This Time, I Became the Villain

My fiancé and my own brother spent ten years hating me. They were certain I'd bullied the sweet little scholarship girl they both loved. So they announced it to the world.

At my engagement party. "I'm not marrying trash who tormented a classmate in high school." The livestream caught her face.

Wet eyes, soft smile. "I forgave her a long time ago." "Some doors you just close quietly. Then you keep walking." She was famous by morning. The whole country turned on me.

I got acid thrown in my face by one of her fans, and on my way out, I took her to hell with me. Then I opened my eyes and it was senior year again.

She was standing at the sinks, holding her own head under the faucet, soaking her hair, smiling at me. "Thought about how you're going to apologize yet?" I lost it on the spot.

Dragged her into a stall by the hair and put her face in the bowl. "Let me teach you what real bullying looks like." "That mouth is filthy.

Rinse it out before you go tattle." Chapter 1 The last thing I kept from that life was the acid going into my eyes. Pain like that doesn't leave room for anything else.

I held on anyway, long enough to find her through the blur. Sera, tucked in safe behind my brother.

I picked the cake knife up off the table and drove it into her chest. "We go to hell together." Then I opened my eyes. Everything was too sharp. Too clean.

I stood there two full seconds trying to understand what I was looking at. Then I saw her down the row of sinks. Years younger.

Seraphina Hollis, in a uniform blouse washed so many times it had gone gray, cranking the tap and running cold water over her own head.

She kept smiling while she did it. "Who do you think they'll believe? Me, or you?" And I understood. This day. This was the day it started.

I must have looked stunned, because her smile spread. "Thought about how you're going to apologize, princess? Ah—" Ten years of it came up my throat at once.

I crossed the tile, took a fistful of her hair, and hauled her into the stall. Her scream turned into something raw.

I pushed her whole face down into the water. "You dump a little cold water on yourself and I'm the monster? Come here. I'll show you what real bullying is." She thrashed.

Both arms going like motors. It didn't matter. She couldn't get an inch.

All she could do was open her mouth in the filthy water and make noise. "Sabine, let go of me… glk… hurgh—" I threw my head back and laughed. "That mouth is filthy.

Make sure you rinse it out before you go tattle!" Time travel. Dying hallucination. Whatever this was. I didn't care. I went all the way insane, and I went there on purpose.

In my last life I died on the best day I ever had. I'd just taken my third acting Golden Globe. I was in couture, standing next to Julian Vance. My fiancé.

The boy I'd known since we were five. It was an engagement party the whole country was streaming live.

Then he told the room, "I will not get engaged to trash who tormented a classmate in high school." I was still staring at him when she came up out of the crowd. Tears in her eyes.

Chin lifted. Smiling. "Sabine. Do you remember me? Seraphina.

You bullied me for ten years." "I bet you never imagined the two of us standing here as equals." "It's all right, though.

I forgave you a long time ago." "Some doors you just close quietly. Then you keep walking." Live, in front of everyone. She was a star before the night ended.

Before I could get a word out, the reporters my brother and Julian had lined up came through the doors and closed around me in a ring. "Ms.

Locke, we hear you still make a habit of hazing the new actors on set—" Chapter 2 "—and there were photos of you leaving a reproductive health clinic last month.

Is that a lifestyle problem, or did you catch something?" Someone came out of the crowd fast. A fan.

Her arm went back. "Die, you whore." The liquid hit me across the face and stuck there, burning through everything it touched. My vision never came back after that.

Heaven to hell, and it took no time at all. I let go of her hair. Seraphina slid down the side of the stall and lay on the tile, barely pulling air.

That sweet, innocent little face was streaked with filth. I laughed out loud. "Go ahead. Cry. Scream. Go tell the whole world I bullied you.

Wearing that." My voice climbed on the last word. I thought about what acid does to a face, and I put my shoe into hers. Twice. Then I walked out.

Nadia was waiting at the bottom of the main hall steps, shoulder against the wall. "PE started ages ago. What were you doing up there?" "Bullying the new girl," I said.

Her head came around. "You what?" "Mark Twain said that when the whole world already thinks you're the bully, you might as well be one." "…Did Mark Twain say that?" "Doesn't matter." We cut toward the edge of the field and walked straight into Julian Vance.

