Stealing the Wrong Magic

Why do I get nothing, while you snag the MIT degree and millions in Silicon Valley funding?! If you die I can cash in your massive life insurance policy! Brielles over-filled, plastic face contorted into a grotesque mask.

Her hands slammed into my chest, shoving me backward off the rooftop ledge.

In her manic moment of triumph, her stiletto heel caught on a rusted steel pipe. She pitched forward, plummeting over the edge right alongside me.

Weightlessness.

Falling.

When my eyes snapped open again, I was back at our eighteenth birthday dinner.

Sylvia slid two intricately frosted cupcakes across the table. "The sweet vanilla one guarantees you top-tier, Kardashian-level glamour. The salted caramel one brings you massive, Paris Hilton-style wealth"

Before Sylvia could even finish her sentence, Brielle lunged across the table. She snatched the salted caramel cupcake, ripped the wrapper off, and shoved it into her mouth, chewing frantically. She leaned in, her breath hitting my ear. "Your turn to rot as useless eye candy, Margot."

Chapter 1

After plummeting from that rooftop, my eyes snapped open to the familiar harsh lighting of our old dining room. I was back at our eighteenth birthday.

Sylvia slid the two cupcakes toward Brielle and me.

"Margot, Brielle. The sweet vanilla brings beauty, the salted caramel brings wealth. The effects only last ten years. You"

"I'm taking the salted one!" Before Sylvia could finish, Brielle snatched the salted caramel cupcake and crammed it into her mouth.

I stared at the remaining vanilla cupcake. My pulse steadied. I peeled the paper back and took a slow bite. That cemented it.

Brielle had come back, too.

But she wasn't the only one acting differently. Sylvia was, too.

In our past life, Sylvia had watched us eat with a warm, doting smile. Now her gaze locked onto Brielle.

A heavy breath rattled her chest. The lines around her mouth deepened.

She waited in silence until we swallowed the last crumbs. Then, her eyes flicked to the wall clock.

5:56 PM.

She exhaled another raspy breath. "Margot, Brielle. Don't rely too much on these gifts. You have to build real skills to survive in this world."

"Especially you, Brielle." Sylvia fixed a hard stare on my sister. "Don't make the wrong choice again. Margot is your family, not your enemy."

Brielle clamped her lips shut. Her jaw ticked, eyes rolling in pure irritation.

Sylvia opened her mouth to push the issue, but the grandfather clock chimed.

6:00 PM.

"Never mind. Look out for yourselves. It's time for this tired old woman to go." Sylvia cast one last, lingering look around the peeling wallpaper of our living room.

She turned her hunched back and shuffled out the front door.

A brutal ache seized my throat. The back of my eyes burned. "Sylvia."

I bolted out the door and slammed into her back, wrapping my arms tight around her frail shoulders.

I buried my face into her cardigan. My breathing fractured.

"Don't go," I choked out against her collar. "I'm going to make money. I'm going to buy you a massive house. Give you a good life"

"Silly girl." Her gnarled hand patted the back of my head. "I don't need a mansion. I just need you to be okay."

"That's enough for me. You're a good kid, Margot. Protect yourself out there. Don't let anyone hurt you."

"Not even Brielle. I have to go now. Take care."

I stood frozen on the porch. I watched her frail figure disappear around the street corner until my vision swam, blurred by the heat pooling in my eyes.

The clock hit 6:10 PM.

Right on cue, exactly like my past life, my phone vibrated in my pocket. "Is this Margot? This is Los Angeles Memorial Hospital. We regret to inform you that your grandmother suffered a sudden heart attack and just passed away."

"Please come down immediately to settle her emergency medical bills."

I forced a raspy agreement through my tight throat, ended the call, and stepped back inside the house.

Brielle was slouching on the couch, tapping away on her phone. She glanced up and let out a sharp scoff. "What? Just got the call about the old hag dying?"

