Saved From Fire Forgotten Forever

MotoNovel 1 Chapters English

There was an unwritten law in our house: I came first. Every decision, every concession, every heavy silence revolved around me. Because when I was ten years old, I dragged my twin brother and sister out of our burning house. The cost was my right leg—charred down to the bone, muscle fused into jagged scar tissue. To spare me from feeling guilty, Mom forced Betty to hand in her pointe shoes and abandon her dream of dancing ballet professionally. Dad made Samuel spend every high school summer working double shifts at the machine shop to build up a medical fund for my treatments. But as the years stretched on, the pain in my ruined joint grew unbearable. Navigating the steep stairs to my tiny second-floor bedroom became a daily ordeal. When I finally asked Betty if we could swap rooms so I could have her first-floor space, she snapped. She smashed every frame and porcelain trinket in her room before Samuel dragged her out the front door. They didn't come back for three days. Dad’s eyes turned bloodshot with rage as he forced me onto my knees on the hardwood floor. Mom slapped my face—hard enough to ring my ears—and screamed down at me. "Because of you, your sister had to give up dance! Your brother’s hands are covered in calluses from factory work! And now you want to steal her bedroom too?" She choked on her own fury. "I wish you had died in that fire ten years ago, Alice. Anything would be better than watching you bleed them dry!" Looking up at their cold, hateful eyes, a memory flickered in the back of my mind—an acceptance letter tucked under my mattress, sent from a specialized academy for disabled youth in New Mexico, thousands of miles away. My crippled leg couldn't carry me very far. But it could carry me far enough that I would never be their burden again.

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