Chapter 1

The day my struggling-blue-collar parents dropped eight hundred million on a yacht for my adopted sister's graduation party, I was diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer.

The doctor took one look at my sallow, hollowed-out face—the face of a girl who'd been malnourished for as long as she could remember—and sighed.

"Sweetheart, this isn't good. Where are your parents?"

I shifted my feet and rubbed my hands together. My parents were just janitors. Poor, exhausted janitors.

A surgery bill like that was something we could never afford.

But an hour later, I watched them walk into the most expensive private club in Newport Harbor.

With one careless wave of his hand, my father gifted Lila an eight-hundred-million-dollar yacht.

Warmed by the champagne, my mother said, "Zoey's graduating too. Maybe it's time we told her what we really have."

My father shook his head, dismissive. "What's the rush? Let's test her through one more summer. We'll surprise her on the first day of college."

I scrubbed the plate in my hand, numb. Mom. Dad. I have less than a month left.

The sun was setting when my parents came home in those threadbare janitor uniforms, the fabric washed nearly white.

In the dim yellow kitchen light, my father called out, beaming.

"Zoey, come see what good things your dad brought home!"

"Had to dig through trash cans all afternoon for this!"

I stared at the plate of chicken bones—picked completely clean—and my stomach started to heave.

Earlier that day, I'd heard him speak to the waiter.

"Bring me some of the leftovers. I want to take them home."

When the waiter returned with a properly packed to-go box, my father had frowned.

"This looks too nice. Too rich. It'll spoil Zoey."

My adopted sister Lila had glanced at the little dog in the corner, happily chewing away, and fluttered her lashes. "Daddy, my sister just loves chicken bones!"

So the waiter had dumped the bones from the dog's bowl into a plastic bag and handed them to my father.

My father carefully picked out a bone and laid it in my bowl.

"This one has the most meat. Look how skinny my girl's gotten. You need to eat."

I looked at their empty bowls. "Why aren't you two eating?"

My mother smoothed my hair, voice soft. "Silly girl. A little hardship doesn't matter to us. Everything in this house goes to you first."

Their eyes waited, expectant. I picked up the bone, put the meat between my teeth.

The moment I swallowed, I threw up everything in my stomach.

My father's eyes went cold for a flicker, but he kept himself in check and gestured at my mother. She handed me a plastic bag.

"This is your dad's reward for his state valedictorian!"

I opened it. The sharp stench hit my nose—a pair of battered, filthy sneakers, the kind you'd find behind a dumpster.

My parents watched me, calculating.

If a single spark of vanity showed on my face, they'd erupt into that familiar tirade—how ungrateful I was, how I didn't understand their struggle.

I pulled my lips into a smile.

"Thank you, Mom. Thank you, Dad. I love them."

A wave of pain twisted through my stomach, and I tested the words carefully.

"Mom, Dad… can you give me some money? I… I'm sick."

My mother pulled me into her arms and pressed her palm to my forehead.

"You're not warm. Zoey, where does it hurt?"

I was still gathering the courage to tell them about the cancer when Lila came home.

She swept in wearing a designer sundress, her feet in the summer's most coveted Italian flats.

She heard my mother's question. Her eyes dropped to the swollen curve of my belly, bloated with fluid from the disease, and she asked in that wide-eyed, innocent voice:

"Sis… you're not asking Mom and Dad for money for an abortion, are you?"

Then she clapped a hand over her mouth in fake horror, like she'd just let something slip.

My father's face turned to stone. He yanked me out of my mother's arms.

He remembered how I'd just vomited up the meat. His eyes went ice-cold, fury churning behind them.

"I worked myself to the bone to raise you! Sold everything, starved myself, just to put you through school! And you hid from us that you let some boy knock you up!"

"Fine. Looks like nothing but the strap will teach you how to respect yourself!"

I stared at that thing in his hand—the heirloom leather discipline strap, studded with tiny barbs, tipped with stinging juice to make the welts burn for days—and I started shaking so hard I could barely stand.

"No, Dad—it's not like that—"

He cut me off. "Now you're lying to my face? On your knees!"

My legs gave out before I could stop them. The next second I was on the floor, slamming my forehead against the boards over and over.

"Dad, Mom, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I failed you."

"Please, not the strap. Please. I'm scared."

My forehead split open, blood running into my eyes. My father's hand wavered.

Lila knelt next to me, sweet and helpful.

"Daddy, don't punish her. Sis just got confused. She probably only went to the motel with a few of those vocational school boys all at once—"

It was the spark he needed. His rage detonated.

"You think you can go out and be a little slut? I'll beat it out of you until no man looks at you again!"

The strap came down. My skin split. Angry red welts bloomed everywhere the barbs caught me, mixed with the burning itch of the juice.

I lost count of the blows. Somewhere through the fog I heard him say,

"Your mother and I are pulling the night shift. No dinner. You sit here and think about what you did."