An American Childhood

I agreed to transfer schools with my childhood friend who was constantly being bullied, but she backed out on the last day. Her friend teased, "I can't believe you pretended to be bullied all this time just to get rid of Harry. He's your childhood friend. Are you really willing to let him go to another school all by himself?" Lena said indifferently, "It's just another school in this city. How far could it be? I've had enough of him always being around me. Getting some distance between us is just what I wanted." I stood outside the door for a long time that day before deciding to turn and leave. However, on the transfer application, instead of writing Haleswood High School, I wrote the high school that my parents wanted me to go to, which was abroad. Everyone seemed to have forgotten that Lena and I had been worlds apart from the very start.

When fiercely independent Aiden Matthews makes a spontaneous decision to visit home after a long absence, what she intended to be a day-long trip turns into an entire summer filled with old friends, new acquaintances... and a rekindled old flame. But after stumbling upon a seventy year old secret and the ghosts it stirs up, Aiden must navigate the sudden challenges to everything she thought she knew about her family history while confronting her deepest fears in order to chase her most fervently held dreams.

After my SATs are over, I go to the office block with my poverty certificate to apply for a school loan. The staff member glances at my paperwork before turning my application down coldly. "To think that you're already swindling loans from the government at such a young age! High-income families like yours aren't lacking in the money department at all!" At first, I think this is just a misunderstanding. That is, until the staff member passes me the information on my parents. "Your parents have a villa worth 20 million dollars in the city center, whereas your younger brother goes to an elite academy that costs 800 thousand dollars' worth of tuition fees per year! "Tell me, how can someone from your family be eligible to apply for a school loan?" I'm stunned, to say the least. The entire village has raised me since young. For the past 18 years, I've been the only child of an extremely impoverished family. Little do I know that my parents have already formed another family of their own in the city…

After reuniting with my birth family, my wealthy biological father tossed me a black card and laid down one rule: I could spend as much as I wanted, but I was never to call him Dad—that title belonged only to his adoptive daughter. Clutching the black card, I cautiously bought myself a two-dollar-fifty ice cream cone. Just as I was happily licking the sweet ice cream, the adoptive daughter dropped to her knees before me. "Alice, are you mocking me because I can't even afford something that costs two-fifty in the future?" My brother immediately slapped me twice. "You have money now, but you can't split love. Natalie is my one and only sister!" Then my father splashed boiling water onto my face. "No disgraceful wretch deserves to be a Gervais." To punish me, they sent me off to Rimala, forced to work as a child laborer in the mines. Ten years later, I walked into a grand banquet hall with an ice cream in hand and came face-to-face with my brother, Ansel Gervais, dressed in a hand-tailored suit. "All these years and you're still a disgrace," he sneered, but I couldn't be bothered to argue. "Let go. My dad's waiting for me—and if I'm any later, the ice cream's going to melt." He looked down at me with contempt. "Dad? Who gave you permission to call him that? Natalie will forever be the only Gervais girl—no one can take that away from her!" I rolled my eyes. Who said I was talking about that cheap excuse for a father? I was talking about my adoptive father—the oil tycoon with an incurable sweet tooth. I was in a hurry to let him taste some ice cream.

One photo. Two golden boys. A truth that could destroy everything they've built. Everyone thinks they know me - Perfect grades, perfect girlfriend, student council, perfect future. But it's all a lie to hide who I really am. Until my past caught up with me. Until Chris Moore turns up at summer camp and appears in school on the first day. Until a photo was pinned on my locker on the first day of school — a photo of me staring at Chris across the summer bonfire. And an anonymous note: “I know who you are looking at.” Now my lies are crumbling. The perfect life I built is cracking. And I can't keep pretending. With Chris back in my life, the feelings I buried for two years refuse to stay hidden. Someone is watching. Someone knows my secret. And if the truth comes out, I don't just lose my perfect life. I lose everything.

My mother was the president of a listed corporation, she was both rich and powerful. More importantly, she loved me more than anything in the world. Meanwhile, my father was a man who cheated on her. When he found out his mistress was pregnant with a girl, he beat her until she miscarried and ended up in prison. So when the judge publicly asked me to choose between my mother and my father, everyone assumed the custody battle was just a formality. That was until I walked past my mother's trembling, outstretched hand and firmly chose my father instead. Everyone was shocked into speechlessness. In my previous life, I had chosen my mother, the one who spoiled me rotten. She was the type to buy the whole bakery just because I casually mentioned I wanted their cake. When I complained it was too sunny, she immediately arranged for four helicopters to put up a sunshade cloth and shade me. She even deposited a hundred thousand dollars on my school meal card because she was worried I wasn't eating well. Even though she spoiled me like a true princess and paved the way for me through life, I don't want anything to do with her in this life.