My Parents Swapped My Perfect SAT Score with My Twin Sister’s

The SAT scores were finally released. I, who had always been a straightA student, scored a miserable 580.

For the first time in my life, my parents actually held me in their arms, gently comforting me: "It's okay, sweetie.

We'll pay for an elite prep school so you can retake it next year." With my eyes welling up with tears, I promised them, "I will definitely get into a toptier school next year.

I won't let you down." They prepared a lavish dinner and, with warm smiles, told me to get some early rest. Late that night, I heard laughter coming from my parents' bedroom.

Through the crack in the door, my twin sister’s voice drifted out: "Mom, Dad, you guys are absolute geniuses!

I'm going to Stanford!" Holding my glass of water, I froze right at the turn of the hallway. From inside the room came my mother’s voice.

It was filled with a tenderness I had never once heard in my sixteen years of life. "Don't worry, Chloe. She won’t find out.

And even if she does, what can she possibly do about it?" My father chimed in with a chuckle, his tone completely dismissive. "Exactly. You two look completely identical.

Who could tell you apart? Besides, we’ve raised her for so many years.

What’s wrong with her giving up her score for her sister?" Then came my sister Chloe’s voice, carrying a slight hint of anxiety. "Mom, is there any chance she might hear us?" "That little bookworm?

She’s probably still locked in her room, obsessively checking her practice books. You know what she's like.

She won't stop analyzing every single question ten times over until she's exhausted.

She has no brainpower left to care about what we’re saying." My mother sneered. "And even if she does hear, so what?" My father added, "Your mom and I have already set everything up.

We paid off the right people.

As soon as the official acceptance letter arrives, we’ll throw a massive gala at the country club to celebrate our baby girl." Only then did Chloe relax, her voice returning to that sweet, spoiled tone. "Thank you, Mom and Dad.

I knew you loved me most." I stood there in the dark, my hand gripping the glass so hard it began to tremble. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

Just a few hours ago, the moment the SAT scores were released, I had logged in to check my results. 580. I was completely paralyzed with shock.

My estimated score was at least a 1580. I had doublechecked my answers for every section. My math and reading were practically perfect, and my essay was flawless.

I had even reentered my registration ID three times to make sure there was no mistake. But the screen clearly showed: Total Score: 580.

Thinking there was a system glitch, I refreshed it again and again. It was still 580. I stumbled out of my room. My parents were in the living room watching TV.

When I told them my score, shock and deep concern instantly washed over their faces. My mother was the first to rush over, wrapping me in a tight hug.

She rubbed my shoulders, her voice incredibly soft. "It’s okay, Nora. It’s just one test.

Don't worry, we'll pay for a private prep program so you can retake it next year." My father also came over, patting my back. "Don't be sad. It's just the SATs.

You can always try again next year." Chloe peeked out from her bedroom. She didn't say anything, but her eyes seemed to carry a look of concern.

At that moment, a wave of warmth had flooded my heart.

I thought that even though they had never treated me very well growing up, at least in a moment of crisis like this, they were on my side.

For dinner, my mother had cooked a massive feast. There were prime rib, lobster, garlic shrimp, and my absolute favorite sweet and sour pork.

My father opened a bottle of expensive red wine and poured me a small glass. "Come on, Nora. Let's make a toast. You didn't do well this time, but Dad doesn't blame you.

Next year, we’ll get you into Harvard to show them all." With teary eyes, I held up my glass, my voice thick with emotion. "Thank you, Mom, Dad.

I promise I’ll get into a great school next year. I won't embarrass you." Chloe smiled from across the table. "Good luck, Nora.

I know you can do it." That dinner had felt so incredibly warm—so warm that it felt almost unreal. Growing up, I had only ever seen Chloe receive this kind of treatment.

After dinner, my mother urged me to go to bed early, saying I had been under too much stress lately and needed to catch up on sleep.

Obediently, I took a shower, went back to my room, and lay down. But I kept tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep. The number 580 kept flashing in my mind.

No matter how I looked at it, it made absolutely no sense. Throughout my three years of high school, my practice scores had never dropped below 1500.

