Skipping down the stairs, I braced for the predictable explosion. "Where do you think you're going with those...things in your hair?" Mom's voice, usually prim and polished, crackled with fury. Her gaze snagged on the rebellious red highlights, a slap in the face of her meticulous control.

"Do you like it?" I asked, forcing cheer into my voice.

"Like it? You look like...like..." She sputtered, searching for the most venomous insult. "A street urchin!" the word finally exploded, echoing through the sterile silence of our home.

Tears welled in her eyes, but they weren't for me. They were for the perfect phantom that haunted every corner, every expectation. "First your hair, then the clothes, now this? What have you become?" Her voice choked, the image of a grieving mother crumbling before me.

"Your sister would never do something like this!" the accusation, a poisoned barb, hit its mark. My jaw clenched, the smile hardening into a mask. "I AM NOT MY SISTER."

The front door slammed shut, a defiant punctuation mark against the tyranny of expectations. The engine of my bike roared to life, the rumble drowning out the echoes of disappointment in my head. An electric thrill coursed through me as I gripped the handlebars, the open road a promise of escape.

Ever since the cancer had snatched my sister from our shared future, my parents had turned me into their living trophy. My twin, the paragon of beauty and grace, the shadow I could never escape. College, their golden path, had been ripped away, leaving me to tread a lonely path under their suffocating scrutiny.

Grades, never good enough. Manners, never proper enough. Every misstep, every deviation from their vision, met with disappointment etched on their faces.

The first rebellion was the scissors slicing through my once-carefully maintained locks. "Unladylike," my mother had hissed, but the freedom in the messy strands was intoxicating. My clothes, once a kaleidoscope of pastels and florals, morphed into hoodies and leather jackets, a shield against their suffocating gaze.

"But I still love dresses," I'd pleaded, but they saw only a betrayal, a rejection of their meticulous creation. They mourned the perfect daughter they'd imagined, blind to the one standing before them.