My Family Members Are Dolls That Never Respond To Me Chapter 10
Three days after Adrian left the seaport, the Sheldon family made the news.
At first, it was just that the interview never aired.
People thought it was strange.
The kid had one of the highest SAT scores in the state, and even her family didn’t know where she was.
Then the studio’s neighbor gave an interview.
She told them the girl had lived alone for a year. The AC had broken and no one had helped her fix it. During a nighttime power outage, all she could do was crouch in the hallway and cry.
Someone dug up the coffee shop owner too.
He said the 1590 girl’s mother had once collected her paycheck and swapped it for counterfeit cash.
The headlines came in sharp.
【SAT Prodigy Scoring 1590 Kicked Out of Home, Missing After A Year Living Alone.】
【Family Celebrates Younger Daughter’s Admission While Elder Sister Leaves Alone.】
I saw the story while eating dinner in the cafeteria.
Chloe watched me carefully.
“Nora. Is that. You?”
I glanced down at the screen.
There was the studio, empty now.
Peeling paint. Moldy curtains.
And on the floor, the four dolls, turned to face the wall.
I sat with it for a while before I nodded.
“Yeah. That’s me.”
Chloe didn’t press. She just slid the chicken leg from her tray over onto mine.
“Then eat more from now on.”
I paused, then smiled and thanked her.
The story took off faster than I would have guessed.
Someone at Dad’s firm recognized him.
Colleagues who had always greeted him politely as Mr. Sheldon suddenly started giving him a wide berth.
In meetings, someone joked, half serious.
“Richard can toss out his own daughter, the one with the highest SAT score in the state. Who’s going to trust him with a project?”
The talk around him at work kept growing.
The father who played favorites. The father who drove his own daughter to leave the family chat and vanish.
It got uglier the more it spread. Before long, his most important accounts were pulled.
Mom didn’t dare show her face at her afternoon teas anymore.
She used to love bragging about Leo and Annie.
Now, the moment she walked in, someone would smile and ask.
“I hear you have another daughter. The 1590 one.”
“Such a bright girl. How could you bear to send her away?”
Leo’s life at school got hard too.
Back when he’d barely squeaked into the top engineering program, his family had held him up as a genius.
But now everyone knew.
That sister he had dismissed as “ungrateful,” the one he’d looked down on, had scored 1590 on the SAT.
Higher than he ever had.
“Turns out he isn’t the brilliant one in the Sheldon family after all.”
“No wonder he was so protective of the other sister. A genius, jealous of a bigger genius.”
Adrian didn’t fare any better.
Someone on the school forum dug up an old post where he’d publicly said he would wait for me.
Someone else pointed out that later, he’d stood by Annie, and helped push me to another city.
The talk spread fast.
Everywhere he went, people stared.
Someone asked him.
“Didn’t you say you’d wait for her?”
“And in the end you waited her right out of your life?”
Annie couldn’t handle any of it.
She cried at school more than once, insisting she was sick, that none of it had been on purpose.
But this time, there weren’t as many people rushing to comfort her.
Instead, people murmured to each other.
“Being sick doesn’t give you the right to steal your sister’s life.”
“Her 1590 sister got shoved out of the house for a year. Annie’s living in the penthouse. What exactly is she crying about?”
I heard she attempted suicide again.
But the doctors examined her and said it was emotional volatility. Nothing life threatening.
This time, Mom didn’t rush to hold her and cry.
She just sat in the hospital hallway, eyes red, calling my number.
I didn’t pick up.
Later, Adrian brought Mom, Dad, and Leo to the seaport again.
They stood outside my school with their arms full.
Clothes. A laptop. A brand new credit card in my name.
Mom saw me, and tears started falling immediately.
“Nora, please, forgive Mommy. We were wrong. All of us.”
Dad’s voice was hoarse.
“We’ll cover your tuition. Your living expenses. Everything. You won’t have to suffer again.”
Leo kept his head down.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked at them. My heart was quiet.
Apologies too late. Gifts too late. Concern too late.
None of it meant anything to me now.
“That’s not necessary. My scholarship is enough.”
Mom sobbed and grabbed my hand.
“But we’re family.”
I slowly pulled my hand back.
“Not anymore.”
She froze.
I looked at each of them, and said, one word at a time.
“From the day you sent me to that studio.”
“From the day you told me not to go to the top East Coast school.”
“We stopped being family.”
I turned and walked toward campus.
Behind me came Mom’s suppressed sobbing, and the sound of my name, called out more than once.
But I wasn’t going to look back.
So what if no one is willing to lift me up.
I will walk, alone, to a place they cannot even lift their eyes to see.