He wasn't in any of my classes. Everyone at Ashcroft knew him anyway, as my boyfriend. Sabine Locke's boyfriend since we were kids.

His eyes moved over my face and kept going, to something behind me. "Bee.

You're late." A pause. "I hear your class got a transfer student." In my last life, every single time Sera poured something over her own head and told the school it was me, Julian was the one who walked me into apologizing so we could all move on.

It looked like he was standing up for me. What he was doing was signing my confession, one polite sentence at a time. I slapped him. No warning. Nothing.

Next to me, Nadia shortcircuited for the second time that day. Julian's expression didn't move.

His eyes went cold for maybe half a second, and then it was as if nothing had happened at all. He bent his head and nudged his cheek against mine. "What's wrong, Bee?

Bad day?" It took most of my last life to learn the rest of it. When Julian was small, his mother left him at an amusement park. He spent a while in a group home after that.

There was a girl there. Bright, easy to laugh. She slept in the bunk next to his and slipped him a piece of candy once. The only light he ever had. The light was Seraphina.

And he recognized her on her first day at Ashcroft. Day one. He believed every word she said about how I treated her. He hated me down to the bone.

But he was his father's bastard, and he needed the marriage to get a foothold in the Vance family. So he swallowed it and stayed sweet to me. "We're done," I said.

His pupils shrank. "…Why? Give me a reason, Bee." I pulled a tissue out of my bag and started wiping the cheek he'd touched. One pass.

Another. "I don't date the sons of homewreckers. It's dirty. Is that reason enough?" Afterward, Nadia asked me very carefully whether I'd been possessed. Fair question.

The Sabine Locke of that year loved Julian Vance out loud, with her whole chest. Waited for him after school every single day.

Burned both hands baking cookies and carried them over to him grinning like an idiot. Everyone knew who I'd picked. It was never a secret. That was over.

Saturday was my eighteenth birthday, and my parents were throwing the big kind of party for it. Guest list, catering, the whole floor of the house. And I knew Seraphina Hollis.

She was not going to waste a room like that. Chapter 3 The Sabine Locke who started senior year was dead. The one standing here had crawled back out of the acid.

Sera didn't show her face again for the rest of the day. That tracked.

That face was the only thing she really owned, and she wasn't going to spend it on anything smaller than a full house. I could wait. Saturday came fast. My eighteenth.

My parents had been promising the party for months. The big one, the kind that announces you're an adult now. Then something blew up at the office and they had to come late.

Every chandelier in the house was lit. I came down the curved staircase in couture and saw my brother across the room. Auguste Locke, in a suit, face flat as a wall. "Sabine.

Come here." I went. I pretended not to see Julian standing behind him with those deep, unreadable eyes, or Seraphina beside him, already brimming.

I gave him my sweetest smile. "What does my big brother want? Did you get me a present?" Auguste looked at me for a moment, cold all the way through. "Bullying a classmate.

Running your mouth at her. Sabine, is that how you were raised?" He didn't lower his voice at all.

Every guest in the room turned toward us at once. "What are you even talking about? I don't follow." I tipped my head toward Sera. "Who did I run my mouth at?

When did I bully anybody? I don't even know her." "It's a little late to play innocent.

People pay for what they do." "Mom and Dad aren't here, so I'll handle you for them." He lifted a hand. The housekeeper brought over a tablet.

On the screen was the back end of my trust account. "They put your trust in my name until you turn eighteen." He looked at me and said it one word at a time. "Now.

In front of all of these people. Apologize to her." Across that enormous room, dozens of people settled in for the show. "Bullying? The Locke girl does that?" "Well. Spoiled kid.

Can't stand watching anyone do better than her. It happens." "At least her brother's fair. Doesn't cover for family." Sera's eyes found mine, pleased and daring me at the same time.

I straightened my back and let him have it, smiling the whole way through. "What is this garbage coming out of your mouth? People who know you think you're Auguste Locke.

People who don't would swear some Victorian ghost climbed into your body." "I bow my head in two places.

Funerals, and church." I tilted my head and looked him up and down, slow, and let the smile turn nasty. "Here's an idea. Go find a tall building and jump off it.

