I read it twice.
Then I closed my laptop and went to the gym.
Not because I lacked emotion. Because I had too much clarity.
She would change the seating now?
Acknowledge me now?
Miss her brother now?
Now that Logan’s shine had peeled off.
Now that the room had shifted.
Now that my value had become legible in the language my family respected.
What I felt toward Ivy then was not hatred. Hate is hot and simple. What I felt was colder, sadder, cleaner. I saw her as she was: a woman raised in the same house I was, shaped by the same worship of surfaces, finally discovering the cost of choosing ease over courage.
