Rebirth12 min read
The Year I Met Myself (and Lost the Future I Was Supposed to Have)
ButterPicks13 views
I held the form my mother had rewritten and felt my hands tremble.
"Mom, are you serious?" I asked, voice gone small. "I could get into Tsinghua or Peking. Why are you signing me up for a local second-tier college?"
Isabella Graves chewed her sunflower seeds and watched me like she watched a chessboard. Her smile was strange—too calm, too knowing.
"Listen to me, Everly," she said. "Trust me. You cannot go to those schools. If you go, you will ruin your life."
"Ruin—how?" I demanded. "This doesn't make sense."
Her eyes flickered wet for a second. "I came back, kiddo. I came back so I could stop what happened. If you go to Tsinghua or Peking, one year later you will be expelled, get severe depression, then be trafficked—sold out—taken to some remote mountain, fed like an animal, chained, and forced to have five children. You will die miserably."
I laughed because my brain tried to protect itself with disbelief. "You're saying you were reborn? Mom, stop. This is crazy."
"Don't laugh." She stamped her foot. "I'm serious. You have a guy online—his name is Ethan Castillo. You have a best friend named Karlee Bishop. You are secretly saving money to run away to Sanya after the exams. None of those are good. You cannot go to those schools. Sign the local form."
The laughter burned in my throat like bad coffee. Ethan Castillo. Karlee Bishop. She knew those names without me telling her. She even knew about my secret three-thousand-yuan stash I had never touched in the bank.
"You heard me? I know everything," Isabella said. "You must trust me."
"Or you read my texts?" I shot back. "How did you even—"
"I read you because I know you," she said simply. "Do as I say."
I stared at the checklist, then at my mother. The world narrowed to the cheap paper in my hands and the pressure in my ears. In my head, a stupid idea kept arriving like a moth to a light.
"Is this some elaborate prank?" I asked. "Are you trying to control me? What if we call the hospital?"
That idea made her explode. Before I could dial, Isabella lunged and slapped the phone out of my hand.
"Everly Bullock, you don't call anyone," she hissed. "You sit. You listen."
I sat. I listened. I watched the woman I had known always as my mother act like a woman who had lived another life and slipped into an old coat.
"Fine," I said finally. "Fine. I'll think about the second-tier school. But if this is a lie—"
"It's not." She sniffed. "You will thank me."
I left the house numb, the rewritten form sticking to my palm like wet paper. My father, Apollo Hoffmann, stormed back from a business meeting when he heard the news and nearly had a heart attack. He cursed, he demanded proofs, he wanted to call everyone in the world to argue my case.
"Isabella, what are you doing?" he roared. "You can't just—"
"Three months," she said. "In three months your construction company will hit a wall. Investors will pull out, you will be responsible for massive debts, and we will lose everything."
Apollo laughed without humor. "Isabella, you sound like you've swallowed a fortune teller. You need a vacation."
I thought she was crazy. I thought she was playing me. I thought she had finally decided to be dramatic. But the way she named details—my secret stash, my online crush, the exact timing—felt like a map someone else had drawn on my face.
"Fine," I said, softer than I wanted. "I will submit the form. But if this is wrong—"
"It won't be," she said.
Karlee Bishop came by later with a cone of melted ice cream because she couldn't help being giddy for me.
"So, champion," she said. "Which of the two did you choose? Tsinghua? Peking?"
"None," I said. "I'm not picking either."
She blinked. "Wait. Really? The city champion is choosing a second-tier school?"
"It makes sense," I lied. "I just want to be near home for a year."
That was half-true and half a lie.
Karlee brightened like a sunflower. "Good. You'll be close. We can party. Tonight is the thank-you-for-teachers banquet—are you going?"
Before I could answer, a figure I recognized from forum avatars and hidden messages walked up the garden path like he had been summoned.
"Everly?" Ethan Castillo said, faint smile hovering. He always looked like someone who had stepped out of a math textbook—neat, pale, precise.
I turned a painful red. "Ethan."
He held himself as if he belonged to a different climate.
"Congratulations," he said. "Top score. I knew you'd do it."
My chest did things. He extended a neat little box between his fingers like it contained a tiny world.
"I know this is sudden," he said. "But will you be my girlfriend? Can I escort you to tonight's banquet? I can pick you up at six."