I'll put on a black dress and sit up with the body all night." His face went dark. Behind him, Sera opened her mouth and did the voice. "Miss Locke, I know you don't like me. Fine.

You can treat me however you want.

But how can you say something like that to your own brother?" She widened her eyes until they filled, arranging her face into something small and young and harmless. Julian saw it.

Something moved through his eyes, dark, hard to name. Then, quietly: "Bee. You did something wrong. You apologize, that's all.

There's no need to—" I widened my eyes right back at him and looked genuinely troubled. "Sorry, I don't speak dog.

Could you all say that again in a human language?" "Enough!" Auguste's voice cracked across the room. "Sabine, you are a young woman. Do you have any sense of shame at all?

Who taught you to stand there with that filthy mouth and no manners?" He was exactly the same as he'd always been. Whatever I said, he wasn't going to believe one word of it.

He never had. Chapter 4 He'd take the worst version of me and nail me to it, over and over, for as long as he lived.

I pulled my mouth into the same cold smile he was wearing. "Mom and Dad are busy. Nobody had time to raise me. Want to guess who did?" "You, obviously.

My dear big brother." In my last life I was afraid of Auguste, and I loved him, in that order. He was years older. In my head he was authority with a face on it.

When we were small and our parents were buried in the company, he was the one who handled me. Step out of line and I'd be put in the study to stand there, no dinner, all night.

The day I carried home a curlyhaired stray I'd found, he told the housekeeper not to open the door. "It's filthy.

We don't want that in this house." So I sat on the front steps holding the dog until morning. I was little. I decided that was just how he came built.

Some brothers don't have the soft part. Then Seraphina showed up. And I found out my brother knew exactly how to be gentle. Just not at me.

I saw him hand her warm milk in the back of his car, push her hair off her forehead, say, "Three meals a day, on time.

If money's short, that's what I'm for." I saw her lift a skinny stray cat out of the rain, and him holding the umbrella over both of them, asking softly, "Do you want to keep him?" I saw her drunk, hanging off his sleeve, talking nonsense, and him listening to every word of it with his whole face gone warm.

I spent that entire life inside a con that ran on love. Wondering why my brother didn't love me. Why my fiancé never took my side. It took dying to get it.

I'm a whole person on my own. Nobody has ever needed to be loved in order to keep breathing. The party never did get a clean ending.

I was still standing there refusing to move when my parents finally walked in. They thanked everyone very politely and cleared the room.

Sera tried the routine one more time on my mother, and my mother shut it down with a smile. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. The Lockes handle Locke business ourselves.

I'd like you to go now." Sera choked on it. She looked at Auguste, eyes shining, and then she turned and left.

Once it was just the three of us, my father finally spoke, and he used the voice. "All right.

Somebody tell me what happened." I got in ahead of Auguste. "A girl transferred into my school.

Day one she loses her mind, dumps water over her own head, and tells everyone I did it. Says I bully her." "I found out later she's the scholarship girl my brother's been funding.

Seraphina Hollis." Auguste's head came up off the sofa. His face was pure shock. Surprised, big brother? I found out about the two of you a lot earlier this time.

I pressed the corner of my eye until it went red, and let my voice break. "I wasn't even angry with her. It's one birthday.

I could have let it go." "I'm just sad that my own brother wouldn't believe me…" Seraphina Hollis is not the only girl alive who can play the poor little lamb.

My father listened to me sniffle and shut the whole thing down. "Enough. I don't care who did what to whom.

No more of it." "If this gets outside the house, it's bad for both of you." "It ends here." I went back to school and started bullying Seraphina Hollis right out in the open.

Chapter 5 Ink in her locker. Loud laughter every time she was called on and that mountain drawl came out.

Her physics test, torn up and dropped over her head one piece at a time. "Go on.

Go tell somebody." I was smiling when I said it. "Isn't that your best event?" A scrap of paper drifted down out of her hair.

She looked at me, and for a second something came up in her eyes that went all the way to the bone. Then she started shaking and crying and apologizing. "I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, Miss Locke.

If I did something that upset you, I'll apologize right now, I'll fix it, okay?" "You being alive upsets me." I raised my eyebrows like this was a fascinating problem. "So how are you going to fix that?

