Chapter 1

The first time Chloe died, I wasn't there.

I was in the library, trying to finish a paper I' d put off for weeks.

My phone buzzed on the table, a text from our friend Emily.

"Something happened at the dorm. Come back. Now."

A cold feeling washed over me.

I packed my books in a blur and ran.

The flashing lights of an ambulance and two police cars cut through the evening gloom outside our dorm building.

Yellow tape blocked the entrance. A small crowd of students stood watching, whispering.

I saw Emily near the edge of the crowd, her face pale.

"What happened?" I asked, my breath catching in my throat.

"It' s Chloe," she whispered, not looking at me. "She... she fell."

My mind went blank.

Fell?

I pushed past her, heading for the tape. A campus security officer stopped me.

"You can' t go in there, miss."

"That' s my room," I said, my voice shaking. "My best friend..."

He just shook his head, his expression grim.

That' s when I saw him. Dean Peterson, standing near the dorm entrance, talking to a police officer. He wasn' t looking at the building, he was looking at the crowd, his eyes scanning every face. When his gaze met mine, it was cold, assessing. There was no sympathy there. Just annoyance.

The university moved fast.

Too fast.

They called it a tragic suicide. A case of a young woman overwhelmed by academic pressure. The official statement was released before midnight.

By the next morning, when they finally let me back into our room, it was half empty.

Chloe' s side was sterile. Her bed was stripped, her posters gone from the wall. Her desk was wiped clean. Her laptop, her phone, her little collection of worn-out paperbacks-all gone. It was like she had never existed.

"Where are her things?" I asked the resident advisor, who stood awkwardly in the doorway.

"The university is holding them for her parents," she said, reciting a line she' d clearly been told to repeat. "It' s standard procedure."

It wasn' t standard procedure. I knew that.

I knew Chloe. She wasn' t just stressed about finals. Something else had been going on. She' d been quiet, withdrawn. She had bruises on her arm last week she' d laughed off as clumsiness. She kept getting calls from a blocked number that made her face tighten with fear.

She wouldn' t just jump.

I was convinced of it.

I tried to tell the police, but the detective assigned to the case just gave me a tired look.

"Miss Miller, we have a note. The university has provided her academic and counseling records. All signs point to a young woman under immense distress."

"It' s a lie," I insisted. "The university is covering something up. You have to investigate."

He sighed. "We will look into it."

But I knew he wouldn' t. The case was closed.

For two days, I walked around in a fog of grief and rage. The university offered me counseling and a single room for the rest of the semester. They wanted me to be quiet. They wanted me to disappear, just like they made Chloe' s memory disappear.

Then I remembered something. Chloe had a second phone. A cheap, pay-as-you-go burner phone she kept hidden in a loose floorboard under her bed. She' d shown it to me once, weeks ago. "Just in case," she' d said with a nervous laugh.

And her journal. A small, black leather book she wrote in every single night. She kept it in the same spot.

The university cleaners were efficient, but they weren't detectives. They wouldn't have looked there.

I had to get back into that room.

That night, I waited until the dorm was quiet. I slipped out of my temporary room and went back to my old one. The door was locked, but I still had my key.

My heart pounded as I stepped inside. The emptiness of her side of the room was a physical blow.

I knelt down, my fingers finding the notched edge of the loose floorboard. I pried it up.

They were there. The cheap plastic phone and the black journal.

Relief flooded through me, so strong it almost made me sick. This was it. This was the proof. Whatever she was hiding, whatever she was scared of, the answers were here.

I grabbed them and stood up, turning to leave.

The door swung open.

A large man I' d never seen before stood silhouetted in the hallway light. He wasn' t a student. He wasn' t campus security. He was wearing a dark suit that seemed too formal, too expensive.

"You shouldn' t be here," he said, his voice low and flat.

I clutched the phone and the journal to my chest.

"Who are you?"

He took a step into the room, closing the door behind him. The click of the lock echoed in the silence.

"Give me what you' re holding," he said. It wasn' t a request.

I backed away, my mind racing. I opened my mouth to scream, but he moved with terrifying speed. He crossed the room in two strides, his hand clamping over my mouth. The other hand grabbed for the items. I struggled, kicking and biting, but he was too strong. He twisted my arm behind my back until I cried out in pain, my fingers going numb.

The journal and phone fell to the floor.

He shoved me hard. My head slammed against the metal frame of my bed.

The room spun. Black spots danced in my vision.

His face loomed over me, his features indistinct in the dark.

"Some things are better left alone," he snarled.

Then, there was a sharp, blinding pain at the back of my head.

And then, nothing.

...

A buzzing sound.

A relentless, annoying buzzing.

My eyelids felt heavy, glued shut. My head throbbed with a dull, persistent ache.

I groaned, forcing my eyes open.

Sunlight streamed through the window, hitting me directly in the face. I was in my bed. In our room.

The buzzing continued. I turned my head, the movement sending a spike of pain through my skull.

It was my alarm clock. The one I used for my 8 a.m. classes.

The display read: WEDNESDAY, 7:00 AM.

Wednesday.

That wasn' t right.

I was attacked on a Friday night. It should be Saturday. Or Sunday.

I sat up, my head swimming. The room was... whole. Intact.

I looked over at Chloe' s side.

Her posters were on the wall. Her books were on the desk. Her favorite worn-out blue hoodie was thrown over her chair.

My breath hitched.

And then I saw her.

Chloe was sitting at her desk, her back to me, scrolling through her phone. She was humming a song that had been stuck in her head all week.

She was alive.

My heart felt like it was going to explode. This was a dream. It had to be a dream. A cruel, vivid dream brought on by a concussion.

"Chloe?" My voice was a choked whisper.

She turned around, a smile on her face. "Morning, sleepyhead. You' re going to be late for psych."

It was her. Real. Solid. Breathing.

I stared at her, my mind unable to process it. The attack. The man in the suit. The empty room. The funeral I was supposed to be planning.

None of it had happened.

Or... it hadn' t happened yet.

I scrambled out of bed and grabbed my phone from the nightstand.

I checked the date.

Wednesday, May 18th.

Three days.

I had woken up three days in the past.

Chloe was going to die in three days.

The realization hit me like a physical force, knocking the air from my lungs. I had a second chance.

I could save her.