My Life Is Worth A Million Dollars

On the day I was diagnosed with a glioblastoma, I also received a phone call from the billionaire Vance family, claiming I was their long-lost biological daughter.

The doctor told me that the surgery and follow-up treatments would cost at least a hundred thousand dollars.

So, without a second thought, I threw my beat-up backpack over my shoulder and headed straight to the Vance estate.

Even though I knew they didn't want me there.

The mansion was breathtakingly luxurious, but my eyes were only searching for the person who could write me a check.

In the living room, my biological parents were gently cradling their adopted daughter, Lily, whispering sweet comforts to her.

Lily was crying her eyes out, looking as if my return meant I was going to skin her alive.

I stood at the doorway, the mud from the gritty suburbs still sticking to the soles of my sneakers.

My biological father, Arthur Vance, frowned at me.

"Now that youre back, you will follow the rules in this house."

"This is Lily. She is your older sister. Though we aren't blood-related, she is our real daughter in every way that matters."

"Don't even dream of replacing her. To the public, we will introduce you as our adopted daughter."

My biological mother, Eleanor, added coldly, "Your room is next to the maid's quarters. Don't come to the main building unless you have to. Don't scare Lily."

If I had grown up in a privileged environment like this, I probably would have burst into tears, demanding to know why they were treating me this way.

But years of being bullied in the orphanage and abused by foster parents had beaten any fragile sensitivity out of me. I used to starve myself just to beg for a crumb of affection.

But now? My mind was filled with nothing but that 0-000,000 medical bill.

I looked up, letting my gaze drift past their disgusted faces, and let it rest on the Patek Philippe watch on Arthurs wrist.

Then, I nodded.

"Deal."

Lilys crying stopped instantly.

Arthur hadn't expected me to be so submissive. He froze for a second.

"I only have one condition."

I held out my hand, palm up. It was rough, covered in thick calluses from years of hard labor.

"Give me a hundred thousand dollars."

The living room fell into a dead, suffocating silence.

The disgust in Eleanors eyes practically boiled over. "As expected of a girl raised in the slums. Money is the only thing that comes out of your mouth. Absolutely no manners!"

Lily chimed in with a timid, fragile voice. "Hazel, Mom and Dad just brought you home. How can you... talk about money? It hurts our family's feelings."

I looked at them expressionlessly.

If we don't talk about money, what should we talk about?

Should we talk about how you lost me for eighteen years?

Or should we talk about how you were throwing a lavish birthday party for Lily while my foster father was cracking a beer bottle over my head?

I didn't even bother to explain that this money was to save my life.

In their eyes, a piece of trash like me getting a terminal illness would probably just be seen as bad luck rubbing off on them.

"Give me the money, and I will play along with whatever happy family drama you want."

"Don't give it to me, and I walk out that door right now to find the media. We can talk about the dirty secrets of the Vance family's real and fake daughters."

I was completely calm. My voice didn't even tremble.

Arthurs face turned violently pale. This was his biological daughterdrenched in the smell of cheap money, without a single shred of family affection.

He whipped out his checkbook, scribbled a series of numbers, and threw the check right at my face.

"Take the money and shut up!"

"This hundred thousand dollars buys out your greed. From now on, your monthly allowance is five hundred dollars. Not a single penny more!"

The check fluttered lightly onto the floor.

I bent down and picked it up.

I blew the dust off it.

Perfect. The first round of chemotherapy was covered.

I slipped the check into my pocket and gave them a textbook-perfect bow.

"Thank you, Mr. Vance. Thank you, Mrs. Vance."

"As long as the money keeps coming, I will be a ghost in this house."

"I'll even cry the loudest at your funerals."

With that, I grabbed my bag and walked straight toward the maid's room.

Behind me, Eleanor shrieked in rage, while Lily offered her fake, soothing comfort.

I shut the door, and the world finally went quiet.

Feeling a sharp, throbbing pain in the back of my head, I pulled a bottle of painkillers from my bag and chewed two tablets dry.

The bitter taste exploded in my mouth.

Its okay, Hazel.

You have the money now. You get to live.

As long as you can survive, who cares if you have to play the dog?

The school the Vance family sent me to was St. Jude's Academy, an elite private high school.

It was also Lilys home turf.

On my first day, the family chauffeur refused to let me in the car.

He looked at me and said, "Sorry, Hazel. There's no room left in the SUV. Youll have to find your own way."

It was a seven-seater Lincoln Navigator. Only Lily was sitting in the back.

