Touch Me And Bleed

I was born with a peculiar condition.

Whenever someone tries to make my life miserable, the universe settles the score before the sun goes down.

Growing up, I came to think of myself as an instrument of divine spite. A walking, breathing curse.

When I was seven, my cousin snatched my holiday savings from my coat pocket; that night, field mice chewed through the floorboards of his room and shredded three years’ worth of his hoarded allowance into confetti. In high school, my guidance counselor took an envelope stuffed with cash from the class president’s father and quietly transferred my Ivy League recommendation away. By sunrise, copies of the man’s offshore bank statements were taped to every locker in the hallway.

At eighteen, blood tests and lawyers pulled me out of my small-town diner life and dropped me into the Whittaker family’s sprawling estate.

On my very first afternoon, the girl who had spent the last eighteen years living my life—the girl they kept calling "our fragile little bird"—ripped my late grandmother’s jade bangle from my wrist, smashed it against the marble hearth, and wept, claiming I’d done it out of jealousy.

My biological mother slapped me across the face.

A second later, her brand-new acrylic nail split straight down the center, tearing through her real nail bed and soaking her sleeve in blood.

My older brother shoved me toward the outdoor swimming pool, sneering, "Evangeline is the only sister this family will ever need. Pack your shit and get out."

The words had barely cleared his mouth when his leather loafers hit a slick patch of flagstone. He pitched forward, face-first, into the shallow reflection pond, snapping both of his front teeth on a submerged rock.

Evangeline, however, refused to believe in ghosts, karma, or me.

Late that evening, while the house was quiet, she tracked me down to the pool deck, shoved me into the deep end, and pinned my fingers beneath the stiletto heel of her shoe.

"Stupid, low-class stray," she hissed, gr