My Family, Their Sinister Game

For ten years, I built a wall of mediocrity around myself.

After my sister Sarah vanished, an alleged suicide linked to the sinister "Blackwood Tech Curse," my parents pulled me from advanced STEM, scrubbed my online presence, and moved two states over.

"Just be average, Ashley," my father pleaded, "Average is safe."

I became an insurance analyst, safe and boring, believing I had outsmarted fate, that Sarah was a random tragedy.

Until today, when an encrypted email landed in my inbox: "Congratulations, Ashley Miller. You've been accepted."