Chapter 3

We deleted our chat logs the second we read them. Every text felt like an adrenaline-spiking espionage mission.

Once, while confirming the sale of a rare collectible on my phone, my mother's footsteps suddenly echoed right outside my door.

My heart nearly jumped into my throat. With a frantic swipe, I switched my screen to a diet education video on YouTube.

She poked her head in, her eyes narrowing with suspicion. "What are you looking at?"

"R-researching..." I forced myself to sound calm, pointing at the influencer discussing the ketogenic diet. "Mom, I'm trying to learn how to burn fat faster. Look at what this dietitian says..."

She stared at me for several agonizing seconds, gauging whether I was lying. Eventually, she pulled back, muttering under her breath, "At least you're finally taking this seriously."

I sank back into my chair, my shirt completely soaked in cold sweat.

Mid-month, a text notification arrived from the tutoring agency. My hard-earned paycheck of two hundred dollars had cleared.

Before I could even breathe a sigh of relief, another notification dinged—a debit charge of two hundred dollars.

I didn't even need to guess who did it.

A second later, a SnapChat message from my mother popped up.

It was a screenshot of the transfer, accompanied by a warm smiley face.

"Good job, sweetheart! Mommy will hold onto this for you. Once you hit eighty-five pounds, I'll buy you a designer bag as a reward."

In that split second, the very last shred of hope I held for maternal love was stamped out, crushed into dust, and blown away.

I didn't reply.

Instead, I quietly opened the transit app.

Maya had managed to get me two hundred dollars from selling my old belongings, and she secretly lent me another two hundred. Those four hundred dollars were the entirety of my ticket to freedom.

I didn't choose a glittering metropolitan hub; the cost of living would swallow me whole. I picked an obscure, sleepy town across state lines.

In the dead of night, moving like a ghost, I slipped out of the home that had imprisoned me for twenty years.

When I boarded the outbound train and sank into my seat, my heart was still hammering against my ribs.

The train slowly pulled away from the platform. The city lights smeared into streaks outside the glass, finally fading into a blur. Pressing my forehead against the cool window, I let out a long, ragged exhale.

Freedom.

I truly believed I had finally escaped.

Yet just as the train plunged into a pitch-black mountain tunnel, my screen lit up.

"Sweetheart, Mommy quit her job! I can spend twenty-four hours a day helping you slim down now. Aren't you thrilled?"

The words read like an icy viper slithering out of the screen, coiling instantly around my throat, choking out the breath of free air I had just managed to inhale.

My terror peaked in that suffocating darkness.

When the train pulled into the small town depot, dawn was barely breaking.

As fast as I could, I found a rundown apartment complex near the station and rented a tiny studio for fifty bucks a week. The place was minuscule—just a twin mattress and a wobbly desk, the wallpaper peeling and smelling faintly of damp mildew.

Yet this dingy room was the very first space in my twenty years of existence that belonged entirely to me.

I dropped my duffel bag on the floor, barely catching my breath before my mother's second message arrived.

"Sweetheart, Mommy knows you're in Oakridge. Don't be scared. You're not fighting this alone."

Oakridge. The exact town I was standing in.

My blood ran cold. How did she track me down?

I braced myself for her to kick down the door at any second, screaming and dragging me back by my hair.

She didn't.

Instead, she chose a method that was infinitely more chilling.

The next morning, I stepped to the window and witnessed a scene I would never forget for the rest of my life.