Her Second Life Blueprint

Chapter 1

Rena

The screech of tires is the last thing I hear. A high, tearing sound that rips the world apart. Then comes the brutal percussion of metal on metal, a sound so final it erases everything else. My head whips to the side, smacking against the glass. A spiderweb of cracks fractures the rainy cityscape. For a split second, there is no pain. Just a strange, quiet thought that feels like an apology. Travis. My parents. I’m so sorry I wasted it.

Then, darkness swallows the thought whole.

I wake with a gasp, a lungful of air that feels stolen. My heart hammers against my ribs like a trapped bird. I’m lying on my side, tangled in a thin, scratchy comforter that smells faintly of stale coffee and cheap fabric softener. My neck aches. My body feels…wrong. Young. The persistent ache in my lower back from twenty years hunched over a drafting table is gone. The dull throb in my right knee from a fall on a job site is absent.

My eyes fly open.

It’s not my sterile, minimalist gray bedroom. It’s a riot of color and clutter. A poster of some indie band I haven’t thought about in a decade is taped to the peeling beige wall. A precarious tower of textbooks on structural engineering is piled on a cheap laminate desk. My desk. My college desk.

This is impossible. A dream. A coma hallucination before the end.

“Finally,” a voice snaps, dripping with impatience. “I thought you were going to sleep through the entire afternoon. Some of us have social lives to maintain, you know.”

I push myself up, my head swimming. The room solidifies around me. There, sitting at the opposite desk, applying a thick coat of mascara with surgical precision, is Alina Croft. Her hair is a sheet of perfect blonde silk. Her lips are pursed in that familiar expression of casual disdain. She looks exactly as I remember her. Young. Annoyed. Nineteen.

My blood runs cold. “Alina?” My voice is a croak, thin and reedy. My nineteen-year-old voice.

“Who else would it be?” She doesn’t look away from her compact mirror. “Are you feeling okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. You were mumbling some weird stuff in your sleep. Something about a tower.”

Dane Tower. Sector 7-B. Catastrophic cantilever failure. The words are seared into my brain, a headline from a future that shouldn’t exist anymore.

“What…what day is it?” I manage, my throat tight.

Alina rolls her eyes, the very picture of teenage drama. “It’s Thursday, obviously. Are you still drunk from last night? Seriously, Rena, you need to learn to handle your tequila.” She gestures with her mascara wand towards the small digital clock on my nightstand.

My eyes find the glowing red numbers. 3:15 PM. September 12th.

September. Twelfth.

My breath catches in my throat. No. It can’t be. I scramble for my phone, my old, clunky smartphone from another era, plugged into the wall. My hands shake as I grab it. The screen lights up with a photo of me and my parents, smiling on a beach vacation. They’re so young. So alive. And the date confirms the clock’s silent testimony.

Three weeks. I have three weeks until they get into their car to drive to the lake house for their anniversary. Three weeks until a drunk driver crosses the center line on Route 9 and obliterates my world for the first time.

“Oh, my God,” I whisper, sinking back onto the lumpy mattress. This isn’t a dream. This isn’t the afterlife. It’s a do-over. It’s a second chance.

“What is your problem today?” Alina finally turns to face me, her perfectly plucked brows furrowed. “Are you coming to the Sigma Chi party tonight or not? I told Chad you’d be there. Don’t make me look like a liar.”

In my first life, I would have mumbled an apology and agreed. I would have spent two hours trying on outfits I hated to impress people I didn’t like, all for Alina’s approval. A bitter taste fills my mouth. How much of my life did I waste trying to please her? How many late-night study sessions did I skip for meaningless parties? How many of my own ideas did I silence because she called them weird?

“No,” I say. The word is quiet, but it lands in the small room with the force of a dropped weight.

Alina blinks. “No? What do you mean, no? We’ve been talking about this all week. It’s the first big party of the semester.”

“I’m not going.” I look at her, really look at her, for the first time with a thirty-eight-year-old’s clarity. I see the deep insecurity hiding under the arrogance. I see the desperate need to be the center of every room. And I feel nothing but a profound, weary pity.

