I Woke Up and Walked Away

My silence only irritated Ronan Duvall more.

"While you spent a month in the hospital, Sienna brought me breakfast every morning. We stayed on video calls doing practice problems until we fell asleep.

"She's quicker on her feet than you are. She was the better choice for the math competition all along. Even if you'd gone, you'd only have been there to make her look good.

"And who hears a few spooky words and throws herself down a staircase? You have no one to blame but yourself."

I set my pen down, cutting off the lecture.

"You're right. I don't blame anyone."

And I meant it.

Once, when I'd barely twisted my ankle, Ronan had carried me straight to the school nurse. He'd moved so cautiously, afraid that even a hurried step would hurt me.

This time, I'd broken my leg. He told me it was my own fault and never visited me once.

The only message he sent during that month was a request for my competition notes so Sienna could catch up.

But none of it mattered to me anymore.

When Ronan realized he couldn't provoke me, he gave an angry snort and walked off.

I picked up my workbook and kept solving problems.

Behind me, students whispered.

"Everybody knows how hard Elara worked for that competition. She got up at five and studied until after midnight. She even went to the clinic for hormone shots to postpone her period. Those injections hurt so badly she could barely walk afterward.

"And now she's pretending she doesn't care? She must be dying of regret."

They had no idea.

In my first life, I'd worked even harder.

Back then, the competition seemed like my one chance to earn a place at Northbridge University beside Ronan.

I'd ignored the warning Sienna played through the chapel's hidden speaker.

On competition day, she slipped a powerful laxative into my water bottle.

I took the test anyway, fighting through waves of pain. Sweat slicked my palm until I could barely grip my pen, but I finished every question on instinct and stubbornness.

I'd been so foolish back then. Foolish enough to believe that standing beside Ronan on the winners' podium meant we'd stand together forever.

At the award ceremony, I exposed what Sienna had done. The school expelled her, and I secured my place at Northbridge.

I still remembered walking across campus with new textbooks in my arms, thrilled at the thought of finally being at the same university as Ronan.

Instead, he broke up with me on the spot.

Furious, he snatched my books and threw them into Willow Lake at the heart of campus.

"Sienna swallowed a bottle of pills. She's in intensive care!" he shouted. "While you're enjoying your wonderful new life, she's been in critical condition more than a dozen times.

"She played one little prank on you. What gave you the right to destroy her future?"

I became a campus joke overnight: the freshman who'd sent her textbooks for a swim before classes had even started.

Even now, remembering the humiliation made my breathing hitch.

The whispering behind me continued.

"Elara only had a broken leg. Her hands were fine. The teachers were going to bring a wheelchair to the hospital and take her to the competition. Ronan stopped them. He insisted Sienna get her spot."

"What could they do? Ronan's the school's star. He gets to choose whoever he wants."

Pain tightened in my chest.

Not for Ronan. For the girl I'd been the first time around.

Soon after he dumped me, my mother was diagnosed with a rare illness.

I was frantic and exhausted. Between classes and the part-time jobs I took to pay for her surgery, I couldn't keep up with my coursework. I failed several subjects.

Then someone dug up the photo of me climbing into Willow Lake to retrieve my books and posted it on the university message board.

The headline was vicious: "THE TRUTH ABOUT NORTHBRIDGE'S WORST STUDENT: GOT IN THROUGH HER EX-BOYFRIEND, FAILS EVERY CLASS, AND FALSELY ACCUSED A CLASSMATE OF DRUGGING HER UNTIL SHE TRIED TO KILL HERSELF."

Thousands of comments appeared in a single day, insulting me and wishing terrible things on my family.

I called Ronan again and again through tears. I wanted to beg him not to abandon me, to comfort me, to promise he'd stay.

He never answered.

Two days later, the hospital called. My mother had died despite the doctors' efforts to save her.

I cried so hard on the train home that I lost my voice.

Then my phone vibrated.

Ronan.

Tears slipped down my cheeks as I answered, desperate to hear something kind.

Instead, he said, "Your mother saw the posts about you. That's why her condition got worse and they couldn't save her."

I froze.

"When I sent her the link, I didn't think it would work this well," he continued, as casually as if he were discussing the weather.

"Sienna's awake now, by the way. She's recovering nicely."

He paused. "Wouldn't you call that karma?"

I hadn't known how to answer.

But I knew this much: in my second life, I wouldn't chase a future at Northbridge that had never truly been mine.

I was going to Beacon Medical College instead.

For my mother. For myself.

To find a future where no one could hurt us.