Chapter 1

Last time, I was the first one out of the SAT.

I gave the camera a bored little smile and one line — the test was too easy, I'd rather be surfing in Miami. I had the kind of face the camera liked, and by midnight the clip had two million likes. My whole life had a price tag on it.

An agency came knocking within the week, and my parents signed the contract before I understood what I was giving away. They pulled me out of school so I could earn full-time, and every dollar I made went into their account, not mine. The bigger I got, the more they took.

And Mia — my best friend, the girl who used to braid my hair before exams — Mia copied my notes, rode them into Yale, and smiled into a camera while she told the internet I'd slept my way through high school.

By the time the agency was done with me, I had nothing left. No school. No name worth defending. Not one person who believed a word out of my mouth.

The night it ended, Mia came up to the roof to "talk." She said she'd never forgive me for being the lucky one. Then she put both hands on my chest and pushed.

The last thing I saw was her face, looking down at me over the edge.

The next morning, the headlines called it a tragic suicide.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The clock on the exam-room wall.

I came back with a gasp, my chest heaving like I'd really hit the ground. My answer sheet lay open in front of me, half-filled, the pencil still in my hand.

I knew this day. This was where all of it started.

"Ten minutes left," the proctor said. "Check your answers."

My grip tightened until my knuckles went white. Not this time. This time I was going to —

The girl two seats ahead of me shot up so fast her chair screeched across the floor.

"I'm done." Her voice came out high and unsteady. "I'm turning it in."

The whole room stared at her like she'd lost it. Ten minutes early. On the one test that decided everything.

The proctor frowned. "Mia. You sure you don't want to look it over?"

"It's fine. The questions were too easy." She lifted her chin. "Honestly, I'd rather be surfing in Miami."

The pencil snapped in my hand.

That was my line. Word for word — the thing I'd said to a camera outside this building, in a life that hadn't happened yet.

I watched her grab her bag and rush for the door, cheeks pink, eyes bright.

She remembered. She'd come back too. And she'd come back for the one thing she thought had made me: the moment waiting on the other side of those doors. The camera. The followers. The fame.

Something cold and very clear settled over me.

Last time, that moment had looked like a miracle. It was a poisoned apple. It cost me my school, my name, my life, and it ended with my back going over a rooftop ledge.

You want it that badly? Take it.

I let her go without a word.

I knew what was waiting for her out there — a phone, a clip, an audience ready to crown her by morning. She'd walk straight into it with that sweet, practiced smile.

I turned back to my own answer sheet, took a slow breath, and started checking my work, one bubble at a time.

I had an Ivy to get into. The honest way — the only way out of a house that would sell me for parts, the only way that had ever been mine.

Take the apple, Mia. Every poisoned bite of it.