Chapter 3

At noon, when I went to the cafeteria to get lunch, I had only three dollars left on my meal card.

I bought one plain dinner roll, carried a bowl of free broth, and sat in the corner.

Before I had even taken two bites, a bottle of ice water suddenly slammed onto my table.

Soup splashed all over me.

I looked up and met Tyler Hale’s mocking face.

Standing beside him was Chloe Hale, the fake heiress my parents had adopted.

Chloe wore designer clothes from head to toe and covered her mouth with a delicate laugh.

“Emma, why are you eating something like this? Doesn’t Mom give you twenty thousand dollars every month?”

Tyler snorted coldly, snatched my dinner roll, threw it on the ground, and even ground it under his foot twice.

“Stop acting pitiful! Mom said you caused trouble at school today, so she told me to come teach you a lesson.”

I stared at the crushed dinner roll on the floor, and anger flared inside me.

I shot to my feet and stared at him hard.

“Tyler, tell me the PIN.”

“What PIN?”

He froze for a second, then laughed with disdain.

“How would I know the PIN? Mom said you’re a wasteful loser who never knows when to stop spending, and the money on the card is being saved for you, so they’ll naturally give it to you when you need it.”

“I need it right now!”

My voice went hoarse, and I was almost shouting.

“I can’t even afford food, and my dorm fees have been overdue for a week, so how am I supposed to live?”

Chloe sighed and pretended to look sympathetic.

“Emma, don’t pressure Tyler. If you really have no money, I can lend you a hundred dollars.”

As she spoke, she pulled a red bill from her bag worth more than twenty thousand dollars and tossed it onto the table as if she were giving charity to a beggar.

The students around us began pointing and whispering.

“Chloe is way too kind, right? She still treats her ungrateful sister so well.”

“Emma really doesn’t know what’s good for her. She has such a great sister and still walks around with that sour face every day.”

I stared at that hundred-dollar bill, and my fingers tightened little by little.

I did not take the money.

I turned around, straightened my back, and walked out of the cafeteria.

That afternoon, my advisor called me to the office.

“Emma, if you don’t pay your dorm fees, you’ll have to move out of the dorm tonight.”

I opened my mouth but could not say a single word.

SnapChat wallet, one dollar and fifty cents.

PayPal, two dollars and thirty cents.

Added together, it was not even enough to rent a bed.

I stood in the hallway and called my parents more than a dozen times.

No one answered.

I opened my mom’s Ins.

She had updated it just one minute ago.

“A new necklace for Chloe. Girls are meant to be spoiled.”

The attached picture was of a diamond necklace worth thirty thousand dollars.

I stared at that post, and my eyes began to sting little by little.

So it was not that they had no money, nor that they could not bear to spend it.

They just could not bear to spend it on me.

That night, the dorm supervisor kicked me out of the dorm.

It was raining heavily outside.

I dragged my suitcase down the empty street.

A burst of sharp pain twisted through my stomach.

I crouched by the roadside, and cold sweat instantly soaked my back.