Chapter 1

"Mom?"

No answer came from the living room.

The treacherous top-rated comment flashed through my mind again.

"Wait until she's asleep. Take her phone. Reset the password. Change all her applications to in-state schools."

Barefoot, I stood frozen in my bedroom doorway, my palms slick with sweat. Then I looked up.

A faint blue glow spilled from the end of the hallway.

The unmistakable light of a computer monitor.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

The keyboard clicked steadily, each keystroke sounding like another nail being hammered into a coffin.

When I leaned around the corner, the blood drained from my face.

My mother, Whitney Richmond, sat hunched over the computer desk. The cold blue light from the screen cast shifting shadows across her face.

She clutched my phone in one hand while the other flew across the keyboard.

On the screen was the State University Application Portal. My name, my exam registration number, and my Social Security number—every bit of my personal information was there.

At the bottom of the page, bold red letters stared back at me.

Application Submitted.

First Choice: Westbridge Business College.

Second Choice: North Valley Institute of Information Technology.

These were schools I'd never even heard of, bottom-tier colleges no one with my score would ever consider.

My hard-earned score of 1560 had been thrown straight into the trash.

"Mom! What are you doing?!" I lunged forward and ripped the mouse out of her hand.

She shot to her feet. The instant she saw me, panic flashed across her face. Then, just as quickly, she clutched her chest. Her body arched backward.

Bang.

She hit the floor hard.

"My... my heart... Gemma... my heart hurts..."

She writhed across the floor, eyes rolling back, gasping for air as her arms and legs twitched violently.

I froze.

Half the fury burning inside me vanished in an instant.

What if...

What if this wasn't an act?

"Mom! Mom, don't scare me!" I dropped beside her.

She grabbed my arm with surprising strength, her fingernails digging into my skin. "Call 911... hurry... I'm dying..."

My hands shook so badly I almost dropped my phone as I dialed.

During the fifteen minutes it took the ambulance to arrive, my mother continued "fighting for her life."

I knelt beside her, my mind completely blank.

The emergency room hallway was cold and painfully bright. I sat in a plastic chair, trembling so hard I couldn't tell whether it was from the cold or from rage.

My stomach churned, and my throat tightened as if something huge had lodged there, impossible to swallow.

Half an hour later, the doctor stepped out.

"Are you Ms. Whitney Richmond's family?"

"I'm her daughter."

"Well, it's nothing serious. She had a stress response brought on by emotional distress. Her ECG is normal. Blood pressure's a little elevated, but she'll be fine after some rest."

Dr. Bennett removed his mask. "She doesn't even need medication."

I stared at him for three long seconds, unable to say a word.

No heart condition.

No angina.

No near-death emergency.

She'd faked the whole thing.

I borrowed a phone from one of the nurses and logged into the university application portal with trembling fingers.

A line of red text filled the screen.

This application cycle has been locked. No further changes may be made.

The deadline had passed forty-seven minutes earlier.

I handed the phone back to the nurse.

"Thank you." My voice was so flat it frightened even me.

At three in the morning, my mother was snoring loudly in her hospital bed.

I quietly reached beneath her pillow and retrieved my phone. I opened the anonymous local forum.

The original poster had updated the thread an hour earlier.

"Thanks for the advice. It worked.

"I faked passing out and got myself admitted to the ER. The little brat is sitting here crying her eyes out, watching over me. She doesn't dare bring up taking a gap year."

As I stared at the words "the little brat," I bit down so hard on my lip that I tasted blood. My fingers trembled, the tips having gone ice cold.

Those three words cut deeper than the poisonous advice itself.

The anonymous poster… was my mother.