Go die right now?" Her mouth opened and nothing came out. So she went back to crying. That was the day I found out how good it feels to be the villain.

She told a teacher, obviously. The dean of students called me into his office.

I cried my way through the story of my birthday party and then laid the school counselor's evaluation on his desk. "She made something up about me, and my brother humiliated me in front of a hundred people over it.

I cry every time I think about it. I wake up out of nightmares." "I'm seeing a therapist. I'm on medication.

The evaluation says major depression and posttraumatic stress." He ended up comforting me. Everyone could see I hated Seraphina Hollis.

Nadia didn't get it. "What did she actually do to you? Did she do something?" I tipped my head back and grinned at her. "Can't I just be a terrible person?

Rich girl, new scholarship kid, I look down on her, end of story." "Please." She rolled her eyes. "If you were that person, why aren't you bullying me?

My family's a lot poorer than hers." "Day one of being friends, you covered my school supplies for all of high school.

I'd sooner believe I'm the Queen of England than believe you bully anybody." "I can do that much math." Yeah. Anybody could do that much math. Except my brother.

And the boy I was in love with. I smiled with my mouth. Nothing reached my eyes. The school's centennial gala was a month out.

In my last life, Auguste and Julian arranged for Sera to play a piano solo at it. An admissions director from Thornbury Conservatory was in the audience.

He picked her out of that room and gave her the only fullride early offer they handed out that year. Me? I'd been in ballet since I was four. More than ten years of it.

I had a solo ready. Then Julian came to find me. He put his arms around me on the lawn with the sun going down and said it quietly. "Can you not do it?

Bee, I don't want a room full of people seeing you look like that. I'd be jealous." "Dance it for me. Just me. Please?" I was such an idiot back then. I remember feeling pleased.

Look how much he cares. So on the night of the show, I really didn't go. I stayed in an empty dance studio and danced it for him. Again. And again.

When I finished, the sound came all the way from the main auditorium. A whole building screaming at once. Julian heard it and started to laugh.

He was always gentle with me and always quiet. Even his smiles came through a layer of fog. That was the first time I ever saw something in him move that hard.

So I stopped dancing and asked, like a fool, "Are you that happy?" Chapter 6 He paused. "Yes." Back then I thought he was happy because I'd danced it for him alone.

It took years to learn the truth. He was happy because her performance had gone perfectly. The only light he'd ever had was going to have a bright, enormous future.

This time I submitted my dance program early. Not a solo. Every girl in my class who had the slightest interest in performing got pulled in, and we built a ballet ensemble piece.

I paid for the coach out of my own account. The most expensive costumes. Custom props. Next to that, one girl in a white dress at a piano looked a little thin.

I never found out what she cried to Auguste about that week.

I do know he was waiting for me in the garden when I got home from school. "Sabine." My brother looked at me with nothing on his face at all. "The gala. Your program.

Withdraw it." I laughed. "Auguste, what are you barking about now?" "Don't mistake this for a negotiation." Something cold and amused surfaced in his eyes. "If you insist on going up there, whatever happens is on you." I stopped walking and looked into those eyes. "Big brother.

Your poor little lamb has been playing piano for over ten years. And she still doesn't think she can beat me on the same stage?" "Use.

Less." A few days out from the showcase, Julian found me again. "Bee." "What happened before was my fault. But you blocked me everywhere.

You won't see me." "I don't know what's going on, Bee.

Is this a misunderstanding, or is it… someone else?" There was real pain in his voice by the last few words. "You told me yourself.

You said I'd always be your favorite person." Anger came up my throat with something sharp riding on it. I loved him for years, and every year of it was real.

He said he didn't like watching me film kissing scenes, so I passed on offers from directors people wait their whole careers for.

He said Sera came from nothing, that she got picked on in the group home, that I should let things go. So I forgave her. Again and again and again.

All I ever wanted was to trade one true thing for another true thing. What I got back was ten straight years of the two of them hating me and telling everyone why.

Right then I stopped bothering with the surface. I grabbed the front of his shirt and slammed him back into the tree behind him. He sucked in a breath.

Before he could get a word out, I hit him across the face. I didn't hold anything back. That cold pale face went red and started to swell on the spot.