I didn't argue. I turned around, found a public rental bike, and unlocked it.

A forty-minute bike ride was great cardio anyway.

When I finally walked into the classroom, homeroom had just started.

As a transfer student, I was assigned to the very last row, right next to the trash can.

Lily was sitting in the center of the room, surrounded by a crowd like a queen bee, handing out high-end macarons from a Michelin-starred bakery.

"My mom baked these herself. Please try some, everyone."

The classroom was filled with high-pitched praise.

But the moment I walked in, all the voices dropped to whispers.

"Is that the biological daughter from the slums?"

"I heard she threw a massive tantrum at home just to extort a hundred thousand dollars from her parents. Shes desperate for cash."

"Stay away from her. I heard she used to hang out with gang members."

Lily walked over to my desk holding a small box of macarons, a fake, sweet smile plastered on her face.

"Hazel, have some. I know you've probably never tasted anything this fancy before."

I was busy solving an AP Calculus practice exam. I didn't even look up.

"No, thanks. The sugar content is too high. It slows down my brain cells."

Lilys hand froze mid-air.

The classroom instantly erupted.

"Hazel! What is your problem? Lily is just trying to be nice!"

"Seriously, stop acting like you're above us. Do you even understand a single question on that test paper?"

I was getting annoyed.

Time was literally life for me. Every single minute had to be spent studying, winning scholarships, and getting into an Ivy League school.

After all, the top scholarship was worth twenty thousand dollars.

I raised my head and locked eyes with the boy who was yelling the loudest.

"That derivative problem you've been staring at... you've been trying to solve it for three periods now, haven't you?"

The boy stammered, "How... how did you know?"

"Your auxiliary line is wrong. You should draw the tangent line through point A."

I grabbed his pen and quickly wrote down three lines of calculations on his scratch paper.

"The rest is just plugging in the formula. A middle schooler could do it."

I tossed the pen back to him and buried my face back into my books.

"Don't annoy me. I'm busy."

The entire classroom fell dead silent.

The boy stared at the steps I wrote, his eyes practically popping out of his skull.

Lily bit her lip, tears welling up in her eyes as if she had just suffered the ultimate betrayal.

"Hazel... are you still mad at me for taking your place?"

"If it's because of that, I am so sorry..."

Again with this act.

Impatiently, I pulled a printed paper with my PayPal QR code from my backpack and slapped it onto my desk.

"Want to watch me play the loving sister? Sure."

"Scan and pay. One hundred dollars per scene."

"Two hundred for a chat, five hundred to act with you, and one thousand if you want me to take the blame for something."

"Small business, cash only. No credit."

Lily froze completely.

The rich kids watching the drama were entirely dumbfounded.

Ignoring their ridiculous faces, I went back to solving my geometry problems.

In this house, nobody got my attention unless they were paying for it.

At lunch, I ordered the cheapest salad in the cafeteria.

I transferred the saved money straight into my medical savings account.

As I was eating, my tray was suddenly flipped over.

The salad dressing and soup splashed all over my uniform.

Chloe Sterling, Lily's main sidekick, stood over me with her arms crossed, looking down her nose at me.

"Hazel, you made Lily cry. Go apologize to her right now."

I looked at the wasted food on the floor, my heart bleeding.

That lunch cost fifteen dollars.

That was enough to buy a box of antibiotics.

I slowly stood up and stared into Chloes eyes.

"Pay me back."

Chloe laughed as if she had just heard the funniest joke in the world. "What did you say?"

"The lunch was fifteen dollars. Dry cleaning for my uniform is fifty. Emotional damage is a hundred."

"One hundred and sixty-five dollars total. Snapchat or PayPal?"

Chloes laugh turned into a scowl. She pulled two hundred-dollar bills from her designer purse and slammed them onto the floor.

"You poor freak! Pick it up! Pick it up and I'll let you go!"

Humiliating me?

If I were in their shoes, maybe I would feel embarrassed.

But now?

I knelt down, picked up the two bills, and carefully wiped the dressing off them.

Thirty-five dollars extra. I made a profit.

I pocketed the money, looked at Chloe, and asked with absolute sincerity, "Do you want to throw another tray? I'll give you a twenty percent discount this time."

Chloe looked at me as if I were a literal monster.

"Psychopath... you are a complete psychopath!"

She turned and ran away in panic.

I went back to the counter, bought two cheap bread rolls, washed them down with the free water, and ate happily.

As long as I could stay alive.