"Cut the act, Margot. We've literally lived through this already. What is there to be choked up about?"

Smack.

The sharp sound cracked through the cramped living room. Brielle's head snapped hard to the left.

She clutched her reddening cheek. Her eyes blew wide, locking onto mine in pure shock. "You hit me?"

"Damn right I did."

Chapter 2

I dug my nails into my palms, forcing my hand down before I could deliver a second slap. "Brielle, that's Sylvia! The woman who raised you, not some 'old hag'."

"The hospital just called. She's dead. Are you seriously this dead inside?"

Brielle just laughed. "I'm dead inside? Ha" She mocked.

"In our past life, when I came to you for money, how did you treat me? Who's the cold-blooded bitch here?"

How did I treat her? My conscience was clear.

In our past life, Brielle drowned herself in endless Hollywood yacht parties and back-to-back plastic surgeries, maxing out every single credit card she owned.

I tried to stop her more than once, but she just spat in my face, calling me a broke, jealous nerd who couldn't stand that she was about to marry a Wall Street tycoon.

The next time I saw her, her face was botched. Under those circumstances, she still wanted to borrow money to go under the knife again. How could I possibly hand her cash for that?

But I never gave up on her.

I scoured the country for top-tier reconstructive surgeons, trying to help her remove the implants and fillers, just to get her back to normal.

When Brielle told me to meet her on that rooftop, cold sweat had soaked through my shirt. My heart hammered against my ribs.

I begged her through the phone, my voice cracking, pleading with her not to throw her life away.

Back then, I still saw her as my only family.

I never could have guessed that eleven minutes later, she would shove me off that ledge with her own two hands.

"Brielle? Stop acting crazy. What past life? I'm talking about Sylvia."

I forced a fierce glare onto my face. For now, I had to keep her in the dark. She couldn't know I came back, too.

Brielle narrowed her eyes, scanning me up and down. Then, she clutched her stomach and let out a manic shriek of laughter.

"Hahaha God finally looked out for me! Margot, you have no clue what you just missed out on. This time, it's your turn to be the useless eye candy"

My knuckles popped. I locked my jaw, fighting the overwhelming urge to smash my fist into her grinning face.

"I'm done talking. Brielle, I'm going to the hospital to claim Sylvia's body. If you have even a shred of humanity left, you'll come with me."

"Ha! You're joking, right? Who cares?" Brielle pushed off the couch and stormed into her bedroom, slamming the door shut with a deafening bang.

A second later, the muffled sounds of drawers being yanked out and things crashing to the floor echoed through the thin walls.

I squeezed my eyes shut, a heavy exhaustion settling deep in my bones. The moment Brielle shoved me off that building, she became dead to me.

If it wasn't for Sylvia, I wouldn't have wasted another breath on her.

But I didn't expect Brielle to be this hollow. She wouldn't even show up for Sylvia's final goodbye

Hours later, I stumbled back from the funeral home, clutching Sylvia's ashes in a cheap plastic urn against my chest.

The emergency room fees and a bare-bones funeral cost a staggering thirty thousand dollars. I hadn't just maxed out the few credit cards I had, but I even dragged myself to a sketchy payday loan office to borrow from bloodsucking loan sharks just to scrape the money together.

It was past 9:00 PM when I pushed the front door open. It swung wide, unlatched. Brielle was nowhere in sight.

Sylvia's bedroom door stood wide open, too. From the living room, I could see her faded quilt kicked onto the floor in a crumpled mess.

Crap.

A cold spike of dread nailed my stomach. I carefully set Sylvia's urn on the kitchen table and bolted into her room.

Just as I suspected. Sylvia's wooden lockbox had been pried open. The cash she kept hidden inside was wiped clean.

Did Brielle really do this?

Chapter 3

I yanked my phone from my pocket and hit her speed dial. It didn't even ring fully before the line clicked open.