A score of 580 was mathematically impossible for me. Refusing to give up, I got out of bed and checked the portal again. Still 580.

I went online, crossreferencing my memory with the leaked answer keys over and over. I knew for a fact I had gotten those questions right.

By the time I had tossed and turned until 1:00 AM, my throat was burning with thirst. I finally got up to get a glass of water. And that was when I overheard their conversation.

Thinking back now, that lavish dinner, those sweet words of comfort, and that warm family night—they were all a sickening lie. It was their celebration dinner.

But the guest of honor wasn't me. It was Chloe. Instinctively, I wanted to take a step closer to hear more clearly, but my hand lost all strength.

The glass slipped from my fingers and shattered onto the hardwood floor with a loud crash. Shards flew everywhere. The bedroom instantly went dead silent.

The door swung open violently, and my mother’s face appeared in the doorway. When she saw it was me, a flash of panic crossed her eyes, but she quickly masked it.

Forcing a smile, her tone carried an edge of interrogation. "Why aren't you sleeping at this hour?

What are you doing standing out here?" I stared at her blankly, my mind a complete void. My throat felt like it was clogged with concrete.

It took me forever to squeeze out a few words. "I... I was thirsty. I wanted to get some water." My father stepped out behind her.

His eyes swept over my face before he patted my mother's shoulder. "Alright, alright. The kid was just thirsty.

Why are you being so harsh?" My mother’s expression softened immediately.

She bent down, picking up the broken glass. "Honestly, Nora, you can’t even hold a glass of water without breaking it. Go back to bed.

I'll clean this up." I twitched the corners of my mouth, trying to force a smile, though I had no idea if it actually looked like one. I turned around to walk back to my room.

As I passed by my parents' open door, I glanced inside. Chloe was leaning against the headboard, scrolling through her phone. Sensing my shadow, she raised her eyes.

Her face was adorned with a bright, mocking smirk. I knew that smirk all too well.

Growing up, every time I got yelled at by my parents, every time I brought home a perfect report card only to be told I wasn't good enough, and every time I stood in the corner watching the three of them act like a perfect family, Chloe would wear that exact smirk.

It was the smile of a victor. It was smug, boastful, and the cheap pity of a favored child looking down on the unloved one.

I lowered my gaze and quickened my steps back into my bedroom. The moment the door clicked shut, my knees gave out.

I slid down against the doorframe, my back pressed against the cold wood, and the tears finally poured down my face uncontrolled. Chloe and I were identical twins.

We looked exactly the same. Same eyes, same height, even our voices sounded identical. Outsiders could never tell us apart.

Sometimes even our teachers would call us by the wrong name. But our parents never made that mistake.

Not because they understood me so well, but because in their eyes, I simply did not exist.

For as long as I could remember, I had lived with Grandma Evelyn in a small, rural town upstate. My parents kept Chloe with them in their wealthy suburban home.

They only visited us briefly during the holidays, rushing through a quick dinner before driving back. Whenever they visited, Chloe was always wrapped in my mother's arms.

My father would buy her designer clothes and the newest gadgets, their laughter echoing through the small house.

Meanwhile, I would sit quietly next to Grandma Evelyn, watching them like I was watching a movie that had absolutely nothing to do with me.

Grandma once told me that when my mother was in labor, there were severe complications. The doctor said it was a critical situation and asked who they should save.

Without a single second of hesitation, my father chose Chloe.

Ultimately, both of us survived, but from that day on, my mother always believed I was born under a curse, a bad omen that had almost killed her precious Chloe.

I didn't believe in curses. But I did believe one thing: from the day I was born, I was never their choice. Grandma Evelyn was the only light in my life.

She wasn't highly educated, but she taught me how to read, do math, and most importantly, how to be honest and kind. She always said, "Nora, you have to study hard.

Get into a great college, and you will never have to rely on anyone else." I started school at six, walking two miles along a dirt road every single day to get to the local school.

Chloe had our parents driving her back and forth in a luxury SUV, while I walked alone in the wind. On rainy days, Chloe had parents waiting with umbrellas.

