CHAPTER 1
The morning of the Sterling Grant final review began like every other morning in my small, cramped apartment on the wrong side of the city. Before the sun even crested the horizon, I was sitting at our tiny kitchen table, staring at the glowing screen of my battered laptop.
“You’re going to burn a hole through that screen, Maya.”
I looked up. My mother was standing in the doorway, dressed in her blue hospital scrubs. She looked exhausted. The dark circles under her eyes were practically a permanent fixture now, a physical receipt of the double shifts she worked as an orderly just to keep a roof over our heads.
“I’m just reviewing the slide deck one last time,” I said, offering a tired smile. “The committee wants a comprehensive breakdown of my localized hydroponics project. If the data isn’t flawless, they’ll tear it apart.”
My mother walked over and gently placed a hand on my shoulder. “Your data is flawless. You’ve been working on this for ten months. You know it backward and forward.” She leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “You’re going to win that grant, Maya. A hundred thousand dollars. Full tuition to whatever university you want. It’s going to change everything for us.”
“I know, Mom.”
“Oakridge Academy is lucky to have you,” she murmured, pouring herself a cup of black coffee. “Don’t let those rich kids make you feel any different. You earned your spot at that school. They just bought theirs.”
I closed my laptop and slid it carefully into my black canvas backpack. I zipped it shut, treating it like it held the nuclear launch codes. In a way, it did. That laptop held my ticket out of poverty. It held the culmination of two years of relentless studying, sleepless nights, and swallowing my pride in the face of relentless bullying.
Oakridge Academy was a fortress of generational wealth, a sprawling campus of manicured lawns, brick facades, and luxury cars. I was the charity case. The scholarship kid pulled from a rough public school because my standardized test scores made the academy look good on paper.
For two years, I had navigated the halls like a ghost. I avoided eye contact. I didn’t speak unless spoken to by a teacher. I had survived by being invisible.
But you can’t remain invisible when you’re standing in the way of a legacy student.
As I rode the city bus for forty-five minutes, transferring twice to reach the affluent suburbs, my stomach churned with anxiety. The Sterling Grant wasn’t just an academic prize. It was a lifeline. And there were only two finalists left in the running.
Me. And Chloe Harrington.
Chloe was everything Oakridge represented. Wealthy, connected, ruthless, and effortlessly cruel. Her father was on the board of trustees. Her family name was etched into the marble of the school library. She didn’t need a hundred thousand dollars for college. She probably spent that much on weekend ski trips to Aspen. But Chloe wanted the grant because it came with a guaranteed admission slot to a highly exclusive Ivy League engineering program. It was a trophy she felt entitled to win.
And for the past month, as my project scores began to eclipse hers, her casual disdain for me had mutated into aggressive hostility.
When I finally stepped off the bus and walked through the wrought-iron gates of Oakridge, the morning air was crisp and cold. The student parking lot was already filling up with BMWs and Range Rovers. I kept my head down, clutching the strap of my backpack tightly against my chest.
I needed to get to the AP Biology lab early. The final presentations for the external board were scheduled for noon. I wanted to run a hardware check on the classroom projector and make sure my slides formatted correctly on the school’s network before anyone else arrived.
The hallways were largely empty, echoing with the sound of my sensible, scuffed shoes. I turned the corner toward the science wing, my mind racing through the opening lines of my speech.
I reached the door to the lab. It was slightly ajar, the heavy metal door propped open by a rubber wedge. That wasn’t unusual. The janitorial staff usually left the doors open while they did their morning rounds.
I pushed the door open and stepped inside.
I didn’t hear the creak of the hinge above me. I didn’t see the heavy plastic bucket precariously balanced on the top of the doorframe, tied to a fishing line that was rigged to the handle.
I only felt the sudden, crushing weight of the liquid hitting my skull.
A thick, freezing, viscous wave of bright green slime cascaded down over my head, blinding me instantly. The sheer weight of it forced me to my knees. It poured over my glasses, soaked into the collar of my white shirt, and saturated my black tie. The smell hit me a second later—a harsh, chemical odor of industrial paint mixed with some sort of heavy adhesive.
I gasped, wiping my hands across my face to clear my eyes, but the slime was incredibly thick. It clung to my skin like tar.