'Love Me'

Chapter 1

My adoptive parents had always cared and loved me like i was royalty and i am truly thankful for them.
I am Daphne Autumn Miller, I'm 17 and i was put up for adoption at the age of 1 and was adopted by my adoptive parents when they were 7 months pregnant with my younger sister, Destiny Summer Miller. My name 'Daphne' was given to me as it is related to the story of the a Greek Mythology Nymph and 'Autumn' is my middle name as i was born in Autumn. My sister was named Destiny as my parents had a hard time conceiving and when they did for the first time, they suffered a miscarriage but they strongly believed that they will soon give birth to a healthy baby girl because of fate, hence my sister was named Destiny.

I was very close to Destiny, she was the best sister anyone could ever asked for, we rarely argued and we loved sharing everything since young, from toys to clothes to crushes and even secrets. However, i was secretly able to tell that my parents favoured Destiny slightly more than me which i can't deny was jealous of but I was still grateful for everything they provided me with.

I was a lively individual , very bubbly and always had a smile on my face despite tough times, I was never pessimistic and looked forward to living everyday. Despite my bright personalities, I find it hard to make friends , it's the only thing that I can never succeed in other than Math.

I would always walk around the school compound hanging my head low, avoiding eye contact with anyone, walking in small steps and making use of my long wavy brunette hair to cover my face. People hardly notice me as I was not part of the cool kids. Often ostracized from every single projects.
I feel like I could only be my very own self with Destiny's strong and gentle presence around. Destiny is like the total opposite of me, she's like a all-in-one package. She's tall, she's wise, she's intelligent and she's a person with a heart that's made of 24k carat diamond and decorated with fresh flowers. All i can say is that she's someone i truly looked up to although she's younger than me.

However, my admiration and jealously got the better of me. I let it run wild like a ferocious hungry lioness pouncing on naive preys but this lioness is stronger than the rest, it has the strongest hunting motive and the strength ten times more than 5 horses combined.

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Our family has a habit of labelling our own drinks with name stickers , Destiny loves her flavoured water so much she has a carton of it in the refrigerator.

I woke up earlier that day just to prevent getting caught, I headed to the laundry room with my eyes still blinded by the bright light and grabbed bleach, I held it with both arms as I wasn't strong in my arm areas. I opened the refrigerator quietly before turning my head in a quick motion making sure no one was awake yet. I poured a little bleach into Destiny's bottle of flavoured water and sealed it back tightly. Now you make think how can someone not taste the awful taste of bleach. Well, if you look Google up. You can see that people do drink bleach because it's used to clean the water in some way.

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"Morning" her voice, full of energy greeted me like the sound of the morning chirping birds. I half smiled and averted my gaze away from her. I knew I wasn't able to compress the feeling of guilt without looking suspicious. I took in deep breaths as I grabbed my white binder, flipping it to pretend read.

"Yo sis." Destiny tapped my shoulder, because of my paranoia, I jumped a little causing her to spill her bowl of creamy white goodness and rice chocolate heaven , her bowl of cereal tipped over a little, spilling onto my papers.
"I'm so sorry" she apologized
"No, um it's fine I'll just wipe it with napkins."

Destiny looked at me with 'WORRIED' written on her head "Were the papers important?" her hands cupped each other as her thumbs moves up and down. I paired my raised brows with a half smile and calmly told her "Yeah yeah it's no biggie! Those were just random notes I wrote in Math class," "Come on let's hop onto the car, I'll let you drive today and oh don't forget your flavoured water." The bottle flew in the air like a professional stuntman , flipping a few times and landing loudly but perfectly onto Destiny's palms.

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My eyes wandered aimlessly around the classroom, my heart beats like the thunderclaps, sweat trickled down my forehead. I couldn't shake off the feeling of guilt, "Has she drank it?" "Did something happen to her?" All the possible questions are playing in my head but answers were not found.

"YOUNG LADY!" Mr Montgomery banged on the board. Amanda, one of Destiny's closer friend barged into the class. "DAPHNE," she tried catching her breath before raggedly continuing "DESTINY FAINTED IN CLASS!" My heart sank upon hearing those words, my mind went completely blank and my breathing went out of control.
"Come on Daphne!! You need to head to the hospital." Amanda tugged on my arm vigorously, snapping me out of my white world. I finally processed what had happened and ran out the class together with my bag.

"Damn it where is it?!" I poured the contents in my bag out in search for my phone. I grabbed it and tapped the numbers on the screen so hard the screen could've shattered. "Mom??" I could hear my Mom's heart skipped a beat through the phone, her voice was a soul itself, it was trembling with immense fear, it was confused and it was hurting. That's when I felt completely stupid and useless, I felt horrible that I was able to do such a thing to my own sibiling. Tears formed on my eyes, my vision blurred and i clenched my fists. Tears finally rolled down my cheeks, I was crying uncontrollably.

"Heyy---everything is going to be fine if you think positively," Amanda gently tapped on my shoulder "Come on, let's get into the cab, Destiny needs your support."

Throughout the 5 minutes cab ride, I was staring out the window, looking at the beautiful greenery while breathing in and out to control myself. Besides being afraid for Destiny's health, I was even more afraid of being caught. The sneering, the looks that I will get. Those that criminals get from the society after being locked up behind those thick bars where freedom doesn't exists.

As soon as the cab came to a halt, I dashed into the Hospital's main glass door. "I'm looking for Destiny---Summer Miller" I told the receptionist, out of breath.
"Daphne!" A familiar strong yet gentle voice which sounds more ragged than usual called out to me , its Mom. Her eyes were puffy, her youthful look disappeared and she looked as pale as vampires. Dad was comforting Mom by her side, wearing a huge frown on his face.

Dad paced around the waiting area , Mom was sniffing constantly and I was about to go berserk.I finally understand why people in movies are always acting like that while waiting for someone they love to come out from the emergency room.