When I finally zipped into my tent, my hoodie smelled like lighter fluid and lake water.
I pulled out my phone, switched on the connection I’d prepared before the trip, and watched the signal bars appear.
Thirty-eight followers were online.
The viewer count ticked up.
I started a livestream titled ‘My Weekend in Servitude.’
“Hey,” I whispered. “So. Some of you know I post survival hacks. Tonight’s hack is surviving my stepmom.”
Hearts floated up the screen while Renee slurred outside about Angela deserving a spa weekend.
“That’s Renee,” I murmured. “She’s the one who called me the maid. My stepmom’s the one who agreed.”
“Lily. Coffee. Eggs. Now.”
The viewer count ticked up. Forty-one. Forty-seven. Sixty.
I lowered my voice until it was barely breath on the mic. “If Dad won’t believe me, maybe strangers will.”
The little red light blinked steady.
Dad had wanted to see the truth for himself. Now he could.
“She’s just lazy at home.”
The tent shook before sunrise.
“Lily. Coffee. Eggs. Now.”
I reached for my phone before unzipping the flap.
Angela hadn’t even said good morning before giving me orders. That seemed like a good enough reason to start the livestream again.
I slipped the phone into my hoodie pocket with the lens angled just past the drawstring and stepped outside.
“Don’t be dramatic, sweetheart.”
By eight, I’d cleaned up most of last night’s mess while Angela stretched in her camping chair with cucumber slices over her eyes.
“Lily, spray around the chairs. The bugs are relentless.”
I picked up the repellent and moved closer, my phone still recording from my hoodie pocket.
“She’s just lazy at home,” Angela told Beth. “Rude too. You wouldn’t believe what I put up with.”
“Dad told me to keep it with me.”
I stopped spraying. “Then why did you tell Dad this trip was supposed to be about us bonding?”
Five heads turned.
Angela’s smile stiffened around her teeth. “Don’t be dramatic, sweetheart.”
Renee sat up. “Angela, honey, just take her phone. She’s been glued to it all morning.”
I stepped back. “Dad told me to keep it with me.”
I can stop pretending to be a saint.
“Mark’s not here.”
“He said keep it with me.”
Renee opened her mouth, then closed it.
Angela waved her off with a laugh that didn’t reach her eyes, and I walked away with my viewer count climbing past three thousand.
What my stepmom didn’t know was that one of those viewers would matter far more than the other three thousand.
“It’s basically done.”
Later, I made a show of setting my phone face-down on the picnic table.
Angela glanced at it, then at me. What she didn’t see was me slip it back into my hoodie pocket when I picked up the dirty cups.
By the time I wandered toward the fire, her shoulders had relaxed.
I slowed near her chair.
“Once they vote me in, I can stop pretending to be a saint at every brunch,” Angela said. “Diane practically runs the membership committee, and she loves me. It’s basically done.”
I’d seen that name before.
Priya giggled. “And you brought the stepdaughter, why?”
“Family girls’ weekend photos. Application material.” Angela sipped her wine. “They love that wholesome-family stuff.”
I stopped for half a second.
Diane.
I’d seen that name before.
“I mean it.”
That night I lay in my tent listening to comments pour in that I couldn’t read fast enough.
Someone had clipped the ‘maid’ line. Someone else had captioned it.
A stranger in Ohio wrote, ‘Girl, keep filming.’
Morning came with a different Angela.
“You are so ungrateful.”
“There she is,” she cooed, arms open wide as I climbed out. “Come here, sweetie, Beth’s taking pictures for the committee packet.”
She pulled me against her hip. I smelled her perfume and last night’s wine.
Good thing I’d started the livestream in time.
I stepped back. “You can make your own eggs for the picture.”
“Lily.”
“I mean it.”
The perfect-stepmother act.
Her fingers dug into my shoulder before she remembered the audience. “You are so ungrateful. Your father always goes soft on his little girl. Do you know how exhausting that is?”
“Then why did you marry him if I’m such a problem?”
Angela’s smile tightened. “Don’t start this.”
“You just said Dad goes soft on me. You complain about me constantly. So why marry someone with a daughter?”
Nobody adopts the used car.
“Lily,” Renee warned.
But I kept looking at Angela. “Was I always just something you had to put up with?”
For a second, she remembered the pictures. The application. The perfect-stepmother act.
Then her face changed.
“Honey, I didn’t marry Mark because I wanted to be your mother.” She gave a short, bitter laugh. “You came with him. Nobody adopts the used car when they’re buying the new one.”
The clip was already there.
Nobody laughed this time.
Priya stared at Angela. “Jesus, Angie.”
For five years after Mom died, I’d tried to make myself easy to live with.
I stayed quiet when Angela picked at me. I did what she asked. I kept giving her another chance because Dad kept asking me to.
Maybe some part of me had believed that if I tried hard enough, there’d still be room for me in whatever family Dad was building.
I had my answer.
Angela had just answered that for me. She flicked her hair. “Now grab the pan. Beth, get the light behind us.”
“Get it yourself.”
