Sibling's Ultimate Revenge

I worked seventytwo hours straight. Then I dropped dead on the floor of the factory dorm, alone. Bled dry. That's all I ever was to my family: a body to squeeze for cash.

It took my corpse for my parents to feel sorry. Then I woke up. Reborn, years in the past, a golden pill hovering in the air in front of me.

The System called it the Ten Years' Early Awakening. Feed it to your parents, it said. Their minds will jump ten years ahead. They'll finally wake up.

I fed it to my baby brother instead. His eyes lit up. Just like that, my baby brother grew a brain.

Fourteen years later, they'd break into my account and rewrite my college application, so sure they'd clipped my wings for good.

They had no idea I was already holding the last card. The one that would bury them. Chapter 1 My Little Brother Grew a Brain I fed it to my baby brother instead. His eyes lit up.

Just like that, my baby brother grew a brain. "Vivienne! Why haven't you sent money home yet?!

Don't tell me you're blowing it on some man!" Mom's shrieking came through the phone loud enough to make my ear ring. "Your brother's still ten grand short.

First time he's ever asked you for anything, and this is the attitude you give me?" "You raised him yourself!

You're just going to leave him hanging?" "Say something!" I lay on the bunk in the factory dorm, cold sweat slicking my forehead, my chest tight and pounding.

I felt like I was dying. "Mom... I don't feel good." "Quit playing dead! No money today, and I'm showing up at that factory tomorrow.

I'll let the whole floor know what an ungrateful little snake you are!" Then Dad's voice, thick with irritation. "Vivienne Shaw! A few grand and you're acting like it'll kill you?

I gave you the life you're living!" Grandma piped up from somewhere behind him. "See? See? I said it all along.

We should've just smothered her at birth." I closed my eyes to the sound of them tearing me apart. Seventytwo hours without stopping. My heart gave out on the dorm floor.

A coworker found my body around noon. By afternoon my parents had rushed in from out of town, clinging to each other and sobbing over my coffin. Now they were sorry.

Then, out of nowhere, a baby's cry cut through all of it. I was standing in a cramped, painfully familiar bathroom, a baby squirming in my arms. I'd been reborn.

Reborn at four years old. And the squalling little thing against my chest was my baby brother. A golden pill hovered in the air in front of me.

Beside it, a line of text glowed. [Feed this pill to your parents.

Their minds will move ten years ahead, and they'll wake up sooner.] I thought of the way they'd wept over my coffin. They really had been sorry.

Just not for anything they'd ever done to me.

Chapter 2 They'd looked at the last three thousand dollars in my bank account and kicked themselves for not marrying me off for a bride price while they still could.

I'd gone and died on them. And dead, I was a loss. A bad investment gone bust. Parents like that?

Ten years wiser or not, they'd still have shipped me off to some backwater the day I turned fourteen.

The baby in my arms was still crying, tiny fists twisted into my shirt, spit bubbling on his lips. I looked down at him, this little thing who needed me for everything now.

And I pushed the pill into his mouth without a second thought. He was three months old. He was hungry anyway.

Something sweet touched his tongue, and he craned his neck and gulped it down, little legs kicking with delight. Then, bit by bit, the kicking slowed.

Something complicated surfaced on his face. The look of a mind switching on.

He stared up at me and mumbled. "...Sissy?" With a tenyearold's mind now, it wasn't hard for him to work out who I was. "You're hungry, huh?" I said. "Come on.

Sissy'll get you something to eat." "Da!" I carried him out of the room. This was our old house. A ceiling fan creaked overhead.

On the boxy old TV, some trashy soap opera droned on. Mom was sprawled across the couch in her pajamas, cracking sunflower seeds between her teeth.

Her eyes stayed glued to the screen, her mouth tugging up every time the sappy melodrama got to her. "Mom.

He's hungry." Nothing. "Mom, can you go make him a bottle?" Still nothing. "Mom—" The third time I said it, she flung the fistful of seeds straight into my face.

Got us both. "What is it now?! Mom, Mom, Mom, all day long! Go find your grandmother! She's the one who nagged us into having him, and now the old bat won't lift a finger.

Two little leeches. Out. Out. Out!" My brother flinched. But he didn't cry. I didn't say a word. I just carried him out the door.

Grandma was downstairs at her card game, same as every day around now. I carried him down the stairs one careful step at a time.

