They Think I’m Easy Prey—but My Words Manifest into Reality Chapter 06

They Think I’m Easy Prey—but My Words Manifest into Reality Chapter 06

My father snatched the phone out of the nurse’s hand with a deep frown.

The screen flickered to life. It was playing a fifteen-second clip of high-definition video on a loop.

The angle was from the second-floor balcony, looking down at the hallway below.

There I was, standing perfectly still with my arms at my sides. I was a good three feet away from

Vanessa.

And there was Vanessa. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the eyebrow razor. Her

movements were smooth. Practiced.

Without a flicker of hesitation, she drew the blade across her own arm.

As the blood welled up, she shoved the handle into my unsuspecting palm and slid gracefully to the floor. Then came the scream. That shrill, theatrical scream.

The entire hallway went absolutely silent.

The only sound was the tinny, looping playback of Vanessa’s fake cry for help coming from the

phone’s tiny speaker.

My father stared at the video. The color drained from his face, then came rushing back in blotchy

patches of red. His fingers were trembling.

My mother’s crying cut off so abruptly it was like someone had reached down her throat and ripped

out her vocal cords.

Ryan stared at the screen and unconsciously shrank back into his wheelchair. He was muttering to

himself in denial.

“No. That’s not possible. Vanessa’s afraid of everything. She won’t even step on a bug. She’d never

do that. Not to herself.”

While they all stood there with the undeniable evidence staring them in the face, the doors to the trauma bay swung open again.

The doctors had tied a tight tourniquet around Vanessa’s arm to stop the infection from spreading while they prepped for surgery.

She was being wheeled out on a gurney. Her eyes landed on my father, and on the phone in his hand

that was still playing the video on repeat.

Vanessa’s pupils shrank to pinpricks.

But her arm was a rotting mess. She couldn’t move. She could barely breathe through the pain. All she could do was lie there on the gurney and start crying again.

“Mom! I’m sorry! It’s true! I did it!”

“After Luna came home, you gave her everything. All the nice stuff. I got scared, okay? I thought, now that you have your real daughter back, you wouldn’t want me anymore.”

“So I did something stupid. I just wanted you to notice me. To care.”

With just a few sentences, she had twisted a malicious frame-up into a sob story about an insecure

little girl who just wanted to be loved.

My mother’s face crumpled with sympathy. She rushed to the gurney and pressed her cheek to

Vanessa’s hair, careful not to touch the infected arm.

“Oh, you silly, silly girl! How could you be so foolish? This is your home. No one is ever going to send you away!”

My father hurled the phone onto the tile floor, shattering the already broken screen even further.

He jammed his finger in my face. His chest was heaving.

“I hope you’re happy now!”

“If you hadn’t come back here with that sour look on your face every damn day, Vanessa wouldn’t

have been so scared she felt like she had to cut herself just to get us to look at her! She’s eighteen

years old and now she’s losing her arm! This is on you!”

Ryan’s eyes were red and puffy. He grabbed a throw pillow from his chair and hurled it at me.

“You’re a curse! You know that?! Everything you touch turns to shit! Are you happy now?! Vanessa’s practically dead and this family’s destroyed! That what you came here for?!”

I didn’t duck. I didn’t flinch.

I looked at their angry, twisted faces and I just started laughing. Right out loud.

I shrugged off the guard who had been holding me and walked right up to the gurney.

Vanessa was cradled in my mother’s arms. She shot me a smug, sideways glare.

I leaned down close and stared at the festering, stinking ruin of her right arm. I spoke in a voice that was quiet and cold.

“You put on a hell of a show playing the victim. Did you really think a few crocodile tears would make everyone forget the filthy shit you’ve been up to behind closed doors?”

My father lunged for my collar. “You vicious little bitch! Leave her alone!”

I sidestepped him easily and kept my eyes locked on Vanessa.

“You’re so damn needy. Better pray all that shit you’ve been snorting hasn’t fried what’s left of

your brain.”

The hallway went dead silent.

Vanessa shrieked like a cat with its tail caught under a rocking chair.

“Shut up! Dad, she’s lying! She’s making it up!”

Ryan grabbed one of his crutches and raised it like a club.

“You’re full of shit! Vanessa’s never even set foot in a club! She wouldn’t touch drugs!”

I looked at their outrage and felt a small, sad smile tug at the corner of my lips.

“Do enough drugs and your insides turn to mush,” I said softly. “Your veins go brittle. Then they

burst.”

The moment the words were out of my mouth, Vanessa’s body went rigid in my mother’s arms.

Her eyes rolled back into her head and she started seizing violently on the gurney.

A thick gush of blood and foamy spittle erupted from her mouth and splattered all over my

mother’s horrified face.

“Vanessa!” my mother screamed, her voice breaking into a hysterical shriek.

The nearby doctors lunged for the gurney, holding Vanessa down as the Chief bellowed orders.

“Get her back into the OR! Now! She’s hemorrhaging internally!”

At that exact moment, the glass doors of the emergency room slid open and a unit of DEA agents in

tactical vests stepped into the hallway.