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"Sweetheart, can you walk home today? Sophie still doesn't know the way." I looked at Warren. He'd picked me up from school every day for years. Now Sophie was here, and somehow, I was the one walking five miles home. Again. In my last life, my biological family lost me at an amusement park. Years later, I was found far from home. Even my own mother could barely recognize me. This time, I thought Warren would choose me. I was wrong. Sophie cried, and the barrette meant for me became hers. She dropped a tin of snacks, blamed me, and Warren believed her without a second thought. Then my mother told me to "know my place" when I reached for a dress Sophie wanted. That was when I stopped waiting for them to choose me. I won a math competition, and the prize finally gave me a way out. Warren promised he'd be at my awards ceremony. He never showed. That night, I packed my bag, left my award behind, and took nothing that could make me look back. Tomorrow, I'm getting on that bus. They still have no idea I'm leaving. After my biological parents brought me home, I might as well have been invisible to my own family. Sophie Mercer—the girl they had raised as their daughter instead of me—was driven to and from school by my brother, and Mom waited for her on the porch every afternoon. Meanwhile, they managed to lose me three separate times. The last time, someone took me away. It was three years before the police found me in a mine. Given a second chance at life, all I wanted was to stay with the man who had raised me. No matter how busy he was, he used to pull up outside my school every afternoon in his battered old pickup, right on time. He would drive me home along the narrow back roads between the fields, the evening breeze rolling in through the open windows. I thought no one would ever lose me again. But something had gone wrong this time around. Somehow, Sophie ended up in our little rural town. On her very first day of school, she clung to him and turned
