All Chapters of THE REBIRTH OF ELENA : Chapter 1 - Chapter 4

I wait three weeks before I do anything stupid.Three weeks of sitting through breakfasts where my father talks about "the Marchetti opportunity" like it's a business deal instead of my whole life.Three weeks of learning how to act sixteen again—how to laugh at jokes I've already heard, how to remember which fork to use at a table where forks matter more than people do.Three weeks of catching my own hands doing things a sixteen-year-old shouldn't know how to do, and slowing them down, and smiling like nothing is wrong.I haven't seen him yet. Matteo. Not this time around. I don't know if I'm ready.But I know where the ledger is. I've known since the moment I woke up in that bed with the rabbit sheets.It sits in Vittoria's study, second floor of the main house, behind a door nobody ever bothers to lock.Why would they? Nobody in that family is foolish enough to go looking.Except me. I've already been foolish enough to die once. What's one more risk.---The Marchettis throw a big

The invitation comes on cream paper, my name written out in handwriting so perfect it looks printed. Mrs. Marchetti requests your company for tea, Thursday at four.My mother nearly cries when she reads it over my shoulder."Do you understand what this means?" she says, pressing both hands to her chest like she's holding her own heart in."Vittoria Marchetti doesn't invite just anyone. She's looking at you, Elena."I understand exactly what it means. Better than my mother ever will, because I've already sat through this exact tea once before, in a life she doesn't remember either of us having lived. I know which chair Vittoria will offer me.I know the tea will be too strong, poured from a pot older than my grandmother, and that she'll watch how I take it—sugar or none, cream or none—like a woman reading tea leaves instead of drinking them.I know, too, that this isn't really about tea. This is an audition. And I'm the only person in that room who understands I've already failed it on