Dignity meant absolutely nothing.

On the first district mock exam, I took first place.

Out of a total score of 1600 on the SAT mock prep, I got 1590.

The only ten points I lost were on the essay, because my handwriting was too messy. I had been rushing to finish so I could write essay papers for lazy rich college kids online. I needed quick cash.

The moment the report card was posted on the bulletin board, the whole school went wild.

Lily had placed tenth. The crowd that usually showered her with compliments fell quiet, and her face turned paper-white.

But I didn't expect that when I got home, instead of congratulations, a trial was waiting for me.

Arthur slammed my report card onto the coffee table.

"You cheated! This is utterly embarrassing!"

"The Vance family might be wealthy, but we do not tolerate academic fraud!"

"You barely passed your classes in that trashy public school, and suddenly you're first in the district? Do you think I'm an idiot?"

Eleanor chimed in from the side. "Lily has had Ivy League tutors since she was a child to get tenth place. A wild girl like you? How could you possibly beat her?"

How?

Because I used to collect cardboard boxes in the slums just to exchange them for old textbooks.

Because I hand-copied entire library workbooks to save money on prep materials.

Because I wanted to live.

I stood in the center of the living room. My head was throbbing violently. The tumor was probably pressing against my nerves again.

I felt a warm trickle of blood starting to leave my nose. I sniffed hard, forcing it back.

"I didn't cheat."

My voice was hoarse, and I had to fight to keep it from trembling.

"If you don't have proof, this is slander."

Lily walked over with red eyes and grabbed Arthurs hand.

"Dad, don't blame Hazel. Maybe... maybe she just wanted to prove herself to us too badly."

"Hazel, just go to the principal and admit it. We won't be mad at you."

The scent of her fake pity was sickening.

I let out a cold laugh. "You want proof?"

"The National Math Olympiad is next week. St. Jude's has two spots."

"They were supposed to go to Lily and Ethan Knight."

"I want one of those spots."

Arthur looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. "You want to go to the Olympiad? Is that a place for someone like you?"

"What if I win the gold medal?"

I looked him dead in the eye, my gaze burning.

Arthur sneered. "If you win the gold medal, I will give you one million dollars!"

"But if you lose, you pack your bags and get the hell out of the Vance family. Never show your face here again!"

"Deal."

I agreed instantly.

As I turned to go to my room, I heard Eleanor whispering behind me, "She is insane. Lily, sweetie, ignore her. Focus on your preparation. Don't let her ruin your focus."

The second I shut my bedroom door, I couldn't hold it in anymore. I rushed to the bathroom and threw up blood.

Staring at the crimson liquid in the sink, I turned on the faucet to wash it away.

One million dollars.

That was enough for the best minimally invasive surgery and the most advanced targeted drugs.

I was putting my life on this bet.

The next day at school, I went straight to the academic dean to demand my spot.

The dean looked troubled. "Hazel, even though you got the highest score on the mock exam, the Olympiad is a completely different level of difficulty..."

"Just let her take a test."

A cool, calm voice came from the doorway.

It was Ethan Knight.

The legend of St. Jude's Academy, the guy who had held the number-one spot for years, and the future son-in-law the Vance family wanted for Lily.

He leaned against the doorframe, twirling a pen in his fingers, watching me with an unreadable expression.

"This is last year's national final paper. If you can finish it in an hour and get a passing grade, Ill give you my spot."

The dean gasped. "Ethan, don't play around!"

I looked at Ethan.

He was incredibly handsome, but his eyes were too sharp, as if he could see right through my decaying body.

"I don't need you to give me anything."

I walked over and snatched the test paper from his hand.

"We will take it together."

"Whoever gets the higher score gets the spot."

Ethan raised an eyebrow, a smirk playing on his lips.

"Fine."

For the next hour, the deans office became the center of attention for the entire school.

Lily and her friends crowded outside the window, waiting to watch me humiliate myself.

At the forty-minute mark, I put down my pen.

"Done."

Two minutes later, Ethan also put his pen down.

The deans hands shook as he graded the papers.

"Ethan... ninety-eight percent."

Outside, Lily let out a sigh of relief, a smile starting to form on her face.

"Hazel... one hundred percent."

"A perfect score?!"

The deans voice cracked.

I stood up, but because I got up too fast, my vision went black for a second.

I gripped the edge of the desk to steady myself and looked at Ethan.

"Thanks."

Ethan stared at me for a moment, then reached into his pocket and handed me a chocolate bar.

"Low blood sugar?"

