They Thought I Failed—Until I Turned Down Harvard Chapter 08
The medal slipped from my hand.
I stumbled backward, caught my foot on a stone, and fell hard.
Mom and Dad rushed forward to help me.
The memories I had almost buried came rushing back, squeezing my chest until it hurt.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!”
Their hands froze.
Pain filled their eyes.
“Jenny…”
“What’s wrong? I’m your mother.”
Tears streamed down my face.
Between sobs, I forced out every moment I had been ignored.
Every hurt they had dismissed as if it meant nothing.
“You stopped being my mother a long time ago.”
“A mother who remembers everyone else’s favorites but forgets mine doesn’t feel like a mother to me.”
“I don’t have a mother who never sees anything I do and always thinks I’m worse than someone else.”
I looked at Dad.
He hadn’t said a word, but tears were running down his face too.
“And I don’t have a father who keeps leaving me behind.”
“You already have Olivia. Why are you here ruining the new life I finally built for myself?”
Mom broke down and rushed forward to hug me.
“No. No, Jenny, that’s not true.”
“Olivia lost both her parents. Every time she tried so hard to be good, it broke our hearts.”
“We just wanted to make up for what she lost.”
Mom pulled a new dress from the bag behind her and tried frantically to hand it to me.
I didn’t take it.
I simply stepped back.
“I don’t need it.”
“Not since the day you flew to Virginia to celebrate Olivia’s eighteenth birthday and completely forgot mine.”
“I stopped needing any of this that day.”
Dad stepped forward and grabbed my arm.
“Jenny! How can you be this petty?”
“Just because we missed your eighteenth birthday, you’re going to hold a grudge against your own parents?”
“We raised you for eighteen years, and this is how you treat us?”
I looked at them and felt utterly drained.
A crushing sense of helplessness closed in on me until I could barely breathe.
It wasn’t one eighteenth birthday.
It wasn’t one dress.
It was three years of being ignored.
Three years of being belittled.
Every small hurt had piled on top of the last until finally, I had found the courage to run.
I shook my head.
I didn’t want to say anything else.
Then I turned and ran toward the trees behind me, taking the path back to my dorm.
For the next few days, Mom and Dad stayed outside my residence hall.
Sometimes they called up toward the windows.
I never came downstairs.
My roommate tried to comfort me.
“Jenny, don’t be upset.”
“I already explained the situation to your professors. Here are my notes from the classes you missed.”
I nodded, grateful.
“Thank you.”
Professor Foster spoke to my parents several times and told them to put my education first.
To stop disrupting my classes.
But they refused to listen. They were fixated on seeing me.
They insisted they wouldn’t leave until they saw me.
Their determination didn’t last long.
A few days later, my roommate came back with food and told me she hadn’t seen them downstairs.
I looked out from the balcony.
They were really gone.
For the first time in days, I finally relaxed.
Not long after, I heard from a mutual friend that Olivia was sick.
Suddenly, everything made sense.
But this time, I didn’t feel the old ache.
I didn’t worry.
I felt calm.
Almost indifferent.
After they left, Professor Foster asked me what had happened.
She hugged me, heartbroken.
“Sweetheart, things are going to get better.”
“From now on, I want you to live for yourself.”
Professor Foster connected me with the university’s academic tutoring center.
I started taking paid tutoring jobs, including SAT prep.
Gradually, I stopped worrying about living expenses.
I even managed to save some money.
I moved out of the dorm as soon as I could, afraid my parents might come back and cause trouble for my roommates.
A few months passed.
Just when I thought everything had finally settled down, I saw Ethan again.