothered to remember what I liked to eat. But he could recall the favorite food of Emily, a sister he hadn't seen in over ten years.

My tears smeared the photo of us on my phone screen. All the love I thought we had was nothing but a fragile illusion, bursting at the slightest touch.

I cried so long that I couldn't make a sound anymore. I didn't want to go home, and I definitely didn't want to see David.

After thinking it over, I realized there wasn't a single spot in all of Bayview City where I could actually fit in.

David had cut off all my connections, because he was worried about me. He made me break up with my best friends. So now I had nobody left.

I felt like I was falling into a bottomless pit.

I grabbed my phone and bought the next ticket I saw. Where I was headed didn't matter. The only thing I cared about was getting out of here.

*****

In the train station waiting area, I stared at my chat history with David.

Ever since Emily moved into our home, we barely spoke. Every time we tried, it blew up into an argument.

And I couldn't afford to get too emotional. Eventually, David started ignoring me completely, giving me the cold shoulder.

When I was burning up with a fever, he was out chasing down heart donors for Emily.

I said I wanted to see the ocean, and he shot me down without thinking. But he could take Emily on a beach vacation right away.

He used to keep his phone with him all the time, claiming it was because he was worried about me. But now, it was Emily holding his phone.

The more I remembered all those details I'd tried so hard to overlook, the more it tore at my heart.

David and I were college classmates. He was such a gentleman. Because I had health problems, he always took extra care of me.

I was obsessed with the cafeteria hot dogs, but the place was ridiculously far from my dorm, over half an hour by bike. And I didn't know how to ride one.

So David stepped up and got them for me, every single time, for a whole year.

On top of grabbing food, picking up my packages was part of his daily routine. He'd even go with me for hospital check-ups, patiently asking the doctor about my condition and making sure I was okay.

I remember one holiday when I was home alone, burning up with a fever and barely conscious. I messaged him without thinking.

When I finally came to, he was already right there beside me. He gave up a hard-earned part-time job to be with me.

That day, he really opened up about his past. That was when I found out David was abandoned by his father at three years old, and at six, he watched his own mother jump into a river after suffering humiliation.

He told me that every time he closed his eyes, he could still see the blood spreading across the ice from that day.

No one in his family wanted to take him in.

Then, the day before the government was going to send him to an orphanage, a relative he had never met showed up out of nowhere and took him home.

Then he realized they brought him in to fill a space because they didn't have a child of their own.

Three years after David moved in, the couple finally had the daughter they always wanted and named her Emily.

After that, David was basically invisible in that house. Aside from having a place to sleep, he had to take care of everything else himself, from food to clothes.

It wasn't until Emily learned to talk that things shifted. Her first word wasn't "Mom" or "Dad"; it was "David." That was the moment he finally got noticed again.

But the good times didn't last. A year later, Emily was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition. The couple started calling David a jinx and tossed him aside all over again.

After that, David worked odd jobs to pay his way through school.

He kept his distance from that family, but he always treated Emily with kindness, even though it had been years since they'd last seen each other.

Finally, I'd asked David what his wish was.

He looked down at me, his smile so sincere and pure. "I want you to be healthy, Claire," he said.

Later, I found out he had been sending all the money he made from his part-time jobs to Emily.

Maybe, to David, nothing mattered more than her. He would give up everything for Emily. And I was the one he decided to leave behind, even though I was no different from her.