After I finished with breakfast, I set out the plates for the others and then hurried to take care of Jolene’s clothes. When I returned with them freshly pressed, she nearly snatched them out of my hands.

“Took you long enough,” she sneered.

Would it kill you to say thank you? Kat sounded annoyed. She is such a spoiled brat.

That would require her to think about someone other than herself, I pointed out, wishing I dared to say that out loud. I wasn’t oblivious. I knew Jolene was a selfish, entitled, moderately rich girl who behaved like she was the princess of the entire town and/or so extremely wealthy that everyone should worship her. Her attitude was kind of hard to miss, to be honest.

Ha! Kat chortled. Yeah, she doesn’t know how to do that, does she? I don’t think her mental capacity allows her to see beyond the end of her own nose.

I was tempted to comment, but I had stuff to do, so I decided to push Jolene and her selfishness out of my mind and hurry to get done with my chores so I could head off to school.

I did manage to get to school in time. I survived the day. And the next one. Then it was finals and I felt like I was going crazy with trying to keep up with my chores and make sure I got perfect scores on my tests.

But I did it. I survived. And then it was Friday, and I was looking at my scores on my phone, feeling a sense of victory.

Perfect scores on every test. That wasn’t perfect scores overall, because I’d missed a few questions on tests throughout the year, but it was close. I was pretty sure it would be enough. The only question was a student who had transferred in partway through the year and also had excellent grades, but I was under the impression from the couple of times we had chatted that her grades before transferring weren’t so great and she’d been making more of an effort since getting into this fancy school.

Good job, Ezra, Kat told me, more than a bit of pride in her voice. That is seriously impressive and you did amazing.

Thank you. It felt nice to have someone acknowledge my hard work. I just hoped it was enough for that scholarship.

I was sitting in the waiting room by the admin offices, as was the transfer student, waiting to hear who got the scholarship. At last the principal came out, cleared his throat, and summoned both of us – and the girl’s parents, who were eager to know the outcome – into his office.

“Well, we have quite a predicament this year,” the principal told us as he sat down, a stiff smile on his face. “We haven’t had two students with grades so close we had to figure out how to make the call on who got the scholarship.”

My eyes flitted briefly to Phil, who was standing in the back corner, a kind of smug look on his face.

What is he doing here? Kat growled. Normally parents should be here, but there’s no way he’s here for a good reason.

A sense of foreboding entered me. She was right. Phil wouldn’t be here, smiling, if it was anything good for me.

I jerked my attention back to the principal, hoping against hope I was wrong.

“We had to figure out who deserved the scholarship the most,” the principal went on, shifting his glasses a bit. “And in the end, we decided it goes to…,” he paused for dramatic effect, then focused on the girl, “you,” he told her with a supercilious smile. “Congratulations.”

I felt myself freeze internally while Kat started cursing. All that work. This entire year. All for nothing.

“Wait a second!” The girl protested. “That’s not fair!” She looked at me anxiously, then back at the principal, who seemed surprised by her outburst. “I got good grades since arriving here, yes, but my previous school used a different grading system and I didn’t even have all As there. I was just a bit above average. There’s no way that should mean I got higher scores than Ezra over the course of the year because I know he’s an A+ student and has been since the start of the year!”

“Ah, yes,” the principal took off his glasses and polished them, looking a bit nervous. “It’s true, your school used a different grading system, which is why we had to figure out whether to count it or not. At the end of the day, we decided to just discount that entire part of the year and only include your time here in our school.”

She stared at him, aghast. “So you only look at half a year for me and a full year for Ezra?”

He shrugged a bit, still seeming uncomfortable. “We felt like that was the fairest under the circumstances. I spoke to our attorney,” he tried to reassure her, motioning to Phil, “and if you’re worried about it being challenged, don’t be. At the end of the day, it’s up to us to decide who gets the scholarship, and we’ve decided you’re the better option. Besides,” he added with that weird smile on his face again, “it looks so much better for us to have a girl win it for once! We’ve had an unfortunate number of boys win in recent years, it’s nice to see that change.”

The girl’s parents were trying to cautiously congratulate her, while she just seemed frustrated and tried to apologize to me, because she clearly disagreed. And I just sat there, frozen, realization sinking in.