Brielles gloating voice oozed through the speaker. "Well, if it isn't my favorite sister. Bet you're just thrilled right now, huh?"

Her smug tone practically confirmed it, but a stubborn, naive part of me needed to hear it. I gripped the phone tight enough to crack the screen.

"Brielle, where the hell are you? Did you take Sylvia's money?"

"Bingo! The cash is right here with me." She didn't even hesitate, her voice dropping into a mocking sing-song. "But I don't plan on sharing."

"You're taking all of it?" I choked out. The brazen entitlement hit me like a blow to the ribs.

"Brielle, you didn't even have the decency to show up to the hospital to say goodbye! What gives you the right? Even if it's inheritance, we split it down the middle"

"You said it yourself, Margot, it was Sylvia's money." Her voice pitched up, practically vibrating with glee. "I'm her granddaughter too, aren't I? Why shouldn't I take it?"

"She left behind nine grand. Split evenly, thats barely forty-five hundred. So what if I take it all to buy a Chanel bag?"

"Go ahead, call the cops! Let's see if those white cops give a damn about some broke family's domestic dispute! Hahaha"

Her shrill laughter blasted through the receiver, stabbing at my eardrums. I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead.

Where did the tracks derail? How did we become this?

In our past life, I was the one who choked down that salted caramel cupcake. After Sylvia passed, Brielle and I swallowed our grief and took our finals a week later.

We crushed the tests, but the cash Sylvia left behind wouldn't even cover a single semester's tuition.

Brielle had begged me to drop out so she could afford to go to college. She swore up and down she'd pay me back tenfold. I hadn't agreed out loud, but the guilt had been eating away at my resolve.

That was, until I noticed Brielle was literally transforming, growing insanely gorgeous by the day.

Sylvia's prophecy had been real.

Driven by a desperate, reckless hope, I had walked into a gas station and bought a fistful of scratch-offs. The results paralyzed me.

No matter what I played, I never lost. It was only a question of how massive the payout was. I cleared tens of thousands of dollars in a single afternoon.

From that moment on, I bankrolled both our lives. I funded everything right up until she blew up into a massive A-list celebrity and could easily float her own lavish lifestyle.

I never shortchanged her. Not once. So why did it end with me splattered on the pavement? Why did she have to hunt me down to the very end?

But I couldn't ask that now. Backing her into a corner while she held my only lifeline was a kamikaze move.

The SATs and my Ivy League interviewsthe ones that would decide if I got a full-ride scholarshipwere right around the corner.

For a girl trapped in a decaying neighborhood like this, that was my one and only ticket out of the gutter. I absolutely could not screw this up.

"Brielle." I forced the razor edge out of my voice, letting it drop into a ragged plea. "The exams are in a week. If you take every last cent, how am I supposed to survive the next few days?"

"Can you just bring a little bit back? Just a thousand. I'll write you an IOU right now. The second testing is over, I'll pick up a shift somewhere and pay you back every dime."

My knuckles turned white against the plastic casing of the phone.

Chapter 4

On the other end of the line, Brielle let out a sharp snort. "Margot? Do you want to take a wild guess why I took all the cash?"

"If you're broke, why don't you go bag a Sugar Daddy? With that killer body of yours, you could strip on OnlyFans or hit up a billionaire's club. You'd make a few grand a night, easy"

Her manic laughter echoed through the receiver, followed by the muffled sound of her collapsing onto what sounded like a plush, springy hotel mattress.

"So, Margot," she wheezed, her voice thick with hysterical tears. "What's it going to be? The SATs or your precious dignity?"

"You always looked down on me. Let's see if you end up sacrificing your body just like I did when you're forced to make a choice Your downward spiral starts today, you stupid bitch."

Click. The dial tone buzzed flatly against my ear.

The next morning, I showed up at the campus gates right on time. Brielle was already leaning against a brick pillar, waiting for me.

"Look who actually showed up," she sneered. "What, did you magically find some cash?"