“Don’t be so lame, Rena,” she scoffs, turning back to her mirror. “You’re going to end up a bitter old spinster, buried in blueprints.”

The irony is a physical blow. A bitter old architect, buried in blueprints for soulless corporate headquarters, mourning the life I should have had. That’s exactly what I became.

“I have work to do,” I say, my voice gaining strength.

“Work? Professor Finch’s assignment isn’t due for two weeks.”

“Even so.”

Alina lets out an exasperated sigh. “Fine. Whatever. Be boring. More Chad for me, I guess.” She stands, smoothing down her designer skirt. “Don’t wait up.”

The door slams shut behind her, leaving me in a silence that buzzes with impossible energy. I stand on shaky legs and walk to the window. The dorm room overlooks the main campus green. Students are scattered across the lawn, enjoying the late afternoon sun. My eyes scan the crowd, searching, my heart pounding with a desperate, terrifying hope.

And then I see him.

Travis Dane.

He’s walking near the fountain, a heavy portfolio case in one hand, arguing good-naturedly with a classmate. He runs a hand through his dark, unruly hair, a gesture so familiar it makes my knees weak. He’s wearing a simple gray t-shirt that does nothing to hide the lean, strong lines of his shoulders. His laugh carries on the breeze, a sound I haven’t heard in sixteen years. A sound I thought I’d only ever hear again in my dreams.

He’s alive. He’s real and vibrant and so painfully beautiful it hurts to look at him.

He isn’t a ghost. He isn’t a memory. He isn’t the tragic genius whose career was cut short two years from this exact moment, crushed under the weight of his own masterpiece when a structural support, one he fought the contractors on, finally gave way.

He turns his head slightly, as if he can feel me watching him, and his profile is silhouetted against the sun. Perfect. Classic. The lines a sculptor would kill for. The face I’ve sketched from memory a thousand times in the dead of night.

The sight of him doesn’t just bring relief. It brings fire. It burns away the fog of the last nineteen years of my life, the quiet desperation, the suffocating regret. It incinerates the timid, insecure girl who let Alina walk all over her, who was too afraid to speak up in class, who loved this brilliant, beautiful boy from a distance but was too terrified to ever tell him.

That girl died on a rainy street in a tangle of steel and shattered glass.

I am not her anymore.

I have the memories, the skills, the knowledge of a thirty-eight-year-old master architect. I know which celebrated designs will fail. I know which unknown theories will revolutionize the field. I know about the flaw in the concrete mixture for the foundation of the Dane Tower.

I look at Travis, laughing on the green, completely unaware of the fate awaiting him.

Not this time.

This time, I will save my parents. This time, I will build the career I was supposed to have.

And this time, Travis Dane, I will save you.

Chapter 2

Rena

My fingers press against the cool windowpane, a flimsy barrier between me and the boy on the green. The sight of him, so effortlessly alive, sends a jolt through my system that is equal parts agony and ecstasy. This is real. He is real.

The dorm room door clicks open and then slams shut. I don’t flinch. I don’t turn.

“Forgot my crimson lipstick,” Alina’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “The one Chad says makes my mouth look like a weapon. Are you still just standing there? People are going to think you’re a statue.”

I finally turn from the window, my gaze steady. The nineteen-year-old me would have jumped, stammered an apology for existing in her space. The thirty-eight-year-old me just watches her.

“I’m thinking,” I say, my voice even.

She stops rummaging through her makeup bag and narrows her perfectly lined eyes. “Thinking? About what? How much fun you’re about to miss? This is the Sigma Chi kickoff, Rena. It sets the tone for the entire semester. If you aren’t seen there, you don’t exist.”

“Then I guess I don’t exist.”

The words hang in the air. Alina stares at me, her jaw slack. She looks genuinely bewildered, as if her lapdog just recited Shakespeare.

“What did you just say to me?”

“I said, I’m not going,” I repeat, walking over to my desk and pulling out my textbook on AdMorrisd Structural Theory. The weight of it in my hands is grounding. “I have to prepare for Finch’s class tomorrow.”

