Chapter 1

My name is Sarah Miller, and I have a twin sister, Jessica.

We look alike, but that' s where the similarities end.

Our mother, Karen, loved Jessica, gave her everything.

Me, she hated.

She said I looked too much like my father, Mr. Miller.

He was a kind man, died when we were young.

Karen always said she was forced to marry him, that she despised him.

I knew, even as a child, his death wasn' t an accident.

I saw things, hushed conversations between Mom and a man named Rick.

After Dad died, Mom' s hatred for me grew, and her love for Jessie became a weapon.

Jessie was a terrible student, always out with a bad crowd.

I studied hard, buried myself in books. It was my only escape.

High school graduation came.

My SAT scores were nearly perfect, a full scholarship to Stanford.

Jessie' s scores were a disaster.

Mom couldn' t accept it.

She told me, "Jessie deserves this chance, not you. You remind me too much of him."

She forged documents, stole my acceptance, my scholarship, my future, and gave it to Jessie.

I found out when the acceptance package arrived addressed to me, but Jessie snatched it, her eyes gleaming with triumph, Mom smiling beside her.

"This is mine now, Sarah," Jessie sneered.

"Mom, you can't do this! It's illegal! It's my spot!" I pleaded.

Karen slapped me, hard. "It's what Jessie deserves. You will say nothing."

I tried to fight. I went to the school, told them about the forgery. I called Stanford.

But Mom was ready.

She and Jessie launched their attack.

Photos appeared online, me at wild parties, drunk, half-naked.

Except it wasn' t me. It was Jessie.

They' d been clever, a blur here, a shadow there, but the captions screamed my name.

"Sarah Miller, the school's 'genius,' is a fraud and a degenerate!"

My best friend, Ashley, stood by them.

"Sarah' s always been jealous of Jessie," Ashley told everyone, her voice dripping with false sympathy. "She' s unstable. Those photos are real. I was there."

Jealousy over Ethan Hayes, the popular school quarterback who was always kind to me, and a hefty bribe from Mom, sealed Ashley' s betrayal.

The school believed them. Stanford rescinded the offer, citing moral turpitude.

I was a pariah.

Whispers followed me, fingers pointed. "Look, it's the psycho slut."

The cyberbullying was relentless.

My world collapsed.

The weight of the injustice, the betrayal, the public shame, it was too much.

I remember standing on the old town bridge, the water dark and cold below.

Then, nothing.