When my brother announced his engagement, I was thrilled—until he said he was marrying Nancy, the girl who made my childhood miserable. She wasn’t the kind of bully who hit or shoved. Her weapons were whispers, smirks, and backhanded compliments. While teachers adored her and my parents dismissed my complaints, I spent years mastering invisibility just to survive school.

I escaped after graduation, built a life far from her shadow, and for a while, I thought I’d moved on. But at their engagement party, the past came rushing back. Nancy hadn’t changed. Her smiles were sharp, her compliments laced with cruelty. “Still rocking that old haircut?” she chirped. “It’s cute you never outgrew it.” My brother, blind with love, didn’t notice a thing.

That night, I remembered something from high school—Nancy’s irrational fear of butterflies. During biology class, she’d screamed and fled the room at the sight of them. The memory sparked a plan. I ordered a special wedding gift: two hundred live butterflies, packaged beautifully and scheduled to arrive at their home the night of the wedding.

When Nancy opened the box indoors, chaos erupted. She screamed, flailed, and sobbed in her wedding dress as the butterflies filled the room. My brother tried to calm her, but she was inconsolable. The whole scene was caught on video, just as I’d arranged.

The next morning, he called, furious. I calmly reminded him of the countless nights I cried because of her cruelty. “That was high school,” he said. “Exactly,” I replied. “And she never let it go.”

That night, I finally slept in peace.