"What?" My stupid mouth betrayed me. "Uh—maybe—I'm not ready—"
He blinked with a human crack of hurt.
"I understand." He put the box down on a bench, the metal catching light. "Sorry. I misjudged. Good luck."
He walked away like someone had muted his soundtrack. I wanted to run after him, but I had been warned.
"Don't go." Isabella's voice was smaller, urgent. She popped up behind me in a baseball cap and mask like a spy.
"What are you doing here?" I whispered.
"I followed," she said. "I couldn't risk you. He will lure you. He is a lure."
Ethan had gone into a dingy bar. It didn't look like what boys called a 'gathering spot'—it smelled of stale beer and cheap perfume.
I followed with my mother. We slid into a booth and listened.
He wasn't the shy genius I had built up online. He smirked, and the words he said were like sharp coins.
"She looked gross," Ethan said. "Full of pimples. Who would think the city's best would be like that? But study-wise—she's handy. Imagine: if she says I'm her boyfriend, maybe Tsinghua will take us both."
"What?" My stomach turned. "He thinks stepping with me will get him in?"
"Exactly." He chuckled. "I've heard the rumors—if the recruit takes in an underline, they sometimes take her boyfriend. We'll package it."
I felt cold and molten all at once.
The bar smelled worse when my anger rose. I snatched a bottle and felt ready to hurl it. Isabella slammed hers into Ethan's head before I could move.
"How dare you!" she screamed, and the shackles of her usual calm broke.
The bar exploded into chaos. Words, then hands, then the sound of glass. Someone called the police. We ended up at the station, scribbling statements while Ethan sat sullen with bruises lining his face. My father paid off some fees and shuffled us home with a one-thousand-yuan bill change and a bruise in his pride.
Apollo glared at Ethan like a general facing an enemy.
"You try to take what's mine, you scumbag," he muttered. "You try to use my daughter as an elevator, I'll—"
Ethan's eyes shifted from arrogant to frightened. He had been stunned by our brazenness, by the way my "mother" had hit him. The police let us off after we agreed to settle. My father paid the medical expenses. We left with a bill as the only real cost.
That night my father asked Isabella again, stunned. "If you're right," he said, "then we need money. We need help."
She was quiet for a moment and then, oddly, cheerful. "I know how this ends. I have a plan to help the family."
A week later everything collapsed the way she had said. Apollo's construction backers withdrew funds. He ran from site to site trying to raise payroll. He was tired and furious. An accident on one of the unfinished projects sent him to the hospital with a steel rod embedded near his shoulder. He survived, but the hospital bills stacked like bricks.
When the hospital smelled like antiseptic and pain, I snapped. I was angry at the rumors that I had been sold for five million. I was angry at Karlee's silence. I was angry at my father for hiding debts. Mostly, I was angry at the woman called Isabella who somehow knew my secrets.
"Why didn't you tell us earlier?" I asked, and words came out like stones. "Why didn't you say, 'We need five million to save the company' and let us figure it out? Why did you make me choose a small school without asking?"
She looked like someone much older than her face. "Because I had to make your life different. The rest would follow."
The days blurred into hospital corridors, calls from college recruiters, and people at our door offering scholarships and five-hundred-thousand-yuan incentives for me to enroll in Tsinghua or Peking. Even my school's principal called, stunned. A hundred journalists called. Every dean tried to buy my attendance.
I walked in public like a flag. Strangers smiled. My name was in headlines. Meanwhile, the men who had plans for me—Ethan Castillo and others—moved like wolves behind fences.
Then the blackmail message arrived: a private photo and chat logs. My pulse dropped. The sender wanted two million yuan to destroy them.
I called Ethan. He laughed.
"Two million?" he said. "You can't be serious. Who told you we were selling this? I told you I wouldn't—"
He hung up.
I called the police. I posted preemptive leaks to journalists. I hired a few boys from school to say things—five thousand each to corroborate the bar story, to say Ethan had bragged about using me to get into Tsinghua. The net swung against him faster than my heat.
Within three days the internet had found Ethan.
He tried to upload my photos, and then he sat in an internet cafe trying to broadcast rage, and the door opened with blinking neon lights and someone shouted his name, and the people came.
I had been careful. I had recorded his threats, turned them into police evidence, paid a few boys for statements, and given the bar video to journalists. The internet is a furious animal when it smells hypocrisy—the kind that claims to love but plans to use.
