The drive to school was always the same three-part harmony.

Adrian sat in the front passenger seat, his eyes locked onto his tablet, reviewing corporate updates as if the fate of the global economy rested on his teenage shoulders. Noah and Stella sat on either side of me in the back. Or rather, they sat together, and I was the barrier they had to look around.

In my past life, I hated this seating arrangement. I would deliberately squeeze myself into the middle just to force them to touch my shoulders, to acknowledge my physical mass. I would change the radio station to something loud and abrasive, screaming the lyrics just to watch Adrian's jaw tighten or Noah roll his eyes. I thought irritation was a form of intimacy. I thought if I could make them angry, it meant I still existed to them.

Now, I leaned so heavily against the left window that the glass rattled against my cheekbone. I left a massive, glaring void of leather between Stella and me.

"Oh, Noah," Stella murmured, her voice like silk rubbing against velvet as she showed him her phone. "Look at this charity layout for the youth gala. Do you think the blue orchids are too aggressive? I know Father prefers minimalist tones."

Noah leaned over, his shoulder brushing hers effortlessly. He didn't look at her with worship—Noah didn't worship anyone—but he looked at her with ease. A relaxed, unhurried attention that I had spent sixteen years begging for.

"Go with the white lilies, Stella," Noah said, his voice light, carrying that casual charm that made everyone at school love him. "Dad hates anything that looks like it's trying too hard. Keep it clean. You're good at that."

"Thank you, Noah. I just... I want it to be perfect for the family," she whispered, her eyes flickering toward the rearview mirror, checking if Thomas the driver was listening. Checking if I was listening.

In the past, this was where the trap would spring.

I would have snapped. 'Why are you asking him? It's a Salvatore gala, not a stepsister gala! You don't even have our blood!'

And the moment those ugly, desperate words left my mouth, the car would freeze. Noah's face would turn to stone. Adrian would sigh from the front seat, a sound of pure, clinical exhaustion. Stella would shrink back into the leather, her lower lip trembling just enough to look pathetic but not enough to look ugly, and she would say, 'I'm sorry, Scarlett, I didn't mean to overstep. I'll stay out of it.'

And just like that, I would be the monster. The loud, jealous, biological brat tearing apart the sweet, innocent orphan.

I watched her reflection in the dark glass of the window. I saw the tiny, microscopic way her eyes adjusted, waiting for my shoulders to tense, waiting for my breath to hitch. She was a white lotus—a creature that bloomed in the mud of other people's rage. She needed my tantrums to make her own purity visible.

So, I gave her nothing. I kept my eyes fixed on the passing gray utility poles outside.

When the silence stretched too long, becoming heavy and misshapen in the back seat, Stella cleared her throat softly. It was a beautiful, fragile sound.

"Scarlett?" she asked, her voice dripping with tentative, sisterly concern. "Are you feeling carsick? You haven't said anything since we left the house. If you're worried about the elective registration, I can really—"

I didn't let her finish the script. But I didn't yell either.

Slowly, I turned my head away from the window. I didn't look angry; I made sure my eyes were wide, slightly watery, and completely blank. I let my shoulders drop, making myself look small, deflated, and intensely fragile—the exact posture she usually used.

"My head just hurts a little, Stella," I whispered, my voice cracking slightly at the end. I let a small, pathetic tremor enter my bottom lip. "The house was just... so loud this morning. I feel like whenever I speak, everyone gets so stressed. I think it's better if I just stay quiet so Mom doesn't get another headache."

Beside her, Noah froze.

His eyes slowly moved from his phone to my face. For a second, his analytical, people-reading brain couldn't process the data. He was used to Scarlett the dragon; he didn't know what to do with Scarlett the wounded lamb.

Stella's breath hitched, a genuine break in her composure. Her eyebrows knitted together. This wasn't in her playbook. I was occupying her territory—the land of the misunderstood, self-sacrificing victim.

"Scarlett, no one wants you to be quiet," Stella said quickly, her voice losing a fraction of its rhythmic control. "We just... we love hearing you speak, we just want you to be happy—"

"It's okay," I interrupted, giving her a tiny, tragic smile that I made sure looked incredibly forced, like I was trying to be brave through immense emotional pain. I reached out and gently, dryly patted her knee. "You don't have to apologize for being the good daughter, Stella. You're doing great. I'm just... trying to learn how to not take up so much space."

I turned back to the window, closing my eyes as if exhausted by my own existence.

The silence that followed wasn't the cold, dismissive silence of my past life. It was a suffocating, uncomfortable silence filled with the sound of my brothers' thoughts turning over.

From the front seat, Adrian's eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. He was staring at me, his brow slightly furrowed, his tablet completely forgotten in his lap. For the first time in sixteen years, he wasn't looking at me like I was a public nuisance. He was looking at me like I was a broken machine he couldn't figure out how to fix.

And Noah... Noah didn't look back at his phone for the rest of the ride. He sat straight, his eyes darting between Stella's suddenly tense posture and my curled-up form against the door.

You want to play with perception, Stella? I thought, the cold asphalt of my twenty-two-year-old death pressing against the back of my mind. Let's play. Let's see who the world pities more: the perfect orphan who can do no wrong, or the real daughter who has finally been broken by her own family's silence.