Chapter 2

Watching the loading circle spin and spin, I felt my heart leap into my throat. A few seconds later, the application page finally came up.

I looked at the screen, and my heart lurched. It said my application had been submitted successfully, and when I scrolled down, every choice was exactly what I'd entered, without a single mistake.

I couldn't believe it, so I stared at it and read it over again and again, but nothing was wrong.

Dad let out a hearty laugh. "That's it, we're all done! Now we just sit back and wait for the acceptance letters!"

Uncle Wade's family was thrilled too and insisted on taking us out to eat right then. With all that laughter and chatter ringing in my ears, I finally knew this wasn't a dream.

My application had really gone through this time!

The tension drained out of my body all at once, and I'd never felt so relieved. Someone up there was clearly looking out for me and wasn't going to let history repeat itself.

But just as I happily got up to go eat, my application page suddenly started loading again. The next second, the whole page refreshed into something completely different.

The only choice left on my application was Fernbrook Vocational School, and my major had changed to excavator operation.

We all froze. Dad quickly smacked the side of the computer, completely baffled. "Is something wrong with this thing, or is the monitor broken?"

Mom panicked too and kept clicking on the screen nonstop.

Just then, Uncle Wade thought of something.

"Don't panic yet. Didn't it just say the application went through? This computer's pretty old, so I bet something's wrong with it and it's showing the wrong thing. Callie, why don't you log back in and check?"

My mind was a total mess by then, but when I heard that, I forced myself to calm down and logged back into the system.

As soon as the application page loaded, my heart sank. The only choice on my application was still the excavator operation major at Fernbrook Vocational School.

Everyone else was stunned, and Dad was so frantic that he practically shouted. "What's going on? It was filled out perfectly just now! How did Fernbrook Vocational School pop up out of nowhere?"

Toby was startled too and hurried to log into his own account to check, but nothing on his application had changed.

The room started to spin.

Why? We'd applied at the same time, on the same computer, through the same system, so why was I the only one this happened to?

I'd been given a second chance at life, so why was I still the one being singled out?