Chapter 2

When it was time to start middle school, I scored first in my entire school. My grades qualified me for the best school in the county.

Dad didn’t understand what that meant. He only asked, “So you’d have to board there?”

I said yes.

“Then what the hell’s the point?” he exploded. “If you live at school, what happens here? Who’s going to cook and wash the clothes? Why do you only think about yourself?”

“Grandma’s still here, isn’t she?”

He slapped me. “Grandma? That’s all you ever say! What can she do at her age?”

Yet just the night before, I’d seen her line dancing with her friends at the edge of town for hours.

Dad refused to pay the boarding fees, so I couldn’t go.

A few years later, my brother’s scores weren’t high enough for that same school. Mom spent ages explaining to Dad how important education was.

Dad gritted his teeth, called in favors, and paid tens of thousands of dollars to get him in.

I cried with rage at how unfair it was and went to confront Mom.

“What good would all that schooling do you?” she said. “You’ll get married anyway. Why waste the money?”

For the first time, I felt truly disappointed in her. My throat tightened until it hurt.

She’d spoken up for my brother because she believed every girl’s life should end up just like hers.

Marriage. Always marriage.

If even my parents had no hopes for me, why was I trying so hard?

I slipped into depression. My senior year was approaching, but my grades plummeted. Even my teachers didn’t know how to help.

Then one day, I ran into my cousin Emily on the street.

She lay on the ground, her swollen belly jutting out, a shocking pool of blood beneath her.

I froze. People gathered around and carried her into a battered van to rush her to the hospital.

“How did she slip like that?” someone said. “Seven months along. I wonder if they can save the baby.”

“Whose wife is she? How old is she?”

“The younger Stone boy’s wife. Just turned twenty. They married last winter… Heard she fought it tooth and nail. Her father practically shoved her into the car…”

My ears rang. I couldn’t stop seeing the blood beneath her.

In the end, they couldn’t save her baby.

The next time I saw Emily, her belly was flat and her eyes were sunken. She sat numbly on a stone bench.

The moment she saw me, she cried.

“Claire, my baby’s gone. How am I supposed to keep living?”

“Being born into a family like this… all we do is suffer.”

“Claire, please don’t end up like me…”

It felt as if someone had struck me over the head. The backpack on my shoulders suddenly seemed heavy enough to crush me.

Would that be me in three years? Married off to bear someone’s children?

In that moment, I finally understood. If I wanted to break out of this cage, education was my only way.