My name is\u00a0Bethany Burns<\/span><\/strong>. I am thirty-one years old, and I was raised in\u00a0<\/span>Millbrook, Pennsylvania<\/span><\/strong>, a hamlet so insignificant that our only traffic jam in history occurred when Old Man Henderson\u2019s prize heifer wandered onto Main Street and decided to nap. I fled that town at eighteen with a single suitcase, two hundred dollars stuffed in my sock, and a stubborn refusal to suffocate.<\/span><\/p>\n I didn\u2019t leave because I hated the countryside. I left because my family made it explicitly clear that the inn was full.<\/p>\n I have an older brother,\u00a0Garrett<\/span><\/strong>. He was the Golden Child, the sun around which my parents\u2019 universe orbited. Growing up, I was the shadow cast by his brilliance. If I scraped a B on a math test, Garrett had brought home an A+. If I made the varsity softball team, Garrett was being crowned homecoming king. My mother,\u00a0<\/span>Patricia<\/span><\/strong>, had a specific way of looking at me\u2014a mixture of fatigue and disappointment\u2014as if I were a rough draft she had crumpled up and tossed aside, while Garrett was the framed masterpiece.<\/span><\/p>\n So, I ran. I took a Greyhound bus to the city and started over.<\/p>\n
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