Chapter 1: Splitting Souls and Shattered Truths

Luke secretly loves my twin sister but is engaged to me.

He said, "I always thought you were that girl from church camp—that’s why I asked your family for your hand."

I've told him so many times that the sickly little girl at camp was me.

But everyone in my family helps my sister keep up the lie, so I’m the one who gets labeled the shameless liar.

Luckily, my therapist was the one who noticed I was slipping.

She told me I’d been a renowned psychologist in a past life, and when I died, my soul split in two, becoming daughters in two different families.

She said, "You have to choose soon which family’s daughter you want to be, or neither body will last much longer."

I hesitated, chewing on my lip. "That family—what are they really like?"

My therapist didn’t answer right away.

She studied me for a long moment, then suddenly asked, "Have you suffered a lot these years?"

I shot back a quick denial. "No, they've all been quite good to me." I fiddled with the hem of my shirt, eyes glued to the floor, avoiding her gaze. The lie tasted familiar, bitter, practiced.

Maybe she really was the only one who cared. There was something in her eyes—a tired kind of sadness—that made me wonder if she could see right through me.

She didn’t push. If I said life was good, why ask more?

She said that family had both parents, an older brother, and an older sister. Sounded like the American dream: two-point-five kids, white picket fence, the whole package.

She laid out the details of their life, then looked at me and sighed. "Whether they’re good or not, you’ll have to find out yourself."

She pulled out a glass bottle and set it on my desk. The bottle was cool and oddly heavy in my palm, like it wanted to anchor me to this world. Afternoon light through my curtains made the blue glass cast shadows that danced across the scratched wood.

"This is Soul Separation Powder. It’s got sedatives to ease the pain. Once you take it, your soul leaves your body in a month. When you die, your therapist will come to get you."

"If you don’t take it, the bottle self-destructs after a day. If that happens, I’ll go to Denver and bring your other half over."

She vanished, just like that—one blink and she was gone, leaving behind only the faint scent of lavender and a bottle that shouldn’t have existed.

I jerked awake, sweat soaking my hair. My Michigan State tee was plastered to my back, and I could practically hear Coach Izzo yelling at me to get it together.

Outside, wind chimes tinkled. The early autumn breeze swept in, carrying the scent of burning leaves and the distant growl of a lawnmower—the last cut before dusk.

I shivered and coughed hard, the familiar tightness squeezing my chest. That old friend, always there when I least wanted it.

Was I losing it? Dreaming up weird stuff like this? Maybe I’d binged too many supernatural shows on Netflix. Was this some kind of Freaky Friday situation?

But then I saw it—on my oak side table, right next to my Keurig (still blinking “add water” at me), sat the blue bottle. Exactly where it had been in my dream.

Three sharp knocks at the door snapped me out of it—Luke’s signature knock.