My fridge in my Phoenix apartment has this cheap little American flag magnet I grabbed from a Fourth of July display at Fry’s years ago—bright stripes, a tiny star field, edges chipped like a kid’s front tooth. It’s crooked on purpose. I keep it crooked because perfectly straight feels like pretending.
That night, close to midnight, it was the only thing in my kitchen that looked confident. The A/C rattled in its tired rhythm, my iced tea had melted into a weak brown puddle, and Sinatra was whispering from my phone like he’d been hired to keep me company. I was still in my work sweatshirt, hunched over a laptop, finishing a report and half-thinking about the automatic transfer scheduled to hit my parents’ account in three days.
Then my screen lit up. A notification. My sister’s name.
A video. No caption. Just a thumbnail of my parents at a restaurant table.
I tapped play. And in under thirty seconds, I stopped being Alyssa Mercer—the dependable one, the fixer, the reliable daughter—and started becoming someone I didn’t recognize yet. Because the mistake that exposed them wasn’t a confession or a confrontation.
It was my sister sending the wrong video to the wrong sister. A joke is only a joke when everyone’s laughing. In the clip, my mother waved her phone like a trophy.
She laughed—full, satisfied—and said, “She wired me two thousand dollars just because I said it was urgent. Didn’t even ask why.”
My father leaned back in his chair like the booth belonged to him. “She just wants attention,” he added, casual as chewing gum.
“Pathetic—” he paused, enjoying himself, “—but profitable.”
I could hear the restaurant’s background hum, the clink of silverware, a server asking if someone wanted another round. Then my sister’s voice cut through, bright and amused, like she was doing a podcast recap. “So how much has our little ATM paid us this year?”
My mother snorted, delighted.
My sister said she’d update the spreadsheet later. They didn’t know I could hear them. They didn’t know the video had landed in my inbox instead of the secret group chat where they planned how to use me.
Before the clip ended, they were already laughing about “spacing out the emergencies” so I wouldn’t get suspicious—like I was a bill they’d learned how to game. I stared at my phone, then at my laptop. On my screen, the confirmation page for the next transfer sat open, neat and normal, like it had no idea it was attached to my life.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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