The punishment scene lasted long enough for the sun to set.
They dragged Ethan out into the street like a deflated kite. Cameras gaped. Phones rose like spears. He looked around as if seeing the sky for the first time. The first reaction was disbelief.
"What's happening?" he said aloud, as if it was a scene from a movie.
"Hey, you!" someone shouted. "You tried to sell her!"
A woman in a red jacket stepped forward and slapped his face. "How could you?" she demanded. Her hand stung. Ethan's mask slipped. His neat hair was mussed; his eyes were raw fish eyes.
People shouted. A man recorded with a phone. Teenagers pushed forward to yell. An old teacher recognized him and spat, "Coward," like it was a spell.
Ethan's expression twitched. One moment he was cocky; the next his confidence unspooled. "No, no—listen," he started, voice high. "I didn't mean it—it's not like that—"
But the crowd fed on his denial. "You threatened blackmail!" cried a voice. "You tried to take her future for your own!"
His friends stood by, embarrassed. Tomas Hamza, who had once eaten beef noodle with Ethan, pressed hands to his mouth. "We never meant to—" he began.
"Save your excuses," Karlee shouted. She stood at the center with a handful of furious parents. "You took what you wanted and then turned her into a shameful joke."
He moved like a drowning animal, eyes huge. "Please," he begged suddenly, voice raw. "Forgive me. I'll delete it. I'll give the money. I'll—"
One by one the neighbors who had watched my interviews came forward. One elderly woman had a heater of righteous anger in her ribs.
"You thought you'd play with a girl's life for your own gain?" she shrieked. "You made plans, counted up pennies, and tried to buy your way into a university! You are the spoiled parasite."
The crowd's mood hardened. Phones flashed. Someone said, "Call the police." Someone else said, "We have his threats and his messages." A pair of teenagers pulled up the bar video and replayed it aloud: "If she becomes my girlfriend, Tsinghua will take us both." The words became a chant.
Ethan's face turned through every color a human can make: white, pink, red, gray. He stumbled, seeking mercy in a universe suddenly full of cameras.
"I was trying to help myself," he sobbed. "I thought—please, I'm sorry—"
The faces around him were not listeners but witnesses. They turned away like they had been asked to turn away from a crime scene.
"So you will help yourself by ruining someone else," Karlee said, and the words sliced.
"Get out of our city," someone else shouted. "Leave her alone."
A crowd does something the law sometimes cannot: it converts private shame into public knowledge, and by that very exposure it forces a kind of reparation.
"Anyone who wants to press charges?" a policeman called, because if a crowd wants a show, the state will sometimes comply.
Several hands rose. My father pointed at Ethan with a trembling finger. "This is the man," he said, voice steady. "This is the one who tried to use my daughter for his future."
Ethan's eyes widened in horror. He had expected whispers, not an indictment.
They took him away in handcuffs, but before the car left he tried one last move—pleading, back-pedaling, bargaining.
"Please," he said, and now his voice had a thinness like paper. "I'll change. I'll—"
People spat. Someone yelled, "You should be ashamed."
The internet took it from there. For days there were articles. Old classmates wrote about times he had humiliated people. A profile surfaced mentioning poor decisions and poor choices. He was charged with extortion and material invasion of privacy. The court called him on his actions; the judge called it "an attempt to profit from another's humiliation."
I sat in the courtroom and watched him go pale. He tried to stand, to plead, to explain that everything was a mistake, but public judgement had already been delivered. The sentencing was not a violent spectacle; it was a slow collapse of a life once run on cynicism.
He got three years.
When he read the sentence, Ethan's shoulders buckled. He started to whisper apologies, not to me but to himself. The man who had once believed he could package people for profit sobbed on the stairs leading from the dock. He had gone from sly ambition to empty pockets and time behind walls.
People in the gallery recorded him as they left. Some shouted "Shame!" Some muttered "Welcome to consequences."
I watched him change from arrogance to pleading to rage to hollow acceptance. It was satisfying in a quiet, terrible way.
Public punishment had been messy and human and necessary. It wasn't about joy. It was about exacting a price for the kind of cruelty that treats other people as currency.
After the trial things calmed.
