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The university library hummed with the quiet hum of panic on the last day for college applications. My finger hovered over the 'Submit' button for Caltech, my dream school, when I heard him. Liam, my best friend since childhood, was laughing with his friends, his voice cutting through the silence. "Chloe' s going there. She' s an art major, and she' s kind of nervous about being in the city alone. Someone' s got to look out for her." Then the words that shattered everything: "Ava? It' s fine. She has my account password. When she sees I' ve changed my mind, she' ll follow suit. She can' t live without me anyway." My breath caught. He hadn' t just broken our decade-long promise of attending Caltech together; he expected me to abandon my own future, my father' s legacy, like a pet. He truly saw me as an extension of himself, not a person with my own dreams. The casual cruelty stung, deeper than any physical pain. How could he so easily dismiss everything we' d planned, everything I was, for a new girl he barely knew? Had our shared dream, the very foundation of my future, been nothing but a fleeting whim to him? The betrayal was absolute, the humiliation searing. I had built my world around a promise that, for him, was apparently disposable. But then, a cold anger washed over me, stronger than any hurt. He thought I couldn' t live without him? He had no idea. With a steady hand, I clicked 'Submit' on my Caltech application, forging my own path, free from his shadow.