That bastard, Kat seethed. He did this on purpose. He did it just to make sure he blocked you from getting the scholarship! Whether just to be vindictive or because he could, I don’t know, but he knows you’ve been working for that just to make him happy and now he’ll get an excuse not to accept you like he basically promised! What a fucking excuse for a human being, I’d love to melt his bones with fire and see how he likes it! She went on, seething, and somehow it helped.

Somehow her fire melted my ice and finally I snapped back into place, like the glass house I’d been living in suddenly crashed to pieces around me and I could finally see the truth.

I looked up and directly at Phil, ignoring everyone else around me for once. “You did this on purpose. Just to make sure I couldn’t prove you wrong.” I didn’t even wait for a response, just stood up, then looked at the principal. “I would say thank you, but honestly there’s nothing to thank you for. You let bullies run rampant in the school and encourage favoritism amongst the teachers and then you listen to someone who has a vested interest in seeing me fail. But don’t worry, I’m not going to go after your scholarship anymore. In fact, I won’t be back next year.”

I turned and marched out of the office without another word, leaving them somewhat flabbergasted as me quitting that easily clearly wasn’t the plan.

Kat? It’s time to do things your way. Let’s get out of here, but can you do me a favor? Please try to make it as legal as possible.

I could almost feel Kat start to grin. Got it, Ezzie. Time to get things moving.

~~~~~

Kat

I swept into the house, shoving open the door and nearly knocking it into Jolene. She screeched and then started yelling at me about why I was in her house, but I turned to look at her with such a look of venom that she sputtered into silence, suddenly realizing she was way out of her league.

I marched my way directly up the stairs and then threw open the door to Mom’s room, startling her where she was working on applying nail polish. I shut – and locked – the door behind us, then gave her a cold smile as I walked over and slammed a piece of paper in front of her.

“Sign it,” I ordered.

“Who are you?” She looked at me, bewildered. “What is this?”

“I’m Ezra’s – friend,” I told her coldly. “And I’m taking care of him since you can’t be bothered. You let your precious husband and perfect daughter bully him and emotionally abuse him and pretend it’s all okay and you’re not complicit because you’re not participating, you’re just standing back and letting it happen because you’re too chicken to do anything about it. You value your perfect little dream life over your own son whose only fault was being born to crumby parents. Let me guess – your first husband, the day he called you to tell you he was dying and you needed to come take care of Ezra – you didn’t want to come, did you? He had to threaten you, probably warn you that child protective services or whoever would charge you with neglect if you didn’t take him in.” I tilted my head to one side, eyes narrowing as I took in her response. “Bullseye, huh? You were too worried about offending your beloved husband to think about your kid having lost the only parent he knew, being taken from the only place he lived, and being forced to be the maid, gardener, and cook in addition to trying to maintain perfect grades just to keep your stupid, perfect family happy. Disregarding that they were inevitably going to sabotage his efforts and deny him the one thing he wanted – acceptance. You’re pathetic, lady. Weak. You don’t deserve Ezra, so do the only nice thing you can do for him.” I shoved the paper closer to her. “Sign it,” I demanded again.

She had recoiled during my speech, her face pale, and she finally glanced down at the paper. “Emancipation?”

“For a minor,” I explained impatiently. “It means Ezra won’t have to be your ‘burden,’” I lathered that word in as much sarcasm as I could manage, given that Ezra was by no means a burden to them at all, “anymore – or rather your beloved husband’s. Good news, huh? Now you can go back to your perfect little fake life and don’t have to worry about the best thing that could have happened to you. Oh, and you owe Ezra for all the work he’s done for the past 10 months.” When she opened her mouth to protest, I went on, refusing to allow her to get out a single word. “He’s been doing full-time work of at least two, maybe three people, in addition to getting near perfect grades at school. Rather impressive, I might say, but I’ll let that slide for the moment. Point is, you owe him.”

“He wanted to – ” She started to say.

