My mom picked my birthday to cash in on me. Not with a cake or a surprise party, but with a text. I was wiping down the counter at the cafe halfway through a double shift when my phone buzzed: We sold your car. Family comes first. Be grateful we let you live here. That was it. No happy birthday, no emoji—just my entire independence gone in one message.
I’m Ava. I’m 22. And that car was the one thing I’d worked two years of early mornings and late nights to buy. My hands were still sticky from spilled syrups when the next text came in: Your brother’s starting college. You’ll cover his first semester. $6,000. It’s due this week. Like I was an ATM with a pulse. I stared at the screen, my chest burning, and then I typed one word back: No.
A second later, my phone lit up with a call. I answered and all I heard was yelling. “Pack your stuff. You’re dead to us. You don’t get to say no after everything we’ve done for you.” The line went dead, and for a second the cafe noise around me just faded out. On my birthday, my car was gone. My money was already spent in their heads. And apparently, I was dead for daring to push back.
When my shift ended, there was no car waiting for me in the lot—just empty asphalt and the realization that they had actually done it. I walked home replaying every time I had fixed the Wi-Fi, set up their online accounts, paid something “just this once.” If I was so disposable, so easy to cut off, then so were all the little ways I’d been keeping their lives running.
I walked into that house for what I already knew was the last time—as their built-in tech support and financial backup. I walked out with two bags and one decision. I was going to leave more than just my bedroom behind. I left something running in that house they did not notice that night, and what they woke up to the next morning—when my mom was crying, my brother was screaming, and my dad was suddenly very quiet—is where the real story starts.
When I stepped through the front door that night, I already knew the answer, but I asked anyway. “Did you really sell my car?” My mom was at the kitchen counter scrolling her phone like nothing had happened. She didn’t even look up when she said, “We did what we had to do. Family comes first. Your brother’s future comes before your little convenience.”
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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