My eyes snapped open to the blare of my alarm, October 17th. Senior year. Mock SAT Day. A familiar, suffocating nightmare.
For a second, I didn' t know where I was, then the cold dread washed over me: I was back. Back to that exact day. The beginning of the end.
I remembered it all: the accusations, Tiffany Hayes' smug face, Chad' s betrayal, my mother' s tears and worsening cough, the crushing weight of a ruined future, my own descent into despair that had culminated in unspeakable suffering.
I had meticulously sabotaged myself this time, purposely failing the mock SAT to avoid repeating history.
But when the scores were posted, Tiffany Hayes had a near-perfect score of 1580.
Even more terrifying, she had replicated my unique, deliberately flawed math solutions-down to a random doodle I' d made. How? How was she inside my head?
This wasn't just cheating; it was invasive, a violation of my very thoughts. No more.
This time, armed with my father' s secret tech empire and a former military intelligence expert Mr. K, I wouldn't be the victim.
I was going to expose her, reclaim my life, and save my family from the nightmare she' d already put us through once.