I only had my backpack to shield my head as I ran home. But I never felt miserable, because Grandma Evelyn was always waiting for me.

She would have a warm bowl of soup waiting on the stove, dry my wet clothes, and sit beside me under the dim lamp while I did my homework.

Her back grew more hunched over the years, and her eyes grew cloudy, but every time I brought home a firstplace ribbon, her face would light up with joy. "Our Nora is the smartest girl in the world," she would say, stroking my hair. "You’re going to college in the big city."

Grandma Evelyn passed away when I was twelve. It was incredibly sudden. She was sewing my socks the night before, and the next morning, she just didn't wake up.

I held her cold hand and cried for a whole day until my throat was hoarse and my tears ran completely dry. I felt like an empty shell. My parents came back to handle the funeral.

Chloe stood behind them, wearing a gorgeous floral dress and holding an ice cream cone.

Watching me cry with dirt and tears all over my face, she rolled her eyes and hid behind our mother. After the funeral, my mother said, "You’re coming back to the city with us.

You'll go to school there from now on." I had no choice in the matter. I was dragged into that house they called a home.

From that day on, my life turned into a slow, agonizing torture. My parents' academic demands on me were borderline psychotic. I had to get perfect scores.

A single point missing meant a beating. An A meant a wooden ruler snapped across my palms. A B meant kneeling on the hardwood floor of the hallway for two hours.

If my grade ever fell below a B, I wasn't allowed to eat dinner that night. I remember once, I got a 97% on a calculus test because I misread a multiplechoice question.

My father stared at the paper for a long time before delivering a hard slap across my face. The force spun my head around, and tears welled up in my eyes.

But he just screamed at me, calling me a brainless idiot, a worthless parasite, saying I didn't deserve to be his daughter.

That night, I lay in bed with my cheek swollen and my ears ringing. Chloe pushed my door open.

She held up her test sheet, which had a big red 'D' circled on it, and waved it in front of my face. "Hey, Nora, guess what?

Dad just gave me a hundred dollars because he said I showed improvement." She giggled, her eyes curving into crescent moons.

Then she leaned in close, whispering, "You are so pathetic." As she turned to leave, I saw my mother standing at the end of the hallway, waving Chloe over with a bowl of freshly made dessert in her hands.

Meanwhile, I was starving, my face still burning from my father’s handprint. I studied like my life depended on it. Not out of passion, but out of sheer, paralyzing terror.

I was terrified of the ruler, terrified of the kneeling, terrified of going hungry.

So I did practice questions, memorized textbooks, and took practice exams over and over, turning myself into a flawless testtaking machine.

I was the valedictorian of my class every single year. I won state math championships, took first place in citywide debate tournaments, and won national writing contests.

But to my parents, none of it mattered. When I got first place, they never praised me; they only told me to make sure I kept it up.

When I got perfect marks, they didn't smile; they only said it was the bare minimum expected of me. But what about Chloe?

When she barely scraped a passing grade, they took her to fancy dinners. When she got a C, they bought her designer clothes.

Even if she just finished her homework on time, my mother would kiss her cheek and tell her she was the sweetest angel.

During junior year, I got the highest score in the entire district, ranking number one. Chloe, on the other hand, scored in the bottom 5% of our class.

That night, my father was in the living room wiping Chloe’s tears, cooing, "It’s okay, baby.

We’ll just try harder next time." Then he turned his head to look at me, his eyes instantly turning icecold. "You.

Go copy your prep vocabulary fifty times." I opened my mouth, wanting to say that I hadn't made a single mistake, that I had a perfect score. But I kept my mouth shut.

Because I knew all too well that no matter what I achieved, in their eyes, I would never compare to Chloe. No, it wasn't just that I didn't compare.

It was that I was never considered worthy of being their child. That night, I didn't sleep a wink.

Lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, those whispered words from their room kept looping in my head. "We paid off the right people." "As soon as the acceptance letter arrives, we'll throw a gala." "You two look completely identical.

Who could tell you apart?" I began to piece together every single detail of our childhood. Chloe had always been terrible academically. Everyone knew that.

