Chapter 3

The moment the bell rang, the classroom erupted like a prison break. Within sixty seconds, half the students had vanished. Tania walked over, holding her wallet. Julie had other friends outside of this class, but she spent most of her time attached to Tania at the hip—going to the bathroom together, eating together, surviving together.

Julie let out a muffled groan of agreement.

Even if the sky was falling, she still needed breakfast.

The two linked arms and walked out into the corridor. Tania noticed Julie’s completely defeated posture. “If you’re feeling that sick, just rest in the classroom. I’ll bring you something.”

“No, I’m fine.”

Julie shook her head. Sitting in that stuffy classroom staring at textbooks was going to suffocate her. She needed air.

Bayview High didn't have strict rules about uniforms, as long as you didn't wear anything that triggered the disciplinary dean. Tania turned her head to check on Julie and found herself staring. Julie’s forehead was smooth, her features clean and striking. With the morning light hitting her skin, highlighting the soft peach fuzz on her cheeks, Tania couldn't help but sigh. “I really wonder what it feels like to be as pretty as you.”

It wasn't just her face. Julie knew how to dress. Ten years from now, people would call it "having great personal style."

Even in a basic t-shirt and jeans, she looked effortless. Her sneakers were spotless, the laces tied in a unique, deliberate way.

Julie laughed, the sound light and breathy. “I’ll gladly trade my face for your brain. Come on, swap IQs with me.”

Tania giggled. “You’re not stupid. You just study the wrong way. You should ask your parents to hire a private tutor for the weekends. It really helps, but you have to get a real genius. My uncle hired a guy from Stanford University to tutor my cousin last summer, and his grades skyrocketed.”

“Where am I supposed to find someone like that?” Julie sighed.

The local education board was cracking down hard right now. Public school teachers were too busy to take on private students, and getting caught moonlighting meant risking their jobs. And college students? The smart ones had their own brutal schedules to deal with. Top-tier tutors were impossible to book.

But she couldn't just coast. If she was completely lost in class, she would absolutely beg her parents to pay for extra help. In her past life, she wasn't a straight-A student, but she definitely wasn't an idiot either—you couldn't even get into Bayview High with bad grades. Her absolute baseline was getting back into the exact same university she attended in her past life. That was her pride as a time traveler.

The two chatted as they walked, their path to the cafeteria taking them right past the outdoor basketball courts.

While Julie was still drowning in academic despair, Tania looked toward the courts with total envy. “Honestly, I’d rather swap brains with Warren. Look at him. We barely survived one study session, and he still has the energy to play basketball.”

Usually, teachers would gently advise seniors to stop playing aggressive sports. If they broke an arm, it would completely derail their study schedule. Since it was only September, the teachers turned a blind eye, but by next semester, any boy caught on the court would get a deeply passive-aggressive lecture from the homeroom advisor.

Hearing Warren’s name, Julie glanced over just as a loud cheer erupted from the court.

There he was. Dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and light gray sweatpants, Warren Gale gracefully sank a jump shot. He was already tall, but compared to the broad, imposing man he would become in ten years, he still looked a little lean, a little boyish.

The ball snapped through the net, bouncing heavily against the asphalt.

Warren was just warming up. He offered a low, breathless laugh, high-fiving his teammate, his white teeth flashing in a rare, unguarded smile.

Julie stared at him, her eyes tracking the movement of his shoulders.

Tania dragged her away before she could get caught staring, pulling her toward the cafeteria. But as Julie sat down with her bowl of pasta, a dangerous, intoxicating thought began to take root in her mind.

Did being reborn come with a cheat code?

Yes. The extra ten years of memories weren't going to help her pass chemistry, but unlike everyone else, she could predict the future.

For example, she knew Tania was going to score high enough to get into an Ivy League. She knew Tania was going to meet her future husband there, that they would both get full-ride master’s degrees, and that they would get married right after graduation. If Julie had been reborn just a few months later, she would even know the gender of Tania’s baby.

And she knew something else.

Warren Gale was her future boss.

After working for him for a year, she had basically nothing but praise for the guy. In a toxic corporate culture, finding a humane, generous employer was harder than finding a good husband. His company offered weekends off, paid overtime, great benefits, and massive holiday bonuses—no cheap corporate pizza parties, just straight-up cash or expensive gift cards. Employees got extended annual leave, and their salaries bumped up consistently every single year.

She also knew that the employees who had been with Warren since his startup days in college were making the kind of money that made people physically salivate.

In all those time-travel novels, the protagonist always used their knowledge to dominate the stock market or become a billionaire. But looking at her cold, hard reality, Julie knew she had to study her ass off just to get into her mediocre college again. Trying to become a business mogul was a joke.

But if she was destined to be a corporate slave anyway… why take the long way around?