Alina lets out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. “Finch? You’re blowing off the biggest party of the year for a class you’re barely passing? What is wrong with you today? This is about him, isn’t it?”

“Him?” I ask, feigning ignorance as I flip open the book.

“Don’t play dumb. Travis Dane.” She says his name with a mix of reverence and spite. “You were staring at him out the window like some pathetic stalker. Rena, you have to get over it. Boys like that don’t look at girls like you. They look at girls like me.”

She gestures to her own flawless reflection in her compact mirror, a queen reaffirming her reign. The old me would have withered under that statement. It was a poison she’d dripped in my ear for years, and I had always swallowed it.

“You might be right,” I say, not looking up from my book. “But my grade in Finch’s class doesn’t depend on who Travis Dane looks at. It depends on me.”

“But my reputation depends on you showing up!” she snaps, her voice rising. “I told people you were coming. You’re making me look like I can’t control my own roommate.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t make promises on my behalf,” I say, finally meeting her gaze. My voice is quiet, but it carries no heat. Just a finality that is colder than anger. “I’m not your project, Alina. Or your plus-one. Or your social collateral. I’m done.”

She recoils as if I’d slapped her. The confusion in her eyes hardens into something ugly. “Done? What does that even mean?”

“It means I have work to do. Have fun at the party.”

I turn a page in my textbook, my focus absolute. I can feel her staring at me, waiting for me to crack, to apologize, to revert to the girl she knew how to manage. When I don’t, she makes a strangled sound of fury.

“Fine,” she hisses. “Fail your classes. Be a nobody. See if I care.”

The door slams again, with enough force to rattle the band poster on the wall. I don’t look up. A small, unfamiliar smile touches my lips. The first move has been made. The old queen is off the board.

***

The next morning, the lecture hall buzzes with the low hum of hungover students. I sit in my usual spot, halfway up the tiered seating, but the world feels different. Sharper. I’m not just occupying a chair; I’m observing a battlefield.

Alina is three rows down, pointedly ignoring me, whispering dramatically to a friend. Travis is on the other side of the aisle, sketching in a notebook, his dark hair falling over his forehead. He looks focused, intense. Untouchable.

Professor Finch strides in, silencing the room with his presence. He’s a severe man in his late fifties, with a reputation for intellectual brutality. In my first life, I was terrified of him.

“Good morning,” he says, his voice dry as dust. “Let’s discuss the Vexler Atrium.”

An image of the famous building flashes onto the massive screen behind him. It’s a stunning piece of architecture, a soaring cathedral of glass and white steel that seems to defy gravity. I know it intimately. In seventeen years, I’ll be on the commission that investigates its partial collapse.

“A masterpiece of modernism,” Finch drones on, pointing out the innovative cantilevered lobby and the unsupported glass facades. “A structure that redefines the relationship between interior and exterior space. It is, by all accounts, perfect.”

He pauses, scanning the room over the top of his spectacles. “Comments? Thoughts on Vexler’s use of material honesty?”

Silence. This is the part where everyone avoids his gaze, praying not to be called on.

I raise my hand.

My own action surprises me for a second. A ripple of whispers spreads through the rows around me. Alina’s head whips around, her expression one of pure horror. Travis looks up from his sketchbook, his pen frozen mid-air.

Finch’s eyebrows lift a fraction of an inch. “Ms. Morris. You have a contribution?”

“I do, Professor.” I stand up. My heart is beating a steady, powerful rhythm. “With all due respect to the architect, the Vexler Atrium is not perfect. It’s a catastrophe in slow motion.”

A collective gasp echoes in the cavernous room. Finch’s face hardens.

“That is an exceptionally bold accusation against one of the most celebrated architects of our time,” he says, his voice laced with ice. “Elaborate. Now.”

This is it. The point of no return.

“The flaw is in his material honesty,” I begin, my voice clear and unwavering. It doesn’t even sound like my own. “He was honest about the glass and the steel, but he wasn’t honest about the physics that governs them. The southern facade is a curtain wall of triple-paned glass panels, each weighing nearly a ton, secured by custom-forged steel alloy brackets.”

