The second time I watched Kendall Price fall backward into the black campus retention pond, I did not move.
Chapter 1
Rain had just begun to mist over the quad at Blackstone University, silvering the stone walkways and darkening the shoulders of my varsity swim jacket. Kendall stood three yards ahead of me near the moss-covered embankment, pretending to scroll through her phone while inching closer to the edge.
I knew what came next.
I had already lived it once.
Her heel slipped.
Or rather, she made it look as if it slipped.
Kendall threw up one arm, screamed, and disappeared into eight feet of freezing water.
“Help! Somebody help me!”
Her voice ripped through the damp night.
I stood perfectly still.
In my first life, I had reacted before thought could catch me. I had been a competitive swimmer since childhood, captain of Blackstone’s women’s swim team, and the sight of a drowning person had activated every instinct I possessed.
I jumped.
The cold nearly stopped my heart, but I reached her within seconds. Kendall went limp in my arms as soon as I touched her, forcing me to drag her full weight to shore.
On the bank, I started rescue breathing because she appeared unresponsive and wasn’t breathing normally. Her lower lip had split open badly against the rocks. Mine had also cracked during the rescue, and blood was everywhere around her mouth.
I remembered her eyes fluttering open.
“Nora?”
“You’re safe,” I whispered.
I had thought I had saved a life.
Instead, I helped destroy my own.
Days later, Kendall went online crying.
She claimed I pushed her into the pond.
Then she claimed I had deliberately exposed her to HIV through blood contact while pretending to perform CPR.
The accusation spread faster than anyone cared to investigate.
Students called me a monster.
The university suspended me within hours.
Then expelled me.
I showed administrators my clean prior medical records. I begged them to review security footage. I demanded an investigation.
No one wanted facts once scandal had become more profitable than truth.
Months later, the truth surfaced.
Kendall had been diagnosed before the pond incident.
She had known.
She had hidden it.
The fall had been staged because she wanted a believable story explaining how she had become infected, and she needed someone else to blame.
I had been convenient.
My parents refused to let my name stay buried beneath the lie.
During a storm, they drove to meet an attorney who had finally agreed to take my case.
A tractor-trailer crossed the median.
Both died before emergency crews reached them.
Something in me died with them.
I hunted Kendall down months later and confronted her in an abandoned cabin outside the city. She laughed when I demanded to know why.
“Because you always had everything,” she said. “Perfect grades. Scholarships. Parents who loved you. A body that worked. A future.”
Then she smiled.
“You should have let me drown.”
I remember gasoline.
I remember fire.
I remember thinking that if I ever received one more chance, I would not destroy myself trying to save someone determined to drag me under.
Then I opened my eyes beside the pond again.
Now Kendall was screaming in the water.
“Nora! Nora, help me!”
She knew I was there.
That was the part that erased my final doubt.
Her head disappeared beneath the surface, then rose again.
“Please!”
I turned away.
A heavier rain swept across campus.
Two students ran toward the dorms.
One paused.
“Did you hear something?”
The other pulled his hood tighter.
“With this rain? Come on.”
They hurried away.
I walked beside my teammate Haley Vance and never looked back.
By morning, the class group chat was exploding.
KENDALL PRICE FOUND IN RETENTION POND.
SPENT HOURS IN THE WATER.
SERIOUS FACIAL INJURIES.
I stared at the messages from my dorm room.
She had survived.
Apparently, a facilities worker discovered her shortly before dawn, hypothermic and barely conscious.
She had struck the stone embankment while falling and suffered deep facial lacerations.
Marcus Reed, our class representative, organized a hospital visit that afternoon.
I almost skipped it.
Then I reconsidered.
In my old life, every unexplained action had been interpreted against me. This time, I wanted witnesses.
Haley came with me.
Kendall lay beneath heavy bandaging at St. Jude’s Medical Center. Only one swollen eye remained fully visible.
The moment she saw me, hatred burned through it.
“Nora.”
Everyone turned.
She pushed herself against the pillows.
“Why didn’t you save me?”
The room became quiet.
I looked genuinely confused.
“What?”
“You saw me fall!”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You were right there!”
