Chapter 1

Tonight was the night before my final interview for the American Achievement Scholarship.

My whole future, an Ivy League university, everything I worked for, depended on it.

I double-checked my presentation notes, my heart thumping a steady rhythm of hope and anxiety.

My stepsister, Jessica Vance, came into my room. She lived with us, with my dad. Her mom was his new wife.

Jessica smiled, that sweet smile that never quite reached her eyes.

"Nervous, Sarah?"

"A little," I admitted, trying to sound confident.

"I made you some herbal tea," she said, holding out a steaming mug. "It'll help you relax, get a good night's sleep."

She always acted so caring.

I trusted her. I was naive back then.

I thanked her and drank it all. It tasted a little bitter, but I thought nothing of it.

The next thing I knew, I woke up.

Not in my bed.

The room was cheap, dirty. A motel. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and my mouth was dry.

Panic seized me.

My school laptop was open on a rickety table.

On the screen was my scholarship presentation.

But it wasn't my final version. It was filled with paragraphs copied directly from well-known academic papers. Plagiarized.

Then, loud knocking on the door.

"School security! Open up!"

Men in uniforms, stern-faced scholarship committee members, they all barged in. Someone, they said, had given them an anonymous tip.

They saw the laptop, the fake presentation.

They saw me, disoriented and in a strange motel room.

The looks on their faces. Disgust. Disappointment.

I was accused of plagiarism, of unethical conduct.

Publicly. In front of everyone.

Disqualified. Shamed.

My father, Mr. Miller, he heard about it.

His wife, Jessica' s mother, Mrs. Vance, she whispered things to him.

He believed them. He believed I was a cheat, a disgrace.

He turned his back on me. Said I wasn't his daughter anymore.

My boyfriend, Mark Olsen, he was there.

He acted like my rock, my only support.

"I believe you, Sarah," he said, holding me while I cried. "We'll get through this."

I clung to him, so grateful.

Soon after, I found out I was pregnant. Mark' s baby.

Isolated, my dreams gone, I relied on him completely.

While my classmates went off to Yale, to Harvard, to Princeton, I was trapped.

Trapped with Mark. Raising our child. No money, no future.

He wasn't the savior I thought he was.

The years passed. Five of them.

My spirit felt like it had been ground into dust.

One evening, I came home early.

I heard voices from the living room. Mark and Jessica.

"It worked out perfectly, didn't it?" Jessica said, her voice dripping with satisfaction. "I got the scholarship, you got Sarah. Mom was so proud of me."

Mark laughed. A cold, ugly sound.

"Yeah, she was easy to fool back then. So trusting. But honestly, Jess, her usefulness is about over. She's not the ambitious girl I wanted anymore."

My world shattered.

The tea. The motel. The plagiarism. Mark. Jessica.

All of it, a setup. A cruel, calculated plan.

I couldn't breathe.

Utterly broken, I walked out of the house. I didn't see where I was going.

Headlights. A horn blaring.

Then, nothing.

Until I gasped, a sharp intake of air.

My eyes flew open.

I was in my bedroom. My own bed.

Sunlight streamed through the window.

My heart hammered against my ribs.

The door creaked open.

Jessica walked in, holding a steaming mug.

"Nervous, Sarah?" she asked, that same fake-sweet smile on her face. "I made you some herbal tea."