I locked my gaze directly onto Chloe. She was trembling violently, her mouth hanging slightly ajar, the blood rapidly draining from her face.

“You are currently breathing,” I said, my voice dropping to a fierce, trembling whisper that the high-tech microphone picked up perfectly.

“You are standing there in your five-hundred-dollar designer swimsuit, breathing the summer air I nearly died to preserve, because I sacrificed my own body to preserve yours.”

Chloe looked as though she had been hit by the full force of the truth. The expensive designer sunglasses she had been casually twirling slipped from her suddenly weak, trembling fingers. They struck the stone deck, the lenses breaking into a dozen jagged pieces.

The crushing weight of her terrible ingratitude—the cruelty of what she had just openly mocked—finally became real to her.

Chloe let out a broken cry of agonizing regret. Her knees simply gave out beneath her. She collapsed onto the wet stone patio, scraping her shins as she crawled across the puddles until she reached the edge of the wooden stage. She buried her tear-soaked face into the wood near my bare feet, sobbing hysterically, her perfect, lavish birthday ruined by the weight of the truth.