Chapter 3

When Zara Kline and Sadie Whitaker heard Willow Hayes's enthusiastic response, they both froze for a beat.

"Yeah... I guess so?" Sadie answered, her voice tinged with awkwardness.

"Yes! I'm definitely going!" Willow's eyes lit up with giddy excitement.

The other two fell silent. An uncomfortable chill settled over the dorm room.

After a quick mental calculation, I spoke up without hesitation. "Then I'll go too. I'll head home now to change, and we'll meet tomorrow night?"

"Oh—sure," Sadie said quickly, nodding with visible relief.

I immediately started packing my things to leave. At first, I'd only wanted to get away from the three of them. But then it hit me: in my past life, Willow had suspected me precisely because I hadn't shown up to that party. And the defamatory post on the Hawkeye Hive had gone live that very same night. With me absent and Zara stoking the flames with her lies, Willow had swallowed every word—and that's how the tragedy began. If I truly wanted to change fate, I had to be there, right alongside them.

I finished packing in record time and slipped my academic-grade camera—usually used for film assignments—into the hollow beside my pillow. Switching it to fish-eye mode, I tested the angle: it captured nearly the entire dorm room.

"I'm heading out," I announced, and didn't look back.

I couldn't stand another second in that room. On the Greyhound bus heading home to my mom's place in the Ames suburbs, I logged into the camera feed. And there they were—Willow, Sadie, and Zara—huddled together, rummaging through my things.

"Logan Pierce is so hot," Sadie chirped, "and rumor has it he only goes for girls who are super thin. With your figure, Willow, he'll totally lose it over you!"

She was already digging through my closet as she spoke.

Zara chimed in from the side, all fake sweetness: "Absolutely! Just go for it tomorrow night. We've got your back—you'll be fine!"

Willow blushed, her pale cheeks flushing pink.

Logan Pierce—the so-called "farmboy heartthrob" of campus, heir to some Quad Cities fortune, always seen driving that shiny new pickup. I hadn't realized Willow had a crush on him.

Sadie pulled out a few of my outfits—clothes I'd bought during one of my desperate "motivational phases," tiny crop tops and body-con skirts meant for a version of myself that didn't exist yet.

"Try this one, Willow!" Sadie giggled, holding up a neon pink two-piece. "Zoe's such a fat slob—she just stands in front of the mirror trying these on like anyone's watching. So gross."

"These clothes were made for someone like you," she added, thrusting the outfit into Willow's hands.

Willow licked her dry lips and hurried off to change.

"Let me get a pic," Zara said, her smile sharp as she snapped a photo with her phone.

I was already fuming over their invasion—how dare they rifle through my stuff like it was theirs—when a notification popped up on my screen.

It was a message from Zara.

"Oh my gosh, Zoe," the text read, "Willow forced her way into your clothes and called you a fat pig who buys 'hot girl' outfits just to humiliate herself. She said she's the only one who can actually pull this look off... But honestly? She's got no chest and her butt's totally flat—looks like a damn scarecrow! And get this—her back and hips are covered in these nasty pus-filled bumps. Probably from never showering..."

My stomach turned. On screen, Zara was still laughing with Willow, posing playfully for another photo. Her fingers hadn't stopped typing for a second. A cold dread slithered down my spine.

I used to believe Zara was my friend. Now, remembering how she'd whispered similar "confessions" to me in the past, I felt sick. Every time she'd "warned" me about someone, it had been poison wrapped in concern—calculated sabotage disguised as loyalty.

No wonder Willow had trusted her so completely in my past life. Zara had been poisoning her mind long before the knife ever came out.