Chapter 3

My new home was a freezing, drafty basement room.

The damp walls were crumbling, and chunks of drywall kept falling away, exposing the filthy bricks underneath.

Waking up was a daily nightmare. My pillow was always buried under clumps of dead hair, brittle as snapped twigs.

Weeks later, the cancer reached my spine. The pain turned from an ache into something unbearable. It felt like a rusted spike was being driven into my backbone, twisting deeper with every breath.

I spent my nights digging through trash just to afford the cheapest painkillers.

My right leg was so twisted that I could barely walk. My bones made a disgusting, loud crunch every time I took a step.

One evening at dusk, I was dragging a dirty woven bag along the curb when a silver Bentley glided to a stop right beside me.

The window rolled down. The scent of expensive cologne hit my face, drowning out the smell of my own sweat.

"Wynne?" a voice called out.

Julian glared at me from the driver's seat. Disgust twisted his features into an ugly knot.

His gorgeous fiancée, Gloria, sat in the passenger seat, pressing a tissue over her nose and staring at me like I was roadkill.

"Julian?" I asked, taking a step back before I could even think about it.

I gripped the bag so hard my filthy hands left dark stains on the fabric.

"Keep my name out of your filthy mouth," Julian snarled, ripping a few bills out of his leather wallet. "God, you are a total disgrace."

Without even looking at me, he tossed the cash out the window like he was feeding a stray dog. The money fluttered through the air and landed in a muddy puddle.

"Take it and vanish," he demanded. "Do not show your face anywhere near my house. If Gloria's parents find out I have a sister digging through garbage, they'll call off the wedding."

The raw contempt in his eyes sliced through the very last piece of pride I had left.

I left the wet cash in the dirt. Leaning hard against the streetlamp, I forced my back to straighten up.

A hollow, broken smile stretched across my face. "Enjoy the wedding, Julian. May you live a nice, long life."

He sneered at me in disgust. Then he slammed the gas pedal, leaving me choking on exhaust as the car sped off.

He drove away, blind to the truth.

He had no idea my new diary held so much more than a record of my rotting body.

Buried in its pages was the very last "gift" I was preparing for all of them.

*****

My life ended late one night, swallowed by a brutal storm.

A suffocating silence filled the basement. The only sound was the cold rain lashing against the tiny windowpane.

Just before everything went black, warm, sick-smelling blood rushed from my nose.

I curled up beneath a moldy blanket, keeping a death grip on my second diary. That notebook was a death warrant I had drafted for them—born from pure despair and my final shred of sanity.

It took three days for the landlord to find my body. By then, the smell of rotting meat had drifted out of the room and into the street.

The police reached my parents just as they were booking caterers to celebrate Sienna getting into college.

Under the harsh fluorescent lights of the morgue, Mom pinched her nose shut. She refused to step anywhere near the metal table holding my covered corpse.

"She just had to die right now and ruin the mood," Mom complained. "She's a total nightmare, even when she's dead."

Her voice echoed off the cold tile, dripping with disgust. "Sounds good to me, Mom. I say we buy the cheapest urn they have. Some cheap wooden thing is fine. She was completely useless to us anyway."

Julian didn't even look up from his phone as he signed the cremation papers. "Sounds good to me, Mom. I say we buy the cheapest urn they have. Some basic wood thing is fine. She was completely useless to us anyway."

Floating beside the metal table, I watched my own flesh and blood treat my empty shell like a piece of trash.

My ashes ended up in a cheap wooden box with a terrible paint job.

Zero tears were shed. Zero prayers were spoken.

Right before leaving, Julian flipped open the only thing the cops brought from my apartment—my new diary.

He missed the blood-stained truth hidden inside the secret folds of the pages.

All he read was the inscription I had carved into the first page with my dying breaths: To my dear family. I hope you sleep soundly every night now that I am gone.

Julian let out a loud scoff and shoved the notebook into his suit pocket. "What a fake angel. Still pretending to be sweet, even in death."