Go change, you look cheap,” my father laughed after my mother splashed wine all over my dress at his diamond jubilee. So I walked out in silence, returned wearing a general’s mess uniform, and stood at the top of the ballroom stairs until the music died, the room froze, and the man who spent my whole life calling me a failure stared at my shoulders, went white, and whispered, “Wait… are those two stars?”
The crystal chandeliers of the Oakhaven Elite Country Club were not merely bright; they were physically aggressive. They shimmered with a piercing, artificial luminosity that seemed expertly designed to induce a migraine, casting a harsh, unforgiving light on everything and everyone below. There was no place to hide in a room like this, though I…
