Chapter 1

My mother stood before us, her face a mask of false sincerity.

The air in our cramped Ohio living room was thick with the smell of stale cigarette smoke and her cheap perfume.

"Girls, I have an offer for you," she said.

Her eyes, cold and calculating, flickered between me and my younger sister, Ashley.

"I' m moving to Palo Alto. I' ve got a job as a live-in housekeeper for a very wealthy family. A tech billionaire."

She paused, letting the words hang in the air.

"You can come with me. You' ll go to a prestigious private high school with the son, Ethan. But I' ll only pay for your in-state college, a UC school."

That was option one.

"Or," she continued, a faint smirk on her lips, "you can stay here with your uncle. Finish high school, and I' ll use my savings to send you to an Ivy League university on the East Coast."

Ashley didn' t hesitate.

"I' m going to California," she declared, her voice filled with a greedy excitement I knew all too well.

My mother' s smile widened. She was pleased.

"Sarah," she said, turning to me, "let your sister have this. She deserves a chance at a better life. I' ll make it up to you. I promise, I' ll save every penny for your Ivy League dream."

I looked at Ashley, at the triumphant gleam in her eyes. I knew her secret.

She was reborn, just like me.

And she was making a play for Ethan.

A play I knew would fail. Ethan would never fall for someone as shallow as her. I knew this because in our first life, he had fallen for me.

That life ended in fire and blood.

In that life, I was the one who chose California. Ashley took the Ivy League promise. I went to be with my mother, naive enough to believe she wanted me there.

I met Ethan at that private school. He was quiet, reserved, and brilliant. We connected over robotics and quantum physics, our conversations a secret language no one else understood. Our love was a hidden thing, nurtured in the library and the late-night quiet of his family' s estate.

The night of our high school graduation, he was drunk on expensive champagne. He pulled me aside, his eyes shining with a desperate intensity.

"Sarah, come to MIT with me."

He confessed his love. He offered to pay for everything.

I was ecstatic. I ran to tell my mother.

She slapped me.

"You little gold-digger," she hissed, her face twisted with rage. "Seducing the boss' s son."

She forbade me from going. She told me all her money was for Ashley' s education.

Ethan and I tried long-distance. My mother, pretending to be supportive, asked Ethan to "look out for" Ashley, who was attending a community college near his university.

Then came the photo.

Ashley, topless, in a bed with an unconscious Ethan. A text message followed: "He' s mine now."

My world shattered. I knew it was a setup, but the image burned behind my eyes. I grabbed my keys, my hands shaking, and rushed to my car to drive to him, to confront her.

I never made it.

A hit-and-run. As my life bled out on the asphalt, my spirit rose.

I heard them. My mother and Ashley, on the phone, celebrating.

"She' s dead," Ashley shrieked with laughter. "It worked. Now Ethan is all mine."

Then I saw Ethan. He found out about my death. He found the note I' d left him, explaining everything. He saw through their lies.

The heartbreak in his eyes was a physical force. He walked to the highest point on campus and jumped.

Rage, pure and absolute, consumed my fading spirit. I used the last of my energy to find Ashley. I watched her preen in front of a mirror, then I shoved.

She tumbled down the grand staircase of my mother' s new apartment, the one bought with the money she' d extorted from Ethan' s family after my death. Her neck snapped on the marble floor.

Then, darkness.

Until I woke up here, back in this smoke-filled living room, with my mother presenting the same choice.

This time, I would choose differently. This time, they would be the ones to pay.