The year she decided to rebel began the same way all her years began: with the smell of toast burning downstairs.
It was always toast.
Her father always forgot the dial.
Her mother always scolded him.
The smoke alarm always chirped once, like a sleepy bird.
It was one of the earliest signs that her life was not a life at all, but a script she had memorized down to the smallest, stupidest detail.
But this time, she didn't rush downstairs to wave a dish towel under the alarm. She lay in bed and listened to the familiar chaos unfold without her.
Her father coughed.
Her mother sighed.
The toaster clicked.
Every sound was a line in a play she no longer wanted to perform.
She stared at the ceiling, tracing the cracks she had traced in every lifetime. She knew exactly where each one led, how they branched like veins. She could have drawn them from memory.
She had, once — in her ninety‑second life, when she became an artist out of spite.
But today, something felt different.
Not in the world — the world was the same. Predictable. Repetitive. A machine running on rails.
The difference was inside her.
A quiet, simmering defiance…
She sat up slowly, feeling the weight of hundreds of lifetimes settle into her bones. She was thirteen again — the age when her memories always solidified, when the fog lifted and the truth returned in a rush of unwelcome clarity.
Thirteen. Again.
She swung her legs out of bed and stood. Her room was exactly as it always was: the faded posters, the crooked bookshelf, the stuffed rabbit missing an eye. She had tried to throw that rabbit away in her two hundred and fifth life. It had reappeared on her pillow the next morning.
The world corrected her.
Not this time.
She picked up the rabbit and tore it cleanly in half.
The stuffing spilled out like pale snow. She waited for the universe to protest — for the rabbit to reassemble itself, or for her mother to burst in with the same scolding she always gave when she 'accidentally' ripped it as a child.
Nothing happened.
The silence felt… watchful.
She dropped the ruined toy and left her room.
Downstairs, her parents were exactly where they always were: her father fanning the toaster with a magazine, her mother opening windows to let the smoke out. They looked up when she entered, smiling the same smiles they had smiled at her hundreds of times.
"Morning, sweetheart," her mother said. "Sleep well?"
She had answered this question the same way in every life. "Yeah, fine." A harmless lie. A line in the script.
This time, she said, "No."
Her mother blinked. "No?"
"I remember everything."
The room stilled.
Her father lowered the magazine. Her mother's smile faltered, then returned — too quickly, too tightly.
"Oh, honey," she said gently, "you must still be half‑asleep."
"I'm not." She stepped closer. "I've lived this life before. Over and over. Hundreds of times."
Her parents exchanged a look — the same look they always exchanged when she said something strange as a child. Concern mixed with confusion. But this time, something else flickered behind their eyes.
A delay.
A hesitation.
As if they were waiting for a cue that didn't come.
Her father cleared his throat. "Maybe you should sit down. We can talk about—"
"No," she said again, louder. "I'm not doing this anymore."
Her mother opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. "Doing… what, sweetheart?"
"Pretending." She felt her pulse quicken. "Pretending this is real. Pretending I don't know what's going to happen. Pretending I'm not trapped."
Her father took a step toward her. "You're not trapped."
"Yes, I am." She backed away. "And I'm done."
The air shifted.
It was subtle — a faint pressure, like the moment before a storm breaks. The kitchen lights flickered. The toaster clicked even though no one touched it.
Her parents froze.
Not in fear.
In stillness.
As if someone had pressed pause.
Her mother's eyes were open, but unfocused. Her father's hand hovered mid‑air, suspended between one breath and the next.
The world held its breath with them.
She felt it then — a presence. Not in the room, but behind it. Behind the walls. Behind the air. Watching. Listening. Adjusting.
Correcting.
"No," she whispered. "Not this time."
She grabbed her backpack from the hook by the door and ran.
The moment she crossed the threshold, the world lurched. The sky dimmed for a heartbeat. The wind reversed direction. A dog barked three houses down — the same bark, the same pitch, the same timing as every lifetime — but this time it sounded strained, like a recording glitching.
She didn't stop.
She ran down the street she had run down a thousand times, past the same houses, the same mailboxes, the same cracks in the pavement. But the world felt wrong. Too still. Too synchronized.
As if everything was waiting for her to return to her mark on the stage.
She didn't.
She kept running until her lungs burned, until her legs shook, until she reached the old playground at the edge of town — the place where she always had her birthday party at sixteen, where she always broke her arm at seven, where she always sat alone at thirteen trying to understand why she was so different.
She collapsed onto the swings, breathless.
The chains creaked.
The wind died.
And then—
A voice behind her said, "You weren't supposed to wake up this early."
She froze.
She knew that voice.
Yet she had never heard it in any lifetime.
Slowly, she turned.
A boy stood there. Her age. Familiar in a way that made her stomach twist. His face was ordinary. His posture relaxed. But his eyes—
His eyes were wrong.
Too deep. Too still. Too knowing.
"Who are you?" she whispered.
He smiled.
"Someone who needs you to stay on script."
The swing chains rattled.
The world trembled.
And she realized, with a cold clarity sharper than fear, that breaking the loop had consequences she had never imagined.
She wasn't just off the path.
She was being hunted for it.