Chapter 12 Reborn
I came to with a gasp.
Cold tile pressed against my cheek. For a second, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. My lungs dragged in air like I’d been drowning, like I’d just been pulled out of something dark and endless.
Bass thudded through the walls, loud enough to shake the floor beneath me. Laughter. Shouting. A bottle crashing somewhere nearby.
I flinched.
I was alive.
The thought didn’t make sense.
I pushed myself up too fast, and the room tilted violently. My stomach lurched. I grabbed the edge of the sink, fingers slipping against the smooth surface as the world struggled to settle into place.
Then I saw myself in the mirror.
My shirt clung to my skin, damp and reeking of beer, but that wasn’t the strangest part. The girl staring back at me wasn’t the one I remembered dying as.
“No…” The word slipped out, barely a whisper.
My hand lifted slowly, trembling as I reached for my face. My fingers brushed my cheek.
My face was smooth. No melted skin. No jagged ridges of scar tissue. Thick bangs. Shoulder-length hair.
Wasn’t I supposed to be dead?
I remembered it clearly. The knife. The pain. Her voice in my ear.
My stomach twisted, and I grabbed the sink to keep from collapsing.
The last time I had looked like this was senior year, right after Mom dragged me to that salon and insisted on chopping off my waist-length hair because it would make me look more responsible.
This wasn’t real.
It couldn’t be.
But the muffled bass outside the bathroom was real enough. The laughter. The shifting voices. The clink of bottles.
I swallowed hard and forced myself to move.
My hand hovered on the doorknob for a second, hesitation locking my body in place. Opening it felt like crossing a line I couldn’t uncross.
Then I turned it.
The door swung open and the noise hit me all at once.
Music slammed into me, loud and chaotic. The hallway was bright, full of people, the air thick with cheap perfume, sweat, and alcohol. People brushed past me without a second glance, laughing, shouting, alive in a way that felt distant and unreal.
Young.
So young.
My heart started pounding, faster now, harder.
Someone bumped into my shoulder hard, muttering a slurred “sorry” before stumbling upstairs, half-dragging a girl who could barely walk.
I pressed my back to the wall, trying to breathe, trying to gather any detail that could explain this impossible reality.
I got this sharp déjà vu feeling, like I was replaying a scene.
Across the room, a group of guys crowded around a table displaying a brand-new basketball trophy, the one the team had won earlier today. Polished gold, the player frozen mid-jump, arm outstretched with a tiny ball molded into his hand.
Before it even happened, I knew exactly what was about to unfold.
A drunk guy in a letterman jacket stumbled backward, laughing hard, and I already knew where he’d fall.
Right into the table.
He hit it full force. The table jerked. The trophy wobbled, teetered… then crashed to the floor with a sharp metallic clang that cut straight through the music.
Gasps. A few curses.
And just like I knew it would, the tiny golden basketball snapped clean off the player’s hand, rolling across the floor until it disappeared under a couch.
My breath caught in my throat.
This wasn’t just familiarity.
It wasn't a coincidence.
It was memory.
I had lived this exact moment before.
I dragged my gaze away, my heart racing, and looked around.
I caught familiar faces. Couples hanging off each other, people I hadn’t thought about in years.
Barbara and Mia stood in a corner talking, and a memory hit me instantly.
Barbara had been the one who “accidentally” tripped and spilled her beer all over me earlier that night. Looking back now, it was so obviously intentional. She couldn’t stand the thought of Anton showing even the slightest interest in me, so she’d taken her jealousy out on the easiest target.
I scoffed under my breath.
And of course, later that same night, Apple had hooked up with Anton. For the exact same reason.
Jealousy. Possessiveness. A competition no one else had agreed to play.
My mind snapped hard back to the present. Hatred surged through me so suddenly I felt dizzy, my nails digging into my palms until they stung.
Where was that rotten Apple?
The desire to destroy her life rose up so suddenly it stole the air from my lungs.
It burned. Sharp. Metallic. I could almost taste it.
I wanted her perfect world to split down the middle. I wanted the mask to fall. I wanted every carefully built lie to unravel in front of her, slowly, publicly.
I wanted her to feel it.
Every ounce of what she had done to me.
I wanted her to watch everything she had stolen crumble in her hands.
But she wasn’t here.
And even if she had been… killing her now would be pointless.
Because I realized something else. Something darker. Something patient.
Death would be too quick for her.
Too merciful.
I wanted to watch her rise. Higher than she ever deserved. I wanted her adored, untouchable, standing at the top of a world she thought she owned.
So I could take it all away.
Piece by piece.
I wanted the world to see her. Really see her. Every lie. Every secret. Every rotten thing she had buried under that perfect image.
And when there was nothing left to hide behind, when she had nothing and no one left, I would drag her down the rest of the way.
I wanted her to choke on the same agony she had forced on me.
I wanted the polished little Apple to rot from the inside out.
And I wanted her to die slowly in the darkness she created.
I forced a deep breath into my lungs and pushed myself off the wall. My legs felt unsteady, but I moved anyway, wandering deeper into the room. No one paid me any attention.
“Well, isn’t that just perfect,” I murmured under my breath. “Heaven’s got one hell of a sense of humor. Who wants to relive high school?”
My gaze swept over the room. The booze. The noise. The bad decisions already in motion.
“Why did I have to come back ten years?”
Then I heard them.
Three boys near the kitchen. Loud. Careless. Laughing like nothing in the world could touch them.
“—told you she’d drink it.”
“Dumb bitch thought Rick actually liked her.”
“He earned it, man. First round’s his.”
I drifted for a moment, eyes unfocused, watching a group of drunk idiots trying to balance the broken basketball statue back onto its pedestal.
But then I remembered.
In my past life, about a week after this party, there had been a scandal: a girl claimed she’d been drugged and raped by members of the basketball team.
No one believed her.
The school turned on her, called her a liar, attention-seeking, a slut, anything to protect the boys.
I’d left the party early that night, humiliated because Barbara had spilled beer all over me. When investigators later asked questions, I’d had nothing useful to give. I hadn’t seen anything.
None of us had, apparently.
The case was closed within a month. No DNA. No tox screen. No real evidence.
And then…
She killed herself.
We weren’t friends. I’d only known her in passing, a face in the halls, a name I barely remembered.
But her death stayed with me for months.
It had crawled under my skin and refused to leave.
I lifted my gaze toward the stairs.
The same stairs where a boy had just led a drunken girl.
Her.
It was her.
My feet were moving before my thoughts caught up. I took the stairs two at a time and hit the second-floor hallway at a near run.
I didn’t bother knocking.
I shoved doors open one after another, ignoring the startled cries, the curses, the half-dressed couples scrambling and shouting as I barged in.
Not her.
Not her.
Not—
Until I slammed open the right door.