Chapter 1

The first gunshot was a flat, ugly pop that didn't sound real. It was nothing like the movies. It just sounded wrong.

My head snapped up from the SAT prep book. Across the wide library table, my sister Sarah didn' t even flinch, her pencil still scratching across a practice test.

My heart began to hammer against my ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. A cold sweat broke out across my back. I knew this sound. I knew this exact moment. It was a memory burned into my soul, a nightmare I was forced to relive.

In my last life, this was the moment I grabbed Sarah' s arm. I screamed at her to run, to hide. She had looked at me, annoyed, telling me to stop being dramatic. When the second shot came, closer this time, I dragged her under the table. We huddled there, trembling, as the screams started outside the library doors. I held her hand, promising I would get her out, that I would protect her.

The shooter had found us anyway.

I remembered the searing pain in my own shoulder, but my focus was on Sarah. The bullet had hit her in the abdomen. There was so much blood.

I had pulled out my phone, my fingers numb and clumsy, and called my mother, Dr. Olivia Vance. The world-renowned neurosurgeon.

"Liam? What is it? I' m busy," her voice was clipped, impatient.

"Mom, it' s Sarah! She' s been shot! At the school library, there' s a shooter!" I yelled into the phone, my voice cracking with panic.

"Don' t be ridiculous, Liam. Stop trying to get attention with these sick jokes. I' m on my way to the beach with Ethan. He' s been looking forward to this all week."

"It' s not a joke! Mom, please! She' s bleeding, she needs a doctor, she needs you!"

But the line went dead. She had hung up on me.

Sarah died in my arms waiting for an ambulance that came too late. They said if a surgeon had been there, if the bleeding had been stopped sooner, she might have lived.

My family never forgave me. At her funeral, they didn' t look at me. They looked through me. My father, David, his face a mask of grief. My grandparents, their eyes full of accusation. They all listened to Olivia as she painted me as the monster.

"He was jealous of her," she' d said, her voice dripping with a performer' s sorrow. "He was always trying to ruin things for her. He probably distracted her, kept her from hiding properly."

They believed her. They always believed her. They ostracized me, the son who failed to save the perfect daughter.

The end came a few weeks later. My mother found me in the kitchen. Her eyes were hollow, dead. She held a syringe in her hand.

"It should have been you," she whispered, her voice devoid of all emotion. "It' s all your fault. She' s gone because of you."

I was too broken to fight back. She plunged the needle into my neck. The world went dark.

And then I woke up.

I was back in the library. The SAT book was open to the same page. Across from me, Sarah was still alive, her brow furrowed in concentration. The date on my phone confirmed it. It was the same day.

Then came the pop. The first gunshot.

This time, I looked at Sarah. I saw her perfect face, the daughter our parents adored. I saw the girl who got everything while I got the scraps. I saw the centerpiece of the family that had cast me out and left me to die.

The memory of my mother' s dead eyes, the cold prick of the needle, flooded my senses. The choice was not a choice at all. It was survival.

A second shot, closer this time.

Sarah finally looked up, her eyes wide with confusion.

"Liam? What was that?"

I didn' t answer. I didn't grab her hand. I didn't scream for her to hide.

I stood up, my chair scraping loudly against the floor. I turned my back on her.

And I ran.

I pushed through the heavy library doors just as the first real screams echoed down the hall. I didn't look back. I just ran, away from the school, away from Sarah, away from the life that had already destroyed me once. This time, I would not be the hero. This time, I would save myself.