Her eyes drilled into mine, hunting for a crack in my composure. My hand instinctively twitched toward my hoodie pocket.

A crumpled ten-dollar bill sat insidethe absolute last of my money. A thin layer of cold sweat coated my palms.

I had no idea what twisted game she was playing now, but I forced my features into a mask of stone.

"I never want to see your face again, Brielle. Stay the hell away from me." I slammed my shoulder into hers, shoving past her and marching into the school.

The SATs and my Ivy League interviews were exactly one week away. But mentally, I was an adult who hadn't touched a high school textbook in over a decade.

My only saving graces were Math and English. In my past life, I built a career in data analytics, so my advanced calculus was still razor-sharp.

And after years of expanding corporate operations overseas, my English fluency was flawless.

The morning dragged by. With the exams so close, the teachers had stopped assigning new material, leaving the classrooms buried in dead silence as everyone crammed.

When the lunch bell rang, I took my student ID to the cafeteria. I swiped the remaining sixty cents on my balance for a dry, plain bagel. The terminal flashed zero.

I ran the mental math. There was still a half-empty box of generic macaroni and cheese back at the apartment. If I stretched it, I could bring that in a Tupperware container for the next two days.

The ten-dollar bill in my pocket could buy two cheap bread rolls a day. It was just barely enough calories to keep me conscious until the exams were over. Once the tests were done, I could hustle for real cash.

I walked back to the empty classroom. I took a bite of the dry bagel, washed it down with a gulp of tap water, and buried my face back into my AP textbooks.

My focus was on the pages, but a sudden, icy prickle crawled up the back of my neck. It was June, but the draft felt like a freezer door swinging open.

The heavy, suffocating sensation of being watched pressed into my spine.

I glanced up. In the dark reflection of the classroom's smartboard, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the back doorway. Brielle was standing there.

Her eyes were locked onto the pathetic, half-eaten bagel in my hand, glowing with pure, toxic venom. Her lips moved, mouthing a silent but unmistakable vow.

You think you can survive this clean, Margot? I swear I'll drag you into the gutter. Let's see you keep that arrogant face then. We have plenty of time.

I whipped my head around.

The doorway was empty.

Just a trick of the light?

Chapter 5

I whipped my head back around and buried my face in my AP textbooks. The final bell rang. Brielle hadn't shown up to start any drama. The tight knot in my chest loosened just a fraction.

I dragged myself back to our crumbling apartment building, exhausted. The overweight landlady was leaning against my front door, taking a long drag from her cigarette.

The second she saw me, she flicked the cigarette butt away and jammed a thick finger into my shoulder. "Rent is three days late. When are you paying up?"

She squinted, extending a meaty palm toward me with a fake, plastic smile.

Memories crashed over me. Right. This was twelve years ago. Sylvia had kept us afloat by collecting scrap metal and recycling cans.

We didn't own a thing. We lived in the slums, and rent was due on the first of every month. I had forgotten. Where the hell was I supposed to get cash right now?

My jaw worked, but no sound came out. Heat rushed to my cheeks.

The landlady's fake smile vanished. Her face hardened into a scowl. "If you can't pay, Margot, pack your trash and get out today."

"I need this unit cleared so I can rent it to someone who actually has money."

The SATs were days away. Where was I supposed to go?

Her words nailed my shoes to the cheap linoleum floor. "Please, can you just give me a few days? As soon as my exams are over, I'll pick up extra shifts. I'll get you every cent."

I swallowed hard, hating the desperate crack in my voice.

She didn't even hesitate. "No way. What if you flake on me?"

"I swear I'll pay. Or or at least let me stay until you find a new tenant. I'll move out the second you do." I grabbed onto any lifeline I could, praying it would take her a week to find someone.

Just one week until the exams

The landlady waved her hand like she was swatting away a fly. "Save the sob story. Get moving! I already found a new tenant."

