The glow of Madison's post burns on my phone screen like a brand, searing itself into my retinas long after I slam the device face down on my nightstand with enough force to make my lamp wobble.
**Upgrade. ✨**
Two characters. That's all it took for my sister to annihilate me in front of thousands of people, to reduce months of my life and love to a punchline that everyone can share and screenshot and laugh about over their morning coffee.
The air in my bedroom feels thick, suffocating. I can't seem to get enough oxygen into my lungs no matter how hard I try. My chest rises and falls rapidly, but each breath feels shallow, incomplete, like I'm drowning in my own space.
I shove my phone as far away from me as possible, sending it skittering across my desk and into the pile of makeup brushes I'd so carefully arranged this morning when I still believed in fairy tales. But distance doesn't stop the digital flood. Even with the screen face down, I can hear the relentless ping of notifications like machine gun fire. Each sound makes me flinch, makes my stomach clench tighter.
The DMs from strangers are already pouring in, and I know without looking what they'll say. The fake sympathy mixed with barely concealed glee at someone else's misery. The comments that will dissect every aspect of my relationship, my appearance, my worth as if I'm a character in some reality show designed for their entertainment.
*Girl, that's gotta hurt. But honestly, kinda saw it coming.*
*Imagine losing your man to your own sister. The secondhand embarrassment.*
*At least now we know which sister is actually the pretty one lol.*
I curl onto my bed in a tight ball, clutching my favorite pillow to my chest like it's the only thing keeping my ribs from cracking open and spilling everything inside me onto the floor. My sequined graduation party dress lies crumpled in the corner where I threw it last night, the fabric that had sparkled so prettily under the fairy lights now looking cheap and tawdry in the harsh afternoon sunlight streaming through my windows.
The dress mocks me with its optimism, with how hopeful and glittery and naive I looked when Liam whispered sweet promises in my ear just forty-eight hours ago. Back when I thought I knew what love felt like. Back when I believed that someone could choose me and mean it.
Now those promises feel like glass shards working their way through my bloodstream, cutting me from the inside out with every heartbeat.
The tears come in waves, blurring my vision until my bedroom doubles and triples around me. My fairy lights, which had always made me feel cozy and magical and like I was living in some kind of Pinterest dream, now look harsh and artificial. They cast strange shadows across my walls, making the Polaroids of me and my friends look like evidence from a crime scene.
My reflection stares back at me from the vanity mirror across the room, and I barely recognize the girl looking back. Smudged black eyeliner creates raccoon circles around my swollen eyes. My lips are chapped and trembling, bitten raw from trying to hold back sobs. My hair is a mess, still holding the ghost of yesterday's carefully crafted waves.
I look destroyed. And I feel even worse than I look.
Every memory of Liam twists in my mind like a knife being turned in a wound. The afternoon he surprised me at track practice with a bouquet of roses, grinning like he was proud to be seen with me. The late-night drives where his hand would slip under my hoodie, fingers tracing patterns on my skin that made me feel like I was made of electricity. The way he would whisper my name in the dark, like it was something precious, something that belonged only to him.
And now Madison owns him. Madison owns the way he says her name, owns the touch of his hands, owns every sweet word and gesture I thought were mine alone.
The realization hits me like a physical blow, and I scream into my pillow. The sound is raw and animal, torn from somewhere deep in my chest that I didn't even know existed. My throat burns, my chest aches, but the scream still doesn't feel big enough to carry the weight of what they've done to me.
I feel small. Powerless. Like a child who's just learned that the world is cruel and unfair and that sometimes the people who are supposed to love you are the ones who hurt you most.
But the more I replay the scene in my mind—the tangled sheets, their bodies pressed together, Madison's satisfied smirk as she delivered her killing blow—the more my tears begin to dry. Something else crawls into the empty spaces that grief has carved out inside me.
Rage.
It starts as a flicker, just a tiny flame in the center of my chest. But it grows, fed by every humiliating comment, every screenshot, every moment of public mockery I've endured in the past twenty-four hours. The flame spreads through my veins like wildfire, burning away the weakness and self-pity until something harder takes their place.
I drag myself off the bed on unsteady legs, stumbling across the room to my vanity. My reflection stares back at me from the mirror, broken and shattered and barely recognizable. But there's something else there too, something that wasn't there before.
Something dangerous.
I lean forward, my breath fogging the glass as I get closer to my own reflection. My hazel eyes, so similar to Madison's but somehow completely different, burn through the ruin of my makeup.
"Never again," I whisper to the girl in the mirror, my voice hoarse from crying but steadying with each word. "Never again will I be weak. Never again will I let them make me small."
The vow hangs in the air between me and my reflection, as solid and real as any contract I've ever signed. I can taste iron on my tongue, whether from biting my lip or from the metallic flavor of determination, I'm not sure.
I press my palms flat against the cool surface of the mirror, staring deep into my own eyes as I make a promise that feels like it's written in blood.
"I'll make you regret this," I whisper, and the words carry a weight that surprises me. Not a hope. Not a desperate plea to the universe for justice. A promise.
The girl looking back at me from the mirror isn't the same one who drove to UCLA full of romantic dreams and trust in the people she loved. That girl is gone, buried under the wreckage of betrayal and public humiliation.
The person staring back at me is someone new. Someone harder. Someone who understands that if you want justice in this world, you have to take it for yourself.
Someone who's about to learn exactly how sweet revenge can taste.