I got close and said it one word at a time. "You and Seraphina have known each other since you were kids. I know." "You're in love with her.

So what is this act you keep doing in front of me?" "You want to keep me on the hook, use me, and be her simp on the side." "You're exactly like your mother.

She knew he was married and did it anyway. You're both trash." Something built in his eyes at that last word, the way the sky drops before a storm.

He didn't manage a single syllable. I made a sound like a laugh, let go of him, and walked away. That night I dreamed.

I almost never dreamed about the last life, and I'd certainly never dreamed about what happened after I died.

The cake knife went into her chest, and I went out in more pain than I knew a body could hold. They rushed her to a hospital. I died. She lived.

Chapter 7 Outside the hospital room, Julian had a fistful of Auguste's collar. "You said you'd handle all of it.

You said you'd keep her safe—" Auguste knocked his hand off and answered in a flat voice. "I already agreed to share her with you. You're a bastard son.

Without my help, do you hold onto the Locke Group? Don't push it." Julian staggered back a step. "You helped me? It was—" He cut himself off halfway. Auguste's mouth curled. "Right.

It was my sister who helped you. And she's dead. The one who threw the acid? You set that up yourself. Or did you forget?" Julian stood there and said nothing.

The red light over the trauma bay doors kept blinking. A few minutes later they wheeled Seraphina out.

The doctor was saying, "She's not out of the woods—" Julian's eyes went over her face, bloodless and slack, and something in him shook.

Then he spoke, and he was calm. "I didn't forget." "And I've never once been sorry." I came up out of the dream, got to the bathroom on legs that wouldn't hold, and knelt over the toilet dryheaving for a long time.

When I straightened up I braced both hands on the counter and looked at myself.

My eyes were shot through with red, and what was in them wasn't grief. "Never sorry," I said to the mirror. "That's fine. You'll be sorry this time.

You'll be sorry you were born." "Watch me." The day of the showcase, I ran into Sera by the campus pond.

She was in a silver cocktail dress, quiet and expensive, with a diamond necklace at her throat that cost more than her tuition.

I knew exactly who'd bought it for her, and why. "Sabine. You think being a Locke protects you forever?" "You've bullied me this long.

Did you really think I wouldn't hit back?" "I'm going to make you pay a thousand times over." "So you know about Julian and me. So what? He loves me.

Your brother only loves me." "Nobody is ever going to love someone like you." She kept going for a while.

When she ran out, I smiled and gave her one line. "How was the toilet water?" Her face came apart. I turned around and left her standing there.

By evening the sky over the campus was burning orange, edge to edge.

The dance girls and I got into costume and started for the backstage door, holding our skirts up out of the grass.

Halfway there I realized the prop for our final bow was gone. "Did I leave it in the studio?" I ran it back in my head and decided to go get it. "Want me to come with you?" Nadia said. "It's not heavy.

I can carry it." I smiled at her. "Go get your faces done. Find the stage manager and lock in the order of our props." The arts building was enormous and empty.

I took the stairs two at a time with a fistful of goldshot skirt in one hand. One floor below the studio, I stopped. Someone was standing a few steps above me.

The last of the sun came through the window in a redgold bar, and it only caught half his face. The rest of him was in the dark, and his eyes were deep the way water is deep.

Julian. He spoke low, and there was a storm sitting behind his voice, not falling yet. "Bee. What are you doing?" "None of your business.

Move." I went to go around him and take the next step up. Something hit my shoulder with everything behind it. Chapter 8 My brain stalled out for a full second.

By the time it caught up, my weight was gone and I was already going backward. There were thirtysome stairs under me. I landed on my back and went down all of them.

Pain came over me like water. I stopped against the iron railing at the bottom, and my ankle made a small sound that bones should never make.

Julian came down the stairs one at a time and stopped next to me. He was still looking at me with those calm, grieving eyes. His voice, when it came, had nothing in it. "Bee.

Don't blame me." "You've had everything since the day you were born.

Even if you miss this one chance, there are a hundred other roads open to you." "Sera isn't like you." "She has already done the absolute most that anyone in her position could do." Then he took hold of my sprained ankle.

And drove my shin toward the iron railing. The dream came back all at once