No Light for Me

They say blood is thicker than water, but in my family, it’s just a debt I refuse to pay. To the world, I’m Callie Young: the top-scoring student, the resilient scholarship kid, the success story. To my parents, I was a nuisance to be discarded—abandoned by a father who bought my stepsister’s way into elite circles and robbed by a mother who stole my government subsidies to fund her new life. I had to fake being an orphan just to find a home, surviving on the kindness of strangers while my own flesh and blood tried to bury me. They thought they could break me, but they only taught me how to fight. My name is Callie Young, and I’m no longer the victim of their story—I’m the architect of my own.