I didn't take it.

"Can't afford to pay you back. I don't take charity."

Ethans hand paused, then he slipped the chocolate directly into my blazer pocket.

"It's payment for the shortcut you used on the final question."

I felt the warmth of the chocolate through my pocket.

Since it was a trade, Id keep it.

After all, I really needed the energy right now.

On the day of the Olympiad, Lily came along too.

Even though she couldn't beat me, the Vance family had used their connections to get her an alternate spot.

In the van, she kept staring at my backpack.

My admission ticket and ID card were in there.

When we arrived at the test center, Lily suddenly clutched her stomach and crouched down.

"Oh my god, it hurts... my stomach hurts so bad..."

The Vance family driver panicked and immediately got out of the car to help her.

In the chaos, I felt someone bump into me.

By the time I realized what had happened, my backpack zipper was halfway open.

My admission ticket was gone.

Lily had a tiny, barely visible smirk on her face as the driver helped her walk toward the medical tent.

"Hazel, go inside. Don't worry about me."

A classic distraction and theft.

If this had been the old me, I would have panicked.

But I only gave her a cold look, turned around, and walked straight to the registration office.

"Excuse me, I lost my physical ticket and my ID card."

The proctor frowned. "Then you can't enter the hall."

"But I remember my candidate number."

"And I have my digital ID saved on my phone."

In this digital age, Lilys petty tricks were laughably outdated.

Besides, Ethan had already warned me.

Last night, he had sent me a message on Snapchat: Lily is up to something. Keep your eyes open.

I successfully entered the exam room.

The moment the exam papers were handed out, the entire world went silent.

Those numbers and symbols weren't boring formulas to me. They were the secret codes to my survival.

Every question I solved felt like another beat of my heart.

The final question was incredibly difficult. It involved advanced college-level topology.

I bit down on the end of my pen, a sharp, excruciating pain blooming in my head. It felt like a drill was boring into my brain.

Cold sweat poured down my forehead, dripping onto the paper.

I couldn't collapse.

Not here. Not now.

I pinched my thigh hard, using the physical pain to force my mind to stay conscious.

I got it.

Just as I wrote down the final formula, the buzzer rang, signaling the end of the exam.

Walking out of the building, I saw Arthur and Eleanor anxiously crowding around Lily.

Lily had tears in her eyes. "Mom, Dad... I couldn't solve the last two questions... I don't think I'll win any awards."

Eleanor hugged her tightly. "It's okay, sweetheart. It's the effort that counts. You weren't feeling well anyway."

Seeing me walk out, Arthurs face instantly darkened.

"You actually have the nerve to walk out of there? You lost your admission ticket on purpose, didn't you? You were just scared of failing and getting caught!"

Lily acted surprised. "Hazel, you got in? How did you get in without a ticket?"

I had no energy left to waste on them.

"Get that one million dollars ready."

The moment those words left my mouth, I felt a rush of warm liquid pouring out of my nose.

It wouldn't stop.

The bright red blood dripped onto my white school uniform. My vision began to blur, and the world started to spin.

"Stop acting! Do you think a little nosebleed is going to make us feel sorry for you?" Arthur took a step back in disgust, terrified of getting blood on his expensive suit.

My knees buckled, and I collapsed straight onto the hard concrete.

As I fell, the contents of my backpack spilled everywhere.

Along with my pencil case, a thick black ledger rolled out.

Lilys sharp eyes caught it, and she quickly snatched it up.

"What is this? This is why you keep demanding money from us, isn't it?"

She opened the first page and read out loud in a dramatic voice:

"September 1st: Received 0-000,000. Expenses: Chemotherapy deposit $20,000, targeted cancer drugs $80,000..."

Lilys voice suddenly died in her throat.

Arthur snatched the ledger from her hands.

"What is this trash? You made up a fake ledger just to scam us for more money?"

He furiously flipped the pages, and a dozen medical receipts and diagnosis sheets fluttered out of the book.

My latest medical report, printed just a week ago, landed right next to his leather shoe.

The red hospital stamp on the paper read:

[Patient: Hazel Vance. Diagnosis: Glioblastoma, Stage IV. Immediate surgical intervention recommended. Life expectancy without surgery: Less than three months.]

The air around us seemed to freeze solid.

I lay on the cold concrete floor, my consciousness slipping away.

The last thing I saw was Ethan frantically pushing through the crowd, running toward me like a madman.

And Arthurs face, which had turned completely, horrifyingly pale.