Chapter 3

The second day of exams was English and History. I walked into the vast, silent gymnasium that served as our exam hall and found my assigned seat. My hands were trembling. My mind was a chaotic storm of fear and fury.

He could read my mind.

The thought echoed, a relentless drumbeat against my skull. Every strategy I could devise, he would know it. Every plan I made, he would see it forming in my thoughts.

I looked across the room and saw him. Noah Vance. He was leaning back in his chair, looking bored, but his eyes were fixed on me. He gave me a tiny, knowing smirk. It was a look of absolute ownership.

The proctor' s voice droned on, explaining the rules I already knew by heart. Fill in the bubbles completely. No talking. Eyes on your own paper.

Eyes on your own paper. The irony was like a physical blow.

The exam booklet was placed on my desk, face down. The timer started. I turned it over.

The words blurred in front of an essay prompt about the socio-economic impact of the Industrial Revolution. My mind, usually a sharp and orderly library of facts and figures, was blank. Not because I didn't know the answer, but because knowing it was a liability. Anything I wrote, he would write. Anything I knew, he would know.

My plan from the previous timeline was to ace the test, get into Harvard, and use my success to save Liam. That plan was now a suicide mission. If I won, I lost. The bet was a cage, and my own intellect was the key that locked the door.

I gripped my pencil. I could feel his attention on me, a tangible pressure from across the room. I imagined him sifting through my thoughts, plucking the information like a thief in my mind.

No.

The word was a silent scream in my head.

No. You will not have it. You will not have me.

In that moment, a new plan was born. Not from logic or strategy, but from pure, unadulterated defiance. It was a desperate, self-destructive, and utterly terrifying idea.

It was perfect.

I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes, picturing Liam' s face, his weak but hopeful smile. This wasn' t just about an exam anymore. This was about survival.

I picked up my pencil. And I did nothing.

I stared at the first multiple-choice question. I knew the answer was B. I could feel the knowledge resting in my brain, ready to be used. I thought about the letter B. I pictured it. I let the thought linger. Then, with deliberate slowness, I moved my pencil and filled in the bubble for A.

For the next question, I knew the answer was D. I thought it, loud and clear in my mind. Then I filled in C.

I did this for the entire multiple-choice section. For every single question, I mentally selected the correct answer and then physically marked the wrong one. It was a form of mental torture, a deliberate sabotage of everything I had ever worked for.

Then came the essay. My hand hovered over the paper. I could write a brilliant analysis. I could craft an argument so compelling it would guarantee a perfect score. I imagined the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, letting them flow through my mind as if I were about to write them.

Then, I placed the cap back on my pencil and set it down. I left the page perfectly, spotlessly blank.

I did the same for the history exam. Blank pages. Wrong answers. A masterpiece of failure.

With fifteen minutes left on the clock, I stood up. I walked my exams to the proctor' s desk at the front of the room. The invigilator, a stern-faced history teacher named Mr. Harrison, looked at me in surprise.

"Finished already, Ms. Miller?" he asked, his eyebrows raised. He glanced at my blank essay pages. A flicker of concern crossed his face. "Is everything alright?"

"Perfectly fine," I said, my voice steady. "I' m just done."

I walked back to my seat, not daring to look at Noah. But I could feel his rage. It was a palpable wave of heat rolling across the gymnasium. The smug confidence was gone, replaced by a furious, confused energy.

The final bell rang. Students sighed in relief, stretching and chattering as they gathered their things. I calmly packed my bag.

He was on me before I even cleared the aisle.

"What the hell did you do?" Noah hissed, grabbing my arm and spinning me around. His face was twisted in a mask of fury.

"I took the test," I said calmly, meeting his gaze without flinching.

"Don' t lie to me!" he snarled, his grip tightening. His friends were closing in, forming a wall around us. "You left the essays blank! You filled in the wrong bubbles! I was in your head, I saw it!"

A thrill, cold and sharp, shot through me. It was the first time I had ever seen him lose control. The first time I had ever seen genuine panic in his eyes.

For the first time since this nightmare began, I felt a flicker of power.

"You saw, did you?" I asked, a small, humorless smile touching my lips. "Then you should know exactly what I did. I wonder what your test papers look like, Noah. Are they as blank as mine?"

His face went pale. The realization hit him like a physical blow. He had been so confident in his ability to copy me that he hadn't bothered to learn a single thing himself. If I submitted a blank test, he had to submit a blank test to maintain the lie.

"You bitch," he whispered, his voice trembling with a rage so profound it was almost silent. "You think this is over? You think you' ve won?"

"I don' t know what you' re talking about," I said, pulling my arm free from his grasp. His shock made his grip weak. "It was just an exam."

I started to walk away.

"You will regret this, Ava!" he shouted after me. "This doesn' t change the bet! You hear me? The bet still stands!"

I kept walking, not looking back. His threats were just noise. For years, he had been the monster in my nightmares. But by destroying my own future, I had just shown him that I could be a monster too. And he was terrified.

The bet still stood, he was right about that. But I had just changed the rules of the game.