Chapter 1

I got famous filming everyday videos of rural life, built up a million followers, and turned it into a nonprofit that helped local farmers.

Then my aunt showed up on my doorstep with her whole family in tow, and the first thing out of her mouth was,

"You're a big influencer now. Would it kill you to help out your cousins?"

After that they treated me like a live-in maid, on top of pressuring me to buy my cousin the newest phone and cover my other cousin's tuition for a performing-arts program.

The moment I said no, my aunt went crying to the family group chat.

"The second she has money she looks down on her poor relatives! And after her parents died so young, after all those years she ate for free under our roof. What an ungrateful little snake!"

One relative after another called to guilt-trip me.

My cousin went further. He burst into my room in the middle of a livestream and shouted straight at the camera.

"Don't let her fool you! All that money she raked in under the banner of helping farmers? Not one cent of it ever went to the village!"

The stream exploded. Comments flooded the screen.

I scrambled to shut it down, but he snatched the phone out of my hand and sobbed into the lens.

"At least our family never saw a dime of it! Everybody take a good look! This is the 'farm-girl saint' you all worship. She's a heartless little snake!"

The next second my aunt charged in, dropped to her knees in front of the camera, and wailed.

"Please, please help us! Her parents died so young, and I broke my back raising her! Now she's turned her back on us. What's a poor widow and her children supposed to do?"

The comments went completely off the rails. Someone doxxed my address on the spot, saying they'd come deliver justice.

That night, a dozen or so strange men broke down my door.

They dragged me by the hair, tore off my clothes, and held up a phone to livestream it all.

"Come on, let everyone see what an ungrateful snake looks like!"

It was three days before my body turned up in a filthy drainage ditch.

Then I opened my eyes, and there was my aunt, all smiles, hauling her whole family up to my door again.

"Ursula Matthews, honey, you're a big influencer now. Isn't it about time you helped out your cousins?"

…

I looked at the smile on her face, and my stomach turned.

She'd worn that exact smile in my last life, watching me sink into the pond.

"Thanks for the trouble, everyone. Quick now, make it clean! Afterward I'll split this dead girl's money with you. An extra twenty percent, on me!"

The wounds all over my body and the sludge at the bottom of that pond had dragged me down, deeper and deeper.

Until there was nothing left.

"Ursula, honey, if you don't say anything, your aunt's just going to take that as a yes!"

I snapped back to the present.

She was still going, still smiling.

"See, our Ursula really is a good girl. Everything your aunt poured into you all these years wasn't wasted after all!"

"Only, now that you've made some money, why didn't you offer to bring your aunt and your cousins along to share the good life? You're not planning to be some ungrateful snake, are you?"

Ungrateful snake. Three words, and it was like something at the very bottom of me switched on.

Every single word my aunt had screamed on her knees in front of that camera in my last life came buzzing back into my ears.

She always said my parents died young and she'd broken her back to raise me.

But she never once mentioned that the crash happened because my parents were on their way to celebrate my birthday, and my uncle was the one who invited himself along for the free meal.

Of all the luck, an out-of-control truck ran their car off a cliff. All three of them died on the spot.

And my aunt pinned every bit of it on me.

"If it weren't for your birthday, your uncle would still be alive."

So from the year I turned seven and moved into her house, she fed me nothing but leftovers, meal after meal.

In winter she made me sleep in a corner of the attic with no heat.

When my fever hit a hundred and four she wouldn't pay for a doctor. She slapped a wet towel on my forehead and walked out the door to go play cards.

In the end it was a school-sponsored scholarship that got me through high school.

Once I made it into college I started filming videos to pay my own tuition, and I never spent another cent of hers.

But none of that ever crossed the relatives' minds in my last life.

All they knew was that my aunt raised me, and if I wasn't grateful, I was a snake.

"Ursula, why aren't you saying anything? Are you slow?"

She waved a hand in front of my eyes.

I glanced at the two suitcases parked in my doorway, then at my cousins standing behind her, Nathan Finch and Lesley Finch.

Nathan was twenty years old and did nothing all day but play video games.

Every cent he got his hands on went straight into them.

In my last life, the whole scene he made barging into my stream started because I refused to buy him game currency.

And sixteen-year-old Lesley, done up in her whole delinquent look, studded jewelry and a tattoo.

She was hunched over her phone, chewing gum, throwing the occasional disgusted glance at the chipped paint along my doorframe.

In my last life she was forever bringing home some bleach-blond boy to fool around with.

Why would I ever let a family like this through my door again?

I took a step back until my shoulders met the doorframe.

"Aunt Corinne Chavez, there isn't room in here for this many people."

As it happened, the place I lived in now was a small three-bedroom I'd snapped up when housing prices took a nosedive.

Only two bedrooms, plus one tiny storage room.

So really, there wasn't room, was there?

My voice came out so much harder than it had last time.

In my last life, the second she said "help out your cousins," I caved.

I told myself she'd at least put food in my mouth, after all.

And that half a year, I woke up every single day to cook for four, my streams cut off more times than I could count, thirty thousand followers gone, and in the end it cost me my life.

This time I wasn't giving an inch.