She barely got by in middle school, and by high school, she was consistently at the bottom. My parents hired private tutors for her, but it did nothing.

On her last mock SAT, she scored a 980. Meanwhile, from freshman to senior year, I had consistently scored nearperfect scores on every major exam.

My parents' demands on me had grown increasingly brutal. Any grade less than perfect resulted in physical abuse.

I used to think they were just tiger parents who wanted me to succeed. But now I realized they didn't want me to succeed at all. They just needed me to be perfect.

They needed me to secure a nearimpossible, flawless score. Because that score was never meant for me. I recalled a memory from when we were in the third grade.

My parents had come upstate to visit Grandma. I had proudly held up my perfect spelling test, wanting to show them. My mother was brushing Chloe's hair.

Without even glancing at me, she simply muttered, "Put it on the table." Later, that test paper vanished. I searched for it for days but couldn't find it.

During spring cleaning months later, I found it in Chloe's desk drawer. The paper was crumpled and covered in doodles, with Chloe’s name scribbled sloppily over mine.

When I asked Chloe why she took my test, she laughed. "I just thought it was fun. Besides, nobody cares about your grades anyway." I hadn't thought much of it back then.

But looking back now, maybe my parents had been planning this from the very beginning. They were testing us.

Testing our physical similarity, testing whether the people around us could actually tell us apart. And the result was clear: almost no one could.

If my parents registered Chloe for the exam but had me sit in the seat, using our identical faces to bypass the test center security, who would ever suspect a thing?

After all, we were identical twins. I didn't dare think any further. If this entire life had been a setup from the start, how horrifyingly calculating were they?

I rolled over, burying my face in the pillow, my tears silently soaking the fabric. The next morning, I got up before the sun was even fully awake.

When I walked out of my room, my parents were already in the living room. Seeing me, a bright smile spread across my mother’s face.

That smile was so utterly foreign that it sent a shiver down my spine. "Oh, Chloe, you're up? Come have breakfast. Mom made your favorite avocado toast." Chloe.

That was my sister's name. My name is Nora. I froze. My mother also realized her slip of the tongue, but she quickly laughed it off without correcting herself.

Silently, I walked over to the dining table. It was piled high with a lavish breakfast spread.

Pancakes, fresh berries, freshly squeezed orange juice, and even a bowl of organic yogurt parfaits. None of these had ever appeared on my breakfast table before.

What did my breakfast usually look like? At best, a piece of stale toast or last night’s leftovers. If I woke up even a minute late, I got absolutely nothing.

Chloe walked out of her room wearing a brandnew designer dress, her hair perfectly styled.

She glanced at the breakfast table and pouted. "Mom, why are you making such a big deal for her?" My mother gave her a warning look. "Watch your mouth.

Your sister is going to start her intensive prep course soon. She needs her nutrition." Prep course.

My hand holding the fork stiffened slightly. "I’ve already looked into the best elite SAT prep program for you.

It costs thirty thousand dollars a year, but your mother and I are willing to make that sacrifice for you." My father set his newspaper down, looking at me with a rare, gentle tone. "Nora, you didn't do well on the SATs this time, but we don't blame you.

We’ll try again next year." Didn't do well. Was the person who didn't do well really me? I kept my head down, remaining silent.

Chloe sat across from me, popping a blueberry into her mouth, a sweet smile on her face. "Nora, you usually study so hard. How did you end up with such a trash score?

Were you just faking it the whole time?" Her voice was dripping with honeyed poison. "Chloe," my mother warned, but her tone held no real reprimand.

It was pure indulgence, a mere performance. Chloe stuck her tongue out and continued eating.

My father took a sip of his coffee, asking in a seemingly casual tone, "By the way, Nora... last night, you said you came out to get water?" Here it came.

My chest tightened, but I kept my face entirely blank. "Yeah.

I woke up really thirsty." I raised my head, looking straight into my father's eyes. "Why?" My father and mother exchanged a quick, tense look.

My mother quickly took over the conversation. "Oh, nothing, nothing. We were just worried you were under too much stress and couldn't sleep well.

By the way... did you hear anything last night?"