Chapter 1

Before I even opened my eyes, the sharp smell of bleach hit me. I inhaled a lungful before I could stop myself and broke into a coughing fit.

"Shut your mouth before you spit all over my clean floor," Mom's familiar angry voice rang out beside me.

I wiggled my fingers and toes, slowly registering what had happened. I was still in one piece and perfectly healthy.

I had been reborn, back to the very first day Mom started mopping the floors with bleach.

Mom was an uneducated but fiercely confident woman from the countryside. Someone had told her that mopping with bleach killed germs, and she'd taken it as gospel and come straight home to put it into practice.

The problem was she never read the instructions and had no idea how damaging bleach fumes were to the lungs. She just poured bottle after bottle of the stuff into the mop bucket. The concentration was so far beyond safe levels that pulling the mop out was enough to choke a person.

In my last life, I'd fought tooth and nail to stop her, for the sake of everyone's lungs. She refused to listen, of course. It was only after I cited study after study and laid out case after case that she reluctantly switched back to plain water.

I thought I'd saved the whole family. I thought they'd be grateful. But the truth was Mom never believed me. She resented me for it, and when my brother, Cody Aven, got sick later on, she pinned all the blame on me.

Thinking about everything that had happened in my last life, I put on a smile.

"I'm heading out, Mom. I'll let you get back to mopping. And make sure you add plenty of bleach. The more, the better for killing germs."

She nodded at me approvingly.

I didn't dare stay a second longer, terrified that every extra breath in that house was doing irreversible damage to my lungs. I grabbed my phone and bolted for the door.

It was summer break. Every street and alley I walked past had signs advertising summer jobs. After some careful looking, I picked one that included room and board and headed home to pack my bags.

In my last life, I hadn't gone out to work. I'd stayed home every day, studying for the SATs. But it wasn't long before Mom pulled me out of school.

Her reasoning was that since Cody had already dropped out, it wasn't fair for me to keep going because it made him feel bad. So, she made me drop out too, to stay home and keep him company.

Just like that, she killed my dream of going to college.

Since I already knew I'd never get to take the SATs no matter what, there was no point in fighting it. Getting out of that bleach-soaked house was what mattered.

That evening, I told Mom I was dropping out and that I'd already found a job. She was thrilled.

"That's my good girl, already making money for your mother at your age. But why would you live somewhere else? Don't they charge for that? And you'd have to pay for food out there too, wouldn't you?

"That's all money down the drain. You go tell your boss you won't be staying there. You'll come home every night, eat here, and sleep here. See if he'll give you a little extra for that."