Chapter 1

Because I complained about gaining weight in the dorm, my rail-thin roommate force-fed me feces until I died.

"You kept saying you gained weight just from drinking water and that you envied my body—how I can eat anything and never gain a pound," she hissed in my ear that night. "Well, go ahead—eat more of my waste. Maybe next life you'll get the same disease I have!"

Only then did I learn she'd suffered from Crohn's disease since childhood—nothing she ate stayed in her body. That's why she hated anyone with soft, full curves like me.

When I woke up again, I was back on the day I brought my body fat scale to the dorm.

The next second, the dorm room door swung open.

I scrambled to hide the scale—but it was already too late.

......

"Oh hey, Zoe! Did you seriously bring a scale to college? Are you really that desperate to lose weight?" Sadie Whitaker's voice rang out, bright and mocking, just like in my past life. The moment she spotted the scale, her eyes lit up like she'd found buried treasure.

Zara Kline sidled over for a look too, tossing her hair with a smirk. "You're not even that fat," she said, her tone laced with faux concern. "Why go to all this trouble? Do you really want to look like Willow—starving but still eating mountains of food like some anime character?"

Willow Hayes, trailing behind them, froze mid-step. Then she lifted her gaze and locked eyes with me.

The chill in that stare—it was identical to the one she gave me right before she killed me. A cold shiver shot down my spine. "It's not mine," I blurted quickly. "My mom ordered it online by accident and shipped it to the dorm. I'll take it home during break."

As I spoke, I shoved the scale back into its box and buried it deep in the bottom of my closet.

Willow's eyes lingered on me a beat longer before she sniffed sharply and walked to her bed without another word.

Just remembering what I'd only learned too late last time sent another wave of sweat down my back. I'd always been a chubby girl—whatever I ate stuck to me, and I'd never learned to say no to seconds. My weight had yo-yoed for years, and nothing ever stuck.

So on my first day of college, when I saw Willow—skin stretched over bone, hips like knife blades—I couldn't help but ask her how she stayed so thin.

She'd snapped, "It's just my body. I eat whatever I want and never gain."

I'd sighed wistfully, saying more than once in the weeks after how I wished I had her "gift." Each time, her expression darkened a little more, like I was rubbing salt in an open wound. Eventually, I sensed something was off and stopped mentioning it altogether. I only ever complained about my own weight—not hers.

But in the end, what got me killed wasn't my words—it was an anonymous post on the school forum. The post never named names, but it described her: the thinnest girl in our major, born with a "strange illness" that made her waste away. It mocked her sunken chest and hollow hips, said she looked "unbearable to look at," and claimed no man would ever touch her. Worst of all, it called her a "poop machine"—sneering that she spent forever in the bathroom and was basically wasting food, that she'd be better off dead.

Everyone knew it was Willow. She was famously skeletal.

And because she was so ashamed of her body, she never used the communal showers—only washed up in the stall. Which meant all of us in the dorm had seen her naked at some point. So when the post went viral, she immediately suspected one of us.

That's when Zara "helpfully" suggested Willow think carefully: Who kept gushing about how much they envied her body? Someone that jealous was probably twisted enough to smear her behind her back.

Willow didn't hesitate. She fixed on me. That night, she slipped sleeping pills into my milk. The next morning, while everyone was in class, she dragged me into the bathroom, pinned my head over the squat toilet, and made me eat her feces as she defecated—over and over, until I choked on it, bound and helpless, drowning in filth.

The memory hit me like ice water. I shuddered. And when I looked up, Willow was staring at me again—eyes narrow, mouth twisted into a quiet, venomous smile.