Chapter 1

I woke up.

The sunlight felt wrong, too bright for what should have been a bleak afternoon.

My room looked the same, but different. Familiar, yet charged with a terrible memory.

Then I saw the date on my phone: two months before the SATs.

My breath caught.

I was back.

I was alive again, before everything went to hell.

Ms. Evans. The name tasted like poison in my mind.

Our housekeeper. Always smiling, always offering a kind word.

In my past life, she offered me "special calming tea" right before the SATs.

She said it was an old family recipe.

It was.

A recipe that swapped souls.

I remembered the horror.

Waking up in Brenda Evans's body. Brenda, her daughter, academically hopeless, resentful.

I was trapped, forced to take the SATs as Brenda. I tried my best, my mind racing, my borrowed hands clumsy.

But Brenda, in my body, my life, my future.

She didn't just fail my SATs.

She caused a scene. A massive disturbance.

Screaming, tearing up the test.

They disqualified me. Blacklisted me.

My parents, they believed Ms. Evans.

"Chloe had a breakdown."

"Chloe cheated."

Their disappointment was a heavy blanket, smothering me.

Ostracized. My dreams of an Ivy League college, shattered.

I faded. Despair consumed me.

Until I just… stopped.

Now, I was back.

My hands clenched.

This time, things would be different.

I wouldn't just prevent it.

I would understand why. Why Ms. Evans and Brenda hated me enough to destroy me.

Justice. And self-preservation.

Those were my new goals.

The stray white cat I' d been feeding, Ghost, meowed softly from outside my window.

He was part of this, too. He would be.