Chapter 1

I was the top student at an elite college-prep high school, and I'd won the highest honors in three national top-tier competitions.

Guaranteed Ivy League admission was a done deal.

But after one physical touch, I swapped souls with a morally corrupt underachiever.

Rebecca Morton stood in front of me, wearing my face with an utterly contemptuous smile.

"Margaret Cox, you only became a top student because you got stuck with professor parents, didn't you?"

"Let me tell you, this body swap is something I traded a whole lifetime of poverty and hardship for, and it's permanent."

"From now on, your honors, your eight-thousand-a-month allowance, and your guaranteed Ivy League spot are all mine!"

"You can live out a life of poverty in my place!"

I looked at the face I'd been staring at for seventeen years, and suddenly I smiled.

Nobody knew that the academic star everyone envied was scraping by on four hours of sleep a night.

I started learning English at three, and one word memorized wrong earned me a beating.

I started advanced math at five, and one problem wrong meant copying it out a hundred times.

I started programming at seven, and one wrong line of code meant rewriting it all night long.

Even my eight-thousand allowance was tied to my studies.

One wrong answer, minus a hundred; one point lower, minus two thousand; and if I didn't rank first in the grade, my allowance was gone entirely.

Then I'd be eating plain bread and pickles for a month.

My parents were harsher on me than wardens on a prison inmate.

What they gave me was never talent — it was fear.

This is the life she wants?

Fine.

Those twisted parents, and that hell of a home.

She can bear it all in my place!

01

Working from Rebecca's memories, I quickly made my way back to her home.

When I pushed the door open, it wasn't the dirty, messy place I'd imagined.

The living room was smaller than the storage room in my house, with a round table barely big enough to seat three.

Not like my dining table at home — six feet long, one person to a side, as if we were forever separated by a battle line.

On the wall hung a photo of the three of them, her parents smiling sweetly, their arms wrapped tight around Rebecca's shoulders.

On our wall at home, all that hung were the award certificates of the three of us.

I couldn't help the tears that fell.

So nice.

No piano, no violin, no dance studio.

Not even a single book.

I wouldn't have to stay up all night grinding through practice problems to earn my allowance.

I wouldn't have to practice piano, practice dance, or come in first just to please someone.

Rebecca's mother came out carrying a bowl of soup. When she saw my tear-streaked face, her grip slipped, and the scalding soup splashed onto her hand, turning it red in an instant.

But she paid no mind to the pain and hurried to pull me down into a seat.

"What's the matter? Is the teacher calling parents in again? It's all right. If you can't get into college, then you don't. You can make a living doing anything."

My hand froze.

I had never known a mother's hands could be so warm and dry.

My own mother, to train me to be independent, had never held my hand again after I turned five.

If my parents ever got called in, all that waited for me was a beating from both of them and double the punishment.

Not like Rebecca's mother, who panicked and burned her hand just from seeing her daughter cry.

I gently blew on her scalded, reddened hand, my tears flowing harder and harder.

"Mom, does it hurt?"

My mom's head shot up, her eyes going red.

"Becca's grown up — she knows to care about her mother now."

She wiped her tears away.

"Mom's fine. And don't you listen to that idle gossip. So what if you're slow? Fools have their own kind of luck."

A warm current surged up in my chest and lodged in my throat.

What others saw as a flaw, Rebecca's mother treasured.

And yet Rebecca had thrown it away like garbage.

And that very thing she scorned was exactly what I had longed for and never had.

Back in Rebecca's room, it was full of all kinds of plush toys and figurines.

Some were limited editions, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand.

Rebecca's parents were just ordinary working-class people, but they scrimped and saved to indulge their daughter's tastes.

My room, on the other hand, held nothing but books and exam papers.

When I was little, I secretly used my pocket money to buy a SpongeBob doll, and my mom cut it to shreds right in front of me.

After that, nothing to do with "play" ever appeared in my room again.

My phone buzzed. It was Rebecca.

She'd sent a video call request.

I answered.

That familiar face appeared on the screen.

She was wearing the couture gown my mom had just bought me, smiling smugly at the camera.

"Margaret Cox, your parents are about to take me to a banquet. Joshua Sanchez, the campus heartthrob everyone says is the perfect match for you, is going too."

She plopped down on my soft, big bed and bounced on it hard.

"So soft. How's that? You getting used to my little wooden bed?"

"Margaret Cox, aren't you about to lose it?"

I looked at her calmly.

"It's good."

"Good?"

Rebecca froze for a moment, then laughed even harder.

"What are you putting on airs for? Margaret Cox, do you know what I hate most about you? That look, always so high and mighty, always so above it all, wanting nothing. So fake!"

"There's no point pretending. You'll always be under my heel."

After the call ended, I laid my hand on the small bed.

Not soft, but solid, dependable.

I glanced at the time. Nine o'clock at night.

I got into bed and turned off the light.

So what if that big bed was soft?

I never lay on it more than four hours a day.

Lying on the narrow little bed, my eyes slowly welled up.

This was the first time since I was three that I'd gone to bed this early.