Chapter 3

The school the Vance family sent me to was St. Jude's Academy, an elite private high school.

It was also Lily’s home turf.

On my first day, the family chauffeur refused to let me in the car.

He looked at me and said, "Sorry, Hazel. There's no room left in the SUV. You’ll have to find your own way."

It was a seven-seater Lincoln Navigator. Only Lily was sitting in the back.

I didn't argue. I turned around, found a public rental bike, and unlocked it.

A forty-minute bike ride was great cardio anyway.

When I finally walked into the classroom, homeroom had just started.

As a transfer student, I was assigned to the very last row, right next to the trash can.

Lily was sitting in the center of the room, surrounded by a crowd like a queen bee, handing out high-end macarons from a Michelin-starred bakery.

"My mom baked these herself. Please try some, everyone."

The classroom was filled with high-pitched praise.

But the moment I walked in, all the voices dropped to whispers.

"Is that the biological daughter from the slums?"

"I heard she threw a massive tantrum at home just to extort a hundred thousand dollars from her parents. She’s desperate for cash."

"Stay away from her. I heard she used to hang out with gang members."

Lily walked over to my desk holding a small box of macarons, a fake, sweet smile plastered on her face.

"Hazel, have some. I know you've probably never tasted anything this fancy before."

I was busy solving an AP Calculus practice exam. I didn't even look up.

"No, thanks. The sugar content is too high. It slows down my brain cells."

Lily’s hand froze mid-air.

The classroom instantly erupted.

"Hazel! What is your problem? Lily is just trying to be nice!"

"Seriously, stop acting like you're above us. Do you even understand a single question on that test paper?"

I was getting annoyed.

Time was literally life for me. Every single minute had to be spent studying, winning scholarships, and getting into an Ivy League school.

After all, the top scholarship was worth twenty thousand dollars.

I raised my head and locked eyes with the boy who was yelling the loudest.

"That derivative problem you've been staring at... you've been trying to solve it for three periods now, haven't you?"

The boy stammered, "How... how did you know?"

"Your auxiliary line is wrong. You should draw the tangent line through point A."

I grabbed his pen and quickly wrote down three lines of calculations on his scratch paper.

"The rest is just plugging in the formula. A middle schooler could do it."

I tossed the pen back to him and buried my face back into my books.

"Don't annoy me. I'm busy."

The entire classroom fell dead silent.

The boy stared at the steps I wrote, his eyes practically popping out of his skull.

Lily bit her lip, tears welling up in her eyes as if she had just suffered the ultimate betrayal.

"Hazel... are you still mad at me for taking your place?"

"If it's because of that, I am so sorry..."

Again with this act.

Impatiently, I pulled a printed paper with my PayPal QR code from my backpack and slapped it onto my desk.

"Want to watch me play the loving sister? Sure."

"Scan and pay. One hundred dollars per scene."

"Two hundred for a chat, five hundred to act with you, and one thousand if you want me to take the blame for something."

"Small business, cash only. No credit."

Lily froze completely.

The rich kids watching the drama were entirely dumbfounded.

Ignoring their ridiculous faces, I went back to solving my geometry problems.

In this house, nobody got my attention unless they were paying for it.

At lunch, I ordered the cheapest salad in the cafeteria.

I transferred the saved money straight into my medical savings account.

As I was eating, my tray was suddenly flipped over.

The salad dressing and soup splashed all over my uniform.

Chloe Sterling, Lily's main sidekick, stood over me with her arms crossed, looking down her nose at me.

"Hazel, you made Lily cry. Go apologize to her right now."

I looked at the wasted food on the floor, my heart bleeding.

That lunch cost fifteen dollars.

That was enough to buy a box of antibiotics.

I slowly stood up and stared into Chloe’s eyes.

"Pay me back."

Chloe laughed as if she had just heard the funniest joke in the world. "What did you say?"

"The lunch was fifteen dollars. Dry cleaning for my uniform is fifty. Emotional damage is a hundred."

"One hundred and sixty-five dollars total. Snapchat or PayPal?"

Chloe’s laugh turned into a scowl. She pulled two hundred-dollar bills from her designer purse and slammed them onto the floor.

"You poor freak! Pick it up! Pick it up and I'll let you go!"

Humiliating me?

If I were in their shoes, maybe I would feel embarrassed.

But now?

I knelt down, picked up the two bills, and carefully wiped the dressing off them.

Thirty-five dollars extra. I made a profit.

I pocketed the money, looked at Chloe, and asked with absolute sincerity, "Do you want to throw another tray? I'll give you a twenty percent discount this time."

Chloe looked at me as if I were a literal monster.

"Psychopath... you are a complete psychopath!"

She turned and ran away in panic.

I went back to the counter, bought two cheap bread rolls, washed them down with the free water, and ate happily.

As long as I could stay alive.

Dignity meant absolutely nothing.