Chapter 5
The next week, anonymous emails landed in the principal’s inbox.
They contained screenshots, payment records, and text messages proving Ethan had been paying underclassmen to do his homework and projects for the last two years.
Madison had kept every receipt.
The scandal shattered him.
The school couldn’t expel him so close to graduation, but they stripped him of every remaining academic honor. His recommendation letters were quietly withdrawn.
Through the thin apartment walls, Mrs. Lane’s wailing no longer sounded human.
“My son is a genius! He’s being framed! It’s that Lily girl! She’s jealous!”
But this time, the neighbors no longer believed her.
The evidence was too clear.
The golden boy was a fraud.
Then the day of the SATs arrived.
I sat in the testing center with a clear mind, my pencil moving steadily over the page. Every answer felt like a door unlocking, every section like another step toward the future I wanted.
Two rows ahead of me, Ethan was unraveling.
I could hear his ragged breathing. I watched him snap two pencils in half. He erased so hard he tore through his answer sheet and had to ask for a new one, losing ten precious minutes.
At one point, he looked back at me.
His eyes were wide and desperate.
Begging.
I gave him a slow, cold smile and returned to my test.
Three weeks later, the scores were released.
I got a 1580.
A golden ticket.
Ethan got a 1050.
For someone aiming at MIT or the Ivy League, it was academic death.
Combined with his collapsing GPA, disciplinary record, and revoked recommendations, his future was effectively over.
Then the acceptance letters began to arrive.
Yale.
Columbia.
UPenn.
I chose Yale.
My parents cried with joy and threw a huge dinner for the neighborhood.
Mrs. Lane didn’t attend.
Ethan had been rejected by every university he applied to. The only acceptance he received was from the local community college, the same one he had attended in my past life before everything turned to ash.
History was repeating itself.
Only this time, the roles were reversed.
One evening, I took out the trash and found Ethan sitting on the curb beside the dumpsters.
He looked wrecked.
He had lost weight. His clothes hung off him. His eyes were empty.
When he saw me, he struggled to his feet.
“Lily.”
I ignored him and kept walking.
“Please. Just wait.”
He stepped in front of me, tears already spilling down his face.
“Please talk to me. I have no one. My mom… she’s going crazy, Lily. She locks me in my room. She talks to herself. She keeps saying it’s all your fault, that if you had just taken the blame for the lingerie, none of this would have happened.”
I looked at him and felt nothing.
“And do you agree with her?”
He hesitated.
His eyes slid away.
“I just… I think we used to be best friends. You used to protect me. Why did you change?”
I laughed.
“If I had just let her destroy my reputation? If I had just let her call me a slut in front of the whole neighborhood so you could keep playing the perfect innocent son?”
His mouth trembled.
I took one step closer.
“You’re disgusting, Ethan. You hide behind women. You hid behind me, then behind Madison, and your whole life you’ve hidden behind your mother. You deserve everything that’s happening to you.”
He dropped to his knees on the filthy concrete.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay? Please help me. Tell my mom we’re dating. Tell her you’ll tutor me. If she thinks some of your success will rub off on me, she’ll stop hurting me.”
I looked down at him and remembered everything.
The smell of smoke.
The heat.
My mother’s screams.
The roof collapsing.
Mrs. Lane laughing outside.
And Ethan doing nothing.
My answer came out soft and final.
“No. Burn in your own hell, Ethan.”
I stepped around him and walked back inside.
That night, the PTSD hit hard.
I knew the timeline.
In my past life, it had happened exactly three days after Ethan received his community college acceptance.
That was the night Mrs. Lane snapped beyond repair.
At two in the morning, she had crept outside with gasoline, poured it around our ground-floor apartment, and set us on fire.
This time, the humiliation she carried was even worse. Her son wasn’t just going to community college. He was a public disgrace. And I, the girl she hated most, was leaving for Yale.
She would try again.
I could feel it in my bones.
So I didn’t sleep.
Over the last month, using money I earned from tutoring, I had prepared.
I installed four hidden cameras around the exterior of our apartment, tucked into bushes and beneath the eaves.
I bought three heavy-duty fire extinguishers and placed one in every bedroom.
I changed the window locks so they could be kicked open from the inside if necessary.
But I wasn’t just planning to survive the fire.
I was planning to make sure Victoria Lane never saw daylight as a free woman again.
The second day after Ethan begged me for help, I went to the local police precinct.
I didn’t tell my parents.
They would panic.
I asked to speak to a detective and laid out everything I had prepared: transcripts of Mrs. Lane’s public death threats against me, statements from neighbors who had heard her scream that she wanted to burn me alive, and footage of her physically attacking Madison.
“She’s having a psychotic break,” I told Detective Harrison. “She blames me for her son’s failure. She hasn’t slept in days. I believe she’s going to try to burn my house down tonight or tomorrow night.”
The detective studied the stack of evidence.
Then he studied my face.
“All right, kid,” he said at last. “We’ll set up a patrol. But if you see anything, call 911 immediately.”
So I went home and waited for the flames that had once killed me.