4

Ethan and I had known each other since middle school.

My family favored sons so openly that sometimes I did not even get dinner. The day I met Ethan, I was so hungry I fainted when I bent down to pick up his basketball.

When I woke, I was in the hospital. Ethan sat beside the bed, fighting sleep. The instant he saw my eyes open, he snapped awake like a defendant in court.

"Hey," he said. "Everybody saw it. I didn't hit you with the ball. Don't even think about scamming me."

I stared at him for a while, then handed him the paper from the bedside table.

Hypoglycemia.

He clicked his tongue. "You girls and dieting. Passing out in public like that can scare a person to death."

I pointed at my bony face.

"Me? Dieting?"

He looked at me properly then. After a long pause, he said, "You might look better with a little more weight on you. Any thoughts?"

"Thanks," I said. "I do have thoughts. My family doesn't feed me. I owe you the hospital bill, so if you have homework you don't want to do, I can pay it back that way. You saved my life. I can be your horse, too, if you need transportation."

I meant every word.

Ethan looked stunned. "Your family is that poor?"

"No."

"Then you are trying to scam me!"

He jumped to his feet.

I dug through my clothes and pulled out an old photograph. A man and a woman held a newborn baby in the center, smiling like they had won the lottery. At the edge of the picture, half hidden behind a bucket of laundry, was a skinny little girl with half a face in frame.

"That's me," I said. "When I was little, I washed clothes for food. Now that I'm older, they want to sell me to an old bachelor. I said no, so they stopped feeding me and stopped paying my school fees."

I patted Ethan's arm.

"So no, benefactor, I am not scamming you. I am currently the most valuable thing I own. Invest in me. With my brain, as long as I stay alive, I will make something of myself."

From then on, to make his own family angry, Ethan Cole turned me into his scandalous girlfriend.

I held that title for seven years.

If the world had not ended, I would have graduated soon. With my talent, I should have been making six figures and living beautifully.

Instead, I was tied to a post, dead and awake, watching the man who once saved me hold another woman.