Chapter 1Ditching Him Made Me A Billionaire

The year of my most foolish, innocent love, I was sitting on the wooden bleachers by the basketball court, holding a cold drink for the boy I secretly adored.

Travis sunk a clean three-pointer, then turned and blew a cocky whistle in my direction.

My face burned hot. I was just about to stand up and hand him the bottle when a raspy, jarringly familiar voice crackled through my cheap wired earbuds.

"Don't go! I am you, ten years in the future. Tomorrow, Travis is going to get arrested for a gang assault and sent to juvenile hall!"

"Open your SAT vocab book right now. If you don't memorize two hundred words today, I will make you wish you'd never been born."

"After school tomorrow, go to the corner store with the sports book in the back. Bet on Germany beating Brazil, seven to one. It is your only ticket out of this dump."

I gasped, nearly dropping my phone. The voice, the sharp, cynical tone—it was legacy-grade me.

The next second, Travis was jogging over, sweating and grinning, reaching for the bottle in my hand.

I scrambled to unscrew the cap, lifted it to my lips, and took a massive gulp.

"This is mine," I blurted, wiping my mouth. "I have to study. I'm going for top of the class. See ya."

* * *

The smug grin on Travis's face froze.

He swung his leg back and kicked the metal base of the hoop with a resounding "clang".

"Have you lost your damn mind, Maeve? Top of the class? Since when do you care about that?"

His roar made me flinch, my neck burning with residual heat, but my feet obeyed the voice in my ears. I turned on my heel and walked toward the school gates.

Travis caught up in three long strides, snatching my school lunch card right out of my hand.

"Fine, go be a genius. I'm taking this. Courtney said she was hot today, so I'm going to the organic market to buy her a carton of those fancy rainier cherries to cool her down."

He caught the hurt, bewildered look on my face and let out a soft sneer from his nose.

"Don't look at me like some tragic housewife. I'm not trying to be mean, but with your grades, dreaming about being number one is just pathetic."

I stood there frozen, watching him walk away toward the convenience store with my last twenty dollars of lunch money for the month.

Everything that had just happened felt too surreal. My head was spinning.

Travis and I had been neighbors for over ten years. We grew up on the same block, sharing the same bruises and the same empty stomachs.

When I was eight, he threw rocks at the stray dogs chasing me down the alley. When I was ten, he pulled me behind the stairs to hide from my dad’s drunken rages.

Travis was the only person in the world I thought I could trust.

But high school changed him.

As hormones kicked in, I found myself secretly reading those cheap romance paperbacks from the dollar store, daydreaming. Naturally, I started doing what the girls in the books did—bringing Travis drinks, letting him take my lunch money, hoping he’d be the hero who saved me, who told me he'd protect me forever.

Now, he was stealing my lunch money to buy imported fruit for a rich girl who had transferred here less than a month ago.

I bit my lip, but the voice in my ear cut through the silence again.

This time, it sounded cold, heavy with an exhausting, bone-deep weariness.

"Do you hear him? That's the boy you've spent your youth protecting."

"If you stay on this path, you won't even make it to the final exams. You'll get jumped by Travis's rivals, drop out, and end up working twelve-hour shifts at a packaging plant just to pay off debts. You'll ruin your life for him, and the second he gets out of prison, he'll leave you to become Courtney's personal bodyguard."

"Tomorrow afternoon, Courtney is going to pick a fight with some townies from the vocational school. She'll run to Travis to play her knight in shining armor. To show off for her, Travis is going to take an iron pipe and shatter a boy's spine."

"You won't be able to bear seeing him get hurt. You'll jump in to block a blow, take seven stitches to the back of your head, and miss your exams. His rivals will hound you day and night. You'll drop out, leave town, and rot."

I shuddered, a phantom chill creeping up the back of my neck.

The future me paused, her voice cracking slightly.

"If you choose him again this time... we will never escape."

A cold sweat broke out across my back. I clenched my jaw.

Ever since I could remember, my only dream was to get out of this decaying neighborhood.

I didn't hesitate anymore. I broke into a run, darting through the narrow alleys smelling of sour garbage, back to the cramped, moldy rental apartment we called home.

I pushed open the flimsy wooden door. The air inside was a suffocating mix of mildew and cheap, stale beer.

My deadbeat father hadn't been home in two weeks, probably off on another bender or hiding from bookies. My mother had packed her bags and run away with a trucker when I was six, unable to bear the endless cycle of debt collectors pounding on the door.

Through the thin walls, I could hear the neighbors shouting over a card game. The bare bulb overhead flickered, buzzing like an angry insect.

"You wanted him to be your family," the future me said, her voice gentler now, but still unyielding. "But Travis only ever saw you as a loyal dog."

"Put away your useless teenage heartbreak. Go to the bed. Pull out the metal tin under the floorboards."

I got down on my hands and knees, sliding my arm under the bed to pull out a rusted Danish butter cookie tin.

Inside was a crumpled stack of bills. Five hundred and thirty-one dollars.

My entire savings for the next two months.

"Take it. Tomorrow, you bet every single cent on Germany, seven to one."

"Now, open your AP prep book. Unit Two. Start memorizing."

The future me knew exactly what needed to be done. If that was the case, all I had to do was listen.

I cracked open the textbook, grabbed a pen, and began writing on a scrap piece of paper.