“Oh don’t give me the ‘it was his idea’ bullshit,” I snapped. “He felt like he had to because you told him he needed to make Phil happy, and that was the only way to make Phil happy – to basically be the live-in servant. You want to know if it’s okay?” I got a really dangerous smile on my face. “How about we ask child protective services, huh? We can always bring them in on it. Ask them their opinion of whether it’s okay to let a minor handle two full-time jobs in addition to school – let alone manipulate him so he feels like he has to do that so he’ll be allowed to stay with his own freaking mother – and see if they think it’s fine.” I couldn’t help feeling a bit satisfied as she gulped a bit. She knew the answer already. “I bet your beloved husband’s career might be a big at risk if it turned out he got charged with child abuse, even if he didn’t end up in prison over it. You want to call them or shall I? I’d really love to hear their opinion on how you and your precious little family have been treating Ezra.”

Like I’d expected, she folded immediately. She was a weak person, I’d figured that out already. Without further ado, she signed the paperwork to allow Ezra to officially be emancipated, then went to her purse and got out all the cash she had on hand.

Ezra was protesting, saying he didn’t want to blackmail her, but I refused to see it as blackmail. As far as I was concerned, they did owe Ezra for his work, and we were doing them a favor by not reporting it to authorities. Because you bet they’d get arrested and charged with child abuse for this. Ezra might not see it that way, because he was busy trying to win them over, but I did. I figured giving him enough money to get a start in his new life was the least they could do.

They owed him more than that, really. I still remembered the only time I’d caught him crying over this whole disaster. Jolene had been bullying him near the holidays and she and her friends had deliberately ruined his coat. He’d seemed his regular stoic self initially, but later he took the ruined coat and cried quietly for a while before he threw it out.

I knew why. It was Dad’s coat. The only thing he’d really kept from Dad. We might both have complicated feelings about Dad – Ezra more than me – but it was still the last thing he had from the one parent who’d at least tried to show him some affection at times. Dad had been stern and sometimes paranoid, but he’d tried, especially when Ezra was younger. And that coat had been the last thing connecting him to Dad, yet Jolene had ruined it just because she was a freaking bully.

This. This was the family Mom had chosen over Ezra, who was sweet and smart and sometimes a little sassy, if he wasn’t so subdued over trying to fit into the mold Mom’s jerk family wanted to force him into. I couldn’t imagine why she’d choose them over him, but she did seem to specialize in making poor choices – she’d chosen a Hunter for her first husband and Phil for her second – so maybe I couldn’t expect better.

“Is that enough?” Mom looked at the stack of bills, then at me, nervous. She didn’t know who I was, but it was clear she was kind of afraid of me.

Tell her yes, Ezra demanded.

I glanced at it. It wasn’t even enough to cover minimum wage for 10 months’ of work, so I looked back at her, an eyebrow raised.

She almost jumped into action and went over to the safe – honestly I hadn’t known that was in here, so I had to hide my surprise - which she opened and then got out some more cash.

“Phil gives me this for my allowance,” she explained as she counted out some more. “I’ll just be careful for a bit, he’ll never know.”

I nearly rolled my eyes, but managed to hold it back. Phil might try to charge Ezra with blackmail if he knew Mom had given him money, though I’d want to counter-charge with child abuse, but even if I was convinced we’d win in the long run, Ezra definitely didn’t want to cause all that trouble, so I’d honor his wishes.

It was about $10,000 total. Honestly better than what I’d expected her to give up, but still not a lot to start a new life and still wasn’t really good enough to pay Ezra back for his work – that was about $1,000 a month, which was very low for full-time work. However, I wasn’t going to accept a check from her just in case Phil noticed, so this seemed like the best I could get under the circumstances.

“Fine.” I shoved the money and the signed slip of paper into my deep pockets and turned to leave, but paused at the door to look back at her. “For Ezra’s sake, I hope you’re happy in your perfect little life, but a word of advice – you’re giving up a diamond for plastic. Next time choose better.”

And then I stormed out, past Jolene in the hallway who’d been vainly attempting to hear – I deliberately shoved her a bit with my shoulder as I passed, taking some pleasure it hearing her yelp as I stepped on the toes of her fancy designer shoes – and then to Ezra’s room, where within a few minutes I packed up everything he owned and wanted to keep and then marched out, leaving the house behind us.