I fall back onto the bed, letting out a long sigh as the tension leaks out of my body for the first time in what feels like an eternity. The room looks exactly the same as it did when I left it today—or, more accurately, six months from now, on March 15.

The bright blue bedspread, the wall of inspirational quotes, the collage of adorable Polaroid shots that I’ve accumulated throughout my high school and college years—it’s all here. This must be the day I brought more clothes from home back to the Theta Kappa Theta Kappa sorority house. There’s an open suitcase on the ground, full to the brim with rumpled clothes, eyeshadow palettes, and used, dog-eared textbooks I managed to find for half the price at a random garage sale. Shoes and socks are everywhere. The whole room is a bit of a mess.

I groan. Having to clean my room again is an unintended consequence of living my life a second time that I hadn’t thought about when I signed the contract. Maybe it was listed in the terms and conditions that I didn’t read.

Oh well. I’ll gladly clean my room a hundred times—no, a thousand times—if it means I can live past the ripe age of twenty. With a sigh, I get to work, picking through the room and throwing things into the correct drawers. I don’t bother folding anything though. There’s only so much a girl can take in a day.

I’m only half concentrating on cleaning. I carefully inspect every item for clues before tossing them away, hoping to stumble across something that might reveal why I was sent to this exact moment in time. There must be a reason why Death revived me on this day, some moment that would set off the chain reaction that would eventually lead to my death. But what could it have been?

I picked up an old band T-shirt, sniffed it, wrinkled my nose, and threw it into the trash. I don’t remember anything particularly meaningful happening today…

The sound of the door opening interrupts my train of thought. I turn and try pasting some kind of friendly grin on my face, although I can tell I’m probably failing miserably. My cheeks hurt from how wide I’m grinning, masking the anxiety churning like an angry sea inside my stomach.

Standing in the open doorway is Sydney Julian, my so-called best friend. Her strawberry blond hair is pulled up in a high ponytail, but it still drapes down her shoulder. The last time I saw her, she was standing over my dead body with a knife in her hands and my blood on her fingers.

Sydney is saying something, but I can’t hear her over the blood pounding in my ears. My heart threatens to beat out of my chest.

Focus! I command myself. Focus on what she’s saying. Your life depends on it.

It’s no use. I’m starting to hyperventilate. My fight-or-flight reaction has kicked in, and all I want to do is run away, like a deer trapped in the gaze of a hungry, predatory wolf. Fear rises like bile in my throat, turning metallic and bitter in my mouth. I turn away, hoping it isn’t too late to hide my reaction. I won’t be able to function if I keep looking at Sydney, who I keep hallucinating has a knife behind her back and blood dripping down her front.

I fix my gaze on the window in front of me, trying to control my panicked breathing. In. Out. Before long, I calm down enough to focus on Sydney’s voice through the buzzing static filling my head. She’s complaining about something.

“…can you believe that?”

“Huh?” I ask, swallowing past the lump in my throat.

“Can you believe they want to change our theme for the pledge open house? They can’t do that this close to the event. It’ll totally fuck everything up.” She storms over to her desk and flounces onto her sensible wood chair. Thankfully, she’s so worked up over the pledge theme that she doesn’t seem to notice my reaction to her entrance, or the way I tense when she crosses the room. “I don’t know why they want to change it anyways. Our idea was so good, don’t you think? Why would they think any idea would be better than ours?”

I mumble an affirmative, hoping it’s supportive enough to soothe her ire. Luckily, someone outside calls her name. She makes an irritated noise at the back of her throat and walks back out, throwing a quick “Be right back!” over her shoulder. She leaves, slamming the door behind her.

As soon as she’s well and truly gone, I collapse onto the bed, my bones melting into puddles of jelly from the stress. I gulp in giant gasps of air, trying to calm my madly beating heart.

I’m alive, I chant. I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive…

Now that I’m alive, I have a chance to keep my best friend from killing me.

I groan, covering my face with my hands. No matter how many times I replay the scene in my head, I still can’t believe she would kill me. It makes no sense. Best friends don’t kill each other. We might’ve had our ups and downs every now and then, but what friends didn’t? In fact, if you had asked me before I died if Sydney would take a bullet for me, I would have answered with a wholehearted yes.

There has to be a reasonable explanation. This do-over will give me a chance to find the truth.

Sydney and I have been friends since freshman year. We had pretty much identical schedules that semester, but I knew we’d be best friends after our first class. Sydney and I were perfect matches in almost every regard: we were equally ambitious, goal-oriented, and—dare I say it—cutthroat when it came to achieving our dreams.

She was also beautiful and loved to have a good time. She was one of the most fun people I’d ever met. She was down for anything—a party, a movie marathon, anything. We’d quickly become good friends, two souls recognizing a kindred spirit in each other. Then we’d joined a sorority together and become inseparable.

An undercurrent of competitiveness had always simmered underneath our friendship, that is true. We have the same major, same clique of friends, the same vision of what we want our future to look like, so it’s not surprising that we butt heads sometimes. But I always thought a bit of friendly competition was one of the highlights of our friendship—we both push each other to be better than we would be on our own.

Apparently, Sydney doesn’t agree, if she killed me over it. Clearly something would go very, very wrong with our friendship over the next six months—and I would have to keep an eye on her to make sure I caught exactly what it was.

Because I had no idea.

The door slams open, and Sydney stomps back in.

“Oh my god, you would not believe the conversation I just had. Now they don’t want to just change the theme, but they want to cancel the venue too! I think they had some dumb idea about moving it to Bad Saint instead…”

I tune her out. I know from experience that once Sydney gets on a roll about the planning committee, it’s easier to just let her keep going until she tires herself out. I let her voice wash over me, focusing on unpacking the rest of my suitcase to keep busy when—

“Honestly, if they screw this up, I will literally murder someone.”

My body twitches, as if remembering the keen edge of the knife as it sliced through my skin. Slowly, I turn around so I can see Sydney. She’s seated by her desk, shuffling through some papers with her back to me. “Would you, though? Really?”

She pauses at my reaction. She clearly doesn’t understand what I’m asking, or she isn’t really paying attention to her own words. “What? What are you talking about?”

I stand up, my knees cracking at the sudden movement, and move closer. Sydney keeps shuffling her papers, blissfully unaware of what I’m doing until I place a hand on her shoulder and flip her chair around so we’re face-to-face. Her brows draw together in confusion.

“Gigi? What’s going on?”

I ignore her question and my body’s repulsion at being this close to my killer. “Would you really murder someone if you were angry enough?”

She blanches. “What are you talking about? Gigi, you’re being weird. Are you feeling okay?”

I press on. “Would you kill me again if you were mad enough?”

Her eyes go wide in disbelief, but before she can say a word, she freezes. The world goes gray and white, blurring at the edges, and I curse under my breath. A second later, Sydney melts away and Death takes her place, standing at the far end of my childhood bedroom.

He holds up the contract I signed. “Breaking the rules already, are we?”