His little face twisted up with fear, both arms locked around my collar. To a baby, those stairs might as well have been a cliff.

And his whole small life sat in the hands of a fouryearold. We made it down in one piece. I found Grandma midgame. "Grandma.

He needs his bottle." Eyes shut, she rolled a card between her fingers and snapped it onto the table. "Nine of clubs!

Lord above, nine of clubs again!" She cut the two of us a look. "Want a bottle, go find his mother.

I've got nothing here for him to suck on." My brother, thinking himself clever, decided he could soften the old woman up. He screwed his eyes shut and wailed. "Waaah!

Waaah!" "Oh, for— you two little wretches, get out of here! Go on!" She shoved me hard. "I'm playing. Quit jinxing my luck." I nearly went down.

Caught my balance and made a show of hushing my fakesobbing brother. "Come on. Sissy'll make you a bottle." I carried him back home.

The formula was stashed in the top kitchen cabinet. I set him down and dragged over two chairs, stacking one on top of the other like I'd done it a hundred times before.

The tower swayed. Flat on his back on the floor, my baby brother stared up at me and didn't dare breathe. Chapter 3 In the end, I got the formula down without breaking my neck.

Mix the bottle, feed him, burp him. One smooth routine, done on autopilot. Once he'd drained it, his little body went heavy and drowsy, and he drifted right off.

I patted his bottom in a slow rhythm and let my mind wander back over this stretch of my life. He was too little now to remember any of it. I remembered every bit.

The year my brother was born, my family went deep into debt. All for their precious, longawaited boy.

Grandma griped that Mom had no milk of her own, so they had to shell out for formula on top of it. Mom hated Grandma right back for lying to her.

She'd promised to help raise the baby, promised a gold bracelet too, and delivered on neither.

Dad took off to work in the big city, and the war between the two women rolled downhill onto me and my brother. Not until he turned five did any of them bother playing happy family.

Well, now he got to feel all that "love" they were always going on about, firsthand. Fastforward to nine months old.

With the mind of an elevenyearold, he was deeply not okay with me cleaning his bottom. I tossed him the towel. "Fine. Do it yourself." Like I loved wiping him down.

Last life I'd smelled his mess for years. I'd have been thrilled to hand the job over. His tiny hands closed around the damp towel, and he started wiping, slow and clumsy.

Maybe I'd come off a little harsh. His mouth pushed into a wounded pout. Then, pushing himself up to try and stand, he slipped. Nothing under him but hard tile.

I caught him. "Sissy!" "Clumsy little showoff," I scolded, even as I rinsed his back with warm water, careful and gentle. My brother had always been a handful.

Brain boost or not, the kid was a wild little hellion. I always kept one eye on him.

He just didn't remember that. "You wretched girl!" Grandma's voice cracked from the doorway. "What are you hogging the bathroom for?!" First thing Grandma did home from cards was hit the toilet.

She dropped her pants and went, right there in front of the two of us. "Cleaning him up," I said. "Hmph." Her beady eyes raked over my brother and me. "Pair of little money pits." Finished, she caught me still hunched over washing him, and something set her off. "Dragging it out, exactly like that lazy mother of yours!

Hot water in the dead of summer? All you know is how to live it up.

Ever heard of saving on the gas bill?!" With that, she grabbed a scoop and flung the cold water straight at my brother. "Back in my day, babies got washed in well water and came out just fine.

Sturdy, even!" The cold cut deep. I yanked him against me fast, so most of it caught me instead. It left me shaking. "Waah! Waah!" This time, he was really crying.

Not long after, Mom decided to wean him. Her method was simple. Stop buying formula. What he ate after that wasn't her problem. Not her problem. And sure as hell not Grandma's.

Which left exactly one person in this house to keep my brother alive. Me. Five years old.

Chapter 4 So every day, small as I was, I stood at the kitchen counter with a rolling pin and a knife, pounding meat and vegetables into mush to feed him.

One day Grandma spotted me working away in there, snatched my brother off my back, and hauled him over to the table. "Look at you, making a whole production of it.

Kid's got a mouth, doesn't he?" She grabbed a dinner roll off the table and bit into it, her wrinkled lips working open and shut until she'd chewed it into a wad.

She spat the wad into her hand and pushed it toward my baby brother's mouth. My brother thrashed in her arms, his whole body going rigid