My father survived. We paid debts by selling old furniture and borrowing from relatives. Alejandro Vasquez—my uncle who ran a modest university—stepped in when he heard we were desperate. The rumor about five million turned out to have been me mishearing the offer; in reality Alejandro promised to secure funding only if I enrolled at his school. There had been bargaining, yes, but not the monstrous deal I had imagined.
However the real twist came one rainy Tuesday in the hospital corridor.
"Everly," Isabella said quietly, and for a moment the woman I had thought I knew looked like herself again. "Tell me something."
I hesitated. "Do you really belong to me?"
She looked down at her hands—my mother's hands, but with mine tucked into their shape. She inhaled slowly. "No," she said. "I shouldn't say this, but you deserve the truth. I'm you. Or what becomes of you."
I felt the floor tilt. "What?"
She smiled—my smile—and it fit like a key. "I am you from the future. I came back to prevent what happened to me."
A thousand small betrayals rewound backwards. The knowing of my secrets, the precise timing, the discomfort in her habits—she had been mine all along, an older, bruised version of me. The guilt I felt at trusting the person in my mother’s skin curdled. But she wasn't my mother; she was older-me wearing my mother's skin.
"You were married to him?" I asked. "To Ethan?"
She nodded slowly. "Yes. I married him. I thought love could save me. It didn't. I was expelled. I got pregnant and lost it. Depression came like a fog. I came back for one reason: to save my parents and you."
"Why did you lie about selling me?" I demanded.
She looked at me like someone who had been carrying a stone for years. "Because your father had debts. I thought you could help by staying close. I thought making you enroll locally would let the family keep its head above water. I tried to change things without you knowing. I'm sorry."
The next hours were full of barter: of explanations, of memories that I had not yet lived. Future-Everly told me what to avoid. She told me not to fall hard for anyone who asked more than I could give. She told me how to pressure our father to stop dangerous projects. She told me how small kindnesses would protect our family.
"We have five minutes," she said suddenly, looking at me with a soft urgency, "before I have to return."
I hugged her, a desperate, imperfect embrace. "Don't go," I said.
She pressed her forehead to mine. "You will see me again. Because you are me."
Then she left like light through a door.
Over the following months the world did its noisy work. I chose not to chase Tsinghua or Peking immediately. Instead I put my name down at the Communication University—something I had always liked the idea of but never thought I would pick. My parents scrambled. Alejandro Vasquez helped with paperwork. Our debts shrank as messy deals dragged on. The investor who had fled earlier was indicted for fraud months later. My father's company limped but survived.
As for Ethan, the law held him accountable. He served his time and left with an obvious scab where his ambition had been. His arrogance had been replaced by a hollow apology that no one wanted to accept.
I went to Beijing to study television and hosting. I learned to speak calmly to a camera. I learned to let my voice be a tool. I did not take lovers lightly.
Years later, in the city that had once felt like a threat, I came across a woman in a bright coat, sitting at a makeshift stall with little luck boxes. Her face was mine, older, softened by weather and time.
"How much?" I asked, the voice catching.
"Nine ninety-nine," she said, and smiled like the world was still generous.
I bought a box. "I wish for you—me—to be happy."
She laughed, like a sound I had once had in a dream. "Good," she said. "And for the younger you—never stop forgiving yourself."
We hugged, two versions of the same person, and then let go.
At night I would sometimes touch the spot between my shoulder blades where my father's scar had been and remember Isabella's—no, my future's—hands pressing in. I would think of the bar, the station, the courtroom, and the crowd. I would think of the moment the woman who had once been me told me to choose safety, not fame, and the way that saved us all.
The lucky box sat on my desk in Beijing like a small, stubborn talisman. Occasionally I would open it and find a coin, a note, a scrap that meant nothing and everything. Once I found a ticket stub from the hospital cafeteria. I taped it into my notebook.
When I look back now, I know what changed because of the mysterious woman in my mother's coat. A thousand small choices made a different future. Some of them were ugly, many of them were loving. I don't know whether the person who wore my mother's face was me exactly, or some version of me who had learned the hard way to be careful. What I do know is this:
We cannot always choose our fate. But we can choose the next small move. We can choose to speak, to set boundaries, to call police when someone extorts us, to sell a car if it keeps our family from collapsing, to sit with a parent in a sterile hospital corridor when they are scared.
And sometimes, if you are very lucky, you meet yourself on a street corner, handing out luck boxes.
The End
— Thank you for reading —