“Emily,” she said nervously, “I need to ask you something important.”
My heart froze. I thought she was sending me away.
“I want to adopt you,” she said quickly, tears already in her eyes. “Not just foster. I want you to be my daughter forever. Would that be okay?”
I could not speak. I just threw my arms around her neck.
The adoption became official on my fourteenth birthday.
I became Emily Rivera.
Megan gave me a silver necklace with both our initials on it.
“You’re mine now,” she said. “Forever.”
By fifteen, I was in maintenance treatment. My hair had started growing back, and I had energy again. But I had fallen behind in school.
“You are brilliant,” Megan told me one night, dropping a stack of textbooks onto the table. “Your biological parents called you average. We are going to prove them so wrong they never recover from it.”
She enrolled me in advanced online classes. She hired a math tutor with money she did not have. After twelve-hour hospital shifts, she stayed up late helping me study.
My anger became fuel.
I wanted to become a doctor. I wanted to be like Dr. Collins. I wanted to be like Megan.
By sixteen, I was taking college-level classes. I earned straight A’s. I scored higher on the SAT than Ashley ever had.