Haley stepped forward.
“She wasn’t. Nora and I ran back together when the storm started.”
Kendall’s visible eye widened.
“You’re lying for her.”
“No,” Haley said. “I was beside her.”
Several classmates shifted uncomfortably.
Marcus raised both hands.
“Kendall, you need to calm down.”
“I almost died!”
Her anger was too sharp.
Too specific.
Too revealing.
We left minutes later.
Near the nurses’ station, two physicians approached Kendall’s room wearing additional protective equipment appropriate to her recent blood exposure and pending infectious-disease workup.
One nurse quietly mentioned that public-health specialists had been notified regarding an existing communicable-disease record.
My classmates exchanged startled looks.
I said nothing.
The next morning, Kendall’s mother entered my lecture hall.
“Which one is Nora Hayes?”
Before anyone could stop her, Brenda Price crossed the room and slapped me.
My head snapped sideways.
The room erupted.
“What are you doing?” Marcus shouted.
Brenda pointed at me.
“You left my daughter to die.”
I touched my cheek.
“Do you have proof?”
“My daughter told me everything.”
“She also said I pushed her?”
Brenda’s face changed.
“Yes.”
A few students looked at me.
There it was.
The beginning of the same machinery.
Rumor.
Emotion.
Certainty without evidence.
Brenda lunged for me again.
This time, I caught her wrist.
“If you hit me again, I will call the police.”
Her mouth fell open.
“You disrespectful little—”
“No.”
My voice remained quiet.
“You don’t get to assault me because your daughter told you a story.”
Our academic adviser, Professor Fletcher, rushed inside.
“What happened?”
Brenda turned instantly theatrical.
“This girl tried to kill my daughter!”
Professor Fletcher looked at me.
“Nora?”
“I did not touch Kendall.”
“She’s lying!”
Brenda swung her purse toward me.
I caught it, pulled it from her hand, and tossed it onto an empty desk.
“Enough.”
The room went silent.
“In my life,” I said, “an accusation is not evidence.”
Brenda stared at me.
Then she backed toward the door.
“You’ll pay for what you did.”
I watched her leave.
After class, I stepped into the stairwell and called the private investigator my father had used years ago in my first life.
Except this time, my father was alive.
“Did you find it?”
The investigator answered.
“Yes. Clinic records, dates, and witness leads. You were right.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“And campus security?”
“There are thermal cameras near the pond. Installed two weeks ago.”
For the first time since waking in this second life, I smiled.
“Preserve everything.”
Three days later, Kendall waited outside our residence hall.
She had been discharged.
Students filled the plaza around us.
Bandages covered half her face.
“Nora!”
She began crying the moment enough people were watching.
“Why did you do this to me?”
I stopped.
Kendall raised her voice.
“I didn’t want this public, but everyone deserves to know.”
I said nothing.
She told the crowd she had borrowed personal hygiene supplies from me weeks earlier. She implied I had infected her through contaminated items, then claimed I pushed her into the pond to silence her.
The story was medically absurd, but fear rarely waits for education.
People stepped away from me.
Marcus looked horrified.
“Nora, maybe you should leave campus until this gets sorted out.”
Then Dean George Henderson arrived.
My blood ran cold.
I remembered him.
In my first life, he signed my expulsion papers.
He had looked me in the eye and told me the university could not afford the reputational damage of keeping me enrolled.
Now he pointed at me.
“Effective immediately, you are suspended pending formal disciplinary review.”
“You haven’t investigated anything.”
“The health and safety of the community comes first.”
Kendall lowered her eyes modestly.
“If Nora apologizes and agrees to cover my medical and reconstructive costs, I might ask the university not to destroy her entire future.”
“How much?” someone asked.
Kendall hesitated just long enough.
“One hundred thousand.”
Several people murmured about how generous she was.
I started laughing.
Kendall’s expression faltered.
Then sirens entered the plaza.
Two campus police cars stopped beside the crowd.
Behind them came a county health department vehicle.
An investigator stepped out holding a thick folder.
Kendall stopped breathing.
And I knew my second life had finally reached the place where the first one had ended.
Only this time, I had brought evidence.
