Chapter 1

The guy I had a secret crush on for three years became a global pop sensation after I died.

And me? I was labeled the internet’s most pathetic clout-chaser, cyberbullied into severe depression until a car struck me down in the street.

The driver was my former best friend.

Sitting behind the wheel, she looked down at me bleeding on the asphalt, laughing hysterically.

"Nora, you really are clueless, aren't you?

Back in college, I swapped that confession letter you wrote to Chase. I painted myself as the innocent victim you bullied.

Why else do you think he hired me as his personal assistant?"

As my consciousness slipped away, the dashboard screen was playing the music video for Chase’s record-breaking single.

He stood at the top of the world, dazzling under the spotlights.

While I lay there like roadkill in a gutter.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back in our junior-year dorm room.

My roommate, Vanessa, was leaning over me with a can of Coke, smiling with fake concern.

"Nora, have you figured out how you're going to confess to your crush yet?"

The suffocating ache in my chest and the phantom agony of bones crushed beneath car tires still lingered.

I snapped back to reality, realizing I was sitting at my desk in the dorm.

I held a pen in my hand. On the stationery in front of me was an unfinished sentence:

"Chase, I’ve had my eye on you for a long time..."

Vanessa’s face was practically glued to mine. She blinked her innocent-looking doe eyes, her voice dripping with coaxing sweetness.

"Letters are so outdated! Nobody does that anymore.

Listen to me. Post it on the Campus Confession Wall! It’s trendy and romantic. I’ll even take a picture of you, make you look like an absolute angel!"

I lowered my gaze to hide the surge of hatred burning inside me. I crumpled the paper into a tight ball and tossed it into the trash.

In my past life, I had fallen for her lies.

Chase worked as an assistant at our campus library. Quiet and gorgeous, he always wore a simple, faded white shirt, carrying an aloof grace that felt as pure and cold as winter snow.

I had crushed on him for three years, only ever daring to watch him from afar.

It was Vanessa who kept whispering in my ear, telling me a girl needed to be bold, saying that if I didn't make a move on a guy like Chase, someone else would snatch him away.

She wore me down. Gathering every ounce of courage I had, I wrote a heartfelt confession letter, paired it with what I thought was my best casual photo, and trusted Vanessa to submit it anonymously to the campus forum.

The next morning, I became the laughingstock of the entire university.

What went up on the confession page wasn't my nice picture, but a hideous candid snapshot taken during Freshman Orientation Week. It was snapped at an awful angle—my face greasy, expression contorted. Worse still was the trashy, shameless caption attached to it:

[Chase from Computer Science, I’ve wanted you for a long time. I heard your family runs a massive company and you're loaded. I’m tired of working hard. I’d rather cry in the front seat of your BMW. Give a girl a chance?]

That hideous photo was taken by Vanessa behind my back.

Those vulgar words were drafted maliciously by Vanessa.

The moment the post went live, it blew up the campus network.

I instantly became the campus poster child for vanity, gold-digging, and shameless delusion.

[WTF, who is this chick? Looking like that and daring to hit on Chase?]

[Cry in a BMW? She doesn't even deserve a ride on a rusty tractor.]

[Chase, run! Touch this girl and you’ll catch a virus!]

Everywhere I went, people pointed and whispered behind my back.

My social media accounts were doxed. My SnapChat and Instagram DMs overflowed with vile slurs and death threats.

And Chase? He never reached out to me. The way he looked at me shifted from indifferent stranger to icy disgust.

I shattered completely, spiraling into clinical depression.

And what was Vanessa doing during all that?

She sighed in front of me every day, feigning sympathy, insisting someone else was maliciously setting me up, even pretending to curse out the trolls on my behalf.

Behind my back, she took my original, heartfelt letter and handed it directly to Chase.

She told Chase she was the one who wrote it, that she had loved him in silence for years.

She even claimed that the repulsive post on the confession page was made by me to sabotage her, out of jealousy that she liked him too.

She painted herself as the innocent, fragile victim of my bullying.

How ridiculous.

It took dying once for me to see through her masterfully crafted web of lies.