"Pack your stuff. You're out today."

"But the lease just expired today. How could you have someone lined up this fast"

She was lying to my face, but I still had to swallow my pride and beg. A bitter, metallic taste coated the back of my throat.

How many years had it been since I had to bow my head and grovel over a few crumpled dollar bills?

But before the humiliation could fully sink in, the bedroom door swung open.

Brielle leaned against the doorframe, a sickly sweet grin plastered across her face. "She's not lying, Margot. She really did find a new tenant."

Brielle stepped out, doing mock jazz hands. "Ta-da! It's me. I offered ten times the rent upfront. You definitely can't match that right now, can you?"

The corner of her mouth curled up in a smug, mocking sneer. She looked like she was watching cheap reality TV.

It was her. Again.

I dragged a hand down my face, the exhaustion sinking deep into my bones. "Brielle. What exactly did I ever do to you? Why are you trying to ruin my life at every turn?"

"I just can't stand looking at your face." Her chest heaved, her breathing suddenly jagged. "Why do those brainless bimbos who just shake their asses on TikTok get to blow up overnight?!"

"You had so many connections, so much money, but you forced me to take those ridiculous acting classes! You drove me to become a plaything for those Hollywood producers!"

A cold clarity washed over me. The tension in my shoulders dissolved. She was just a rabid, ungrateful dog. Why did I ever doubt myself?

I never owed her a damn thing.

"You're insane," I said, forcing my brow to furrow in fake confusion. "What producers? What are you even talking about?"

That shattered her composure. Brielle lunged forward, grabbing my forearm. Her acrylic nails dug deep into my flesh, threatening to break the skin.

"HaYou don't know?" She hissed, her breath hot on my face. "God, Margot, if only you had your memories Then, when you lose everything, it would hurt so much more."

"You're psychotic." I ripped my arm out of her grip. I turned my back on her and walked straight to my side of the room.

"It's just an eviction. I'm leaving. You don't have to act like a total lunatic."

I didn't have much to pack. Just a few faded hoodies and cheap drugstore toiletries. I shoved them into a duffel bag.

I picked up Sylvia's plastic urn, holding it tight against my chest. I stopped at the doorway, casting one final, flat glance around the peeling walls of the only home I had ever known.

I turned my back. I walked out into the dark.

Chapter 6

I dragged my busted suitcase down the empty street, the broken wheel scraping violently against the concrete. I had nowhere to go.

I scrolled through the sparse contacts on my cracked phone screen until my thumb hovered over my AP Calculus teacher's name, Mrs. Davis.

After a long, agonizing minute of staring at the screen, I finally hit call. "Mrs. Davis? It's Margot. I I really need some help."

After that night, I didn't step foot back on campus until exam day. Mrs. Davis told me Brielle had come snooping around her classroom, trying to dig up where I went.

She covered for me, just saying I was out on personal leave and shutting her down.

I didn't see Brielle again until the SATs and AP exams were officially over. When I walked out of the testing center after the final calculus section, a suffocating weight finally lifted off my chest.

The very next day, a short video titled "The Beautiful Genius Outside the SAT Center" exploded across TikTok and Instagram, instantly dominating the trending pages.

In the clip, I was just wearing an oversized, faded hoodie, but my confident smile and striking looks sent the entire internet into an absolute frenzy.

It didn't take long for my phone to start vibrating endlessly. Brielle's caller ID flashed across the screen over and over again. She had definitely seen the video and completely lost her mind.

In our past life, she was the one who went viral outside that testing center. For a raging narcissist who fed off everyone's worship, stealing her spotlight was a fate worse than death.

A slow smile spread across my face. I popped the back off my phone, snapped the SIM card cleanly in half, and tossed it into the nearest dumpster. Time for a new number.

Any decent businesswoman knows that massive attention equals massive cash. Striking while the iron was hot, I immediately set up a Twitch and a YouTube channel