I walk down a few steps into the aisle, owning the space. All eyes are on me. Especially Travis’s.

“The design doesn’t adequately account for differential thermal expansion,” I continue. “On a hot day, with direct sun, the steel brackets absorb heat and expand at a much faster rate than the glass panels. The specified neoprene buffers are insufficient. The sustained thermal stress creates microscopic fractures at the mounting points of the upper panels. It’s a fundamental engineering oversight hidden by a beautiful design.”

Finch stares at me, his expression unreadable. “The building has stood for five years, Ms. Morris. There have been no reports of structural failure.”

“The reports are there, they’re just being misinterpreted,” I counter, the knowledge flowing out of me, effortless and certain. “They’re calling them ‘settling noises.’ They’re blaming ‘wind shear’ for the strange acoustics in the lobby on hot days. They’ve replaced six panels in the last two years, citing ‘minor manufacturing defects.’ It isn’t a defect. It’s a pattern. The design is fighting itself. Within a decade, one of those upper panels will experience catastrophic failure. The entire facade could follow.”

The silence in the room is absolute. It’s not the sleepy silence of a boring lecture; it’s the tense, electric silence of a bomb being disarmed. I can feel the weight of two hundred pairs of eyes.

I look at Travis. He’s not sketching anymore. He’s leaning forward, his elbows on his desk, staring at me with an expression of such intense, focused appraisal that it feels like a physical touch. He’s not just looking at me. He’s seeing me.

Professor Finch slowly removes his glasses and begins to polish them with a handkerchief. He takes his time. The seconds stretch into an eternity.

Finally, he puts them back on and looks directly at me. “Your hypothesis is… unconventional.” He pauses. “But it is not illogical. You’ve identified a potential stress vector that, to my knowledge, has never been raised in any architectural journal.”

He gives a single, sharp nod. It feels like winning an Olympic medal.

“See me after class, Ms. Morris.” He turns back to the stunned lecture hall. “Well. It appears there is more to discuss about the Vexler Atrium than I had anticipated.”

As I return to my seat, my legs feel slightly shaky, but my mind is perfectly clear. I just changed my own history in this room. The timid girl who hid in the back row is gone forever.

When the lecture ends, the room erupts in chatter. As I gather my things, Alina storms up the aisle.

“What in the world was that?” she hisses, her face pale with fury. “Are you trying to get kicked out of the program? Humiliating yourself? Humiliating *me*?”

“I was answering the professor’s question,” I say calmly, zipping my bag.

“No, you were putting on a show! It was pathetic. You sounded like a crazy person.”

“I thought it was brilliant.”

The voice is low and smooth, and it comes from just behind me. We both turn. Travis Dane is standing there, his portfolio tucked under his arm. He’s looking right at me, completely ignoring Alina.

Alina’s mouth opens and closes. She quickly recalibrates, forcing a dazzling smile. “Oh, Travis! Hi! I just meant it was so… aggressive. So unlike her.”

“Maybe it’s exactly like her,” Travis says, his eyes never leaving mine. He takes a step closer. “That analysis… nobody is looking at thermal stress in curtain walls like that. Not at this level. Where did you find your data?”

I have to be careful. “I didn’t find it. I derived it. The material specifications are public record. The rest is just physics. You follow the math, you find the weakness.”

He shakes his head, a look of genuine disbelief on his face. “I’ve studied those same schematics. I never saw it. I was too busy admiring the form.”

“Most people are,” I say. “That’s the architect’s trap.”

A slow smile spreads across his face. It transforms him from impossibly handsome to utterly breathtaking. “I’m Travis, by the way.”

My heart does a stupid little flip, but I keep my voice steady. “I know who you are. Rena Morris.”

“I know,” he says, and the words are layered with new meaning. He’s known my name, but now he knows me. Or at least, the person I’m becoming.

“Ms. Morris!” Professor Finch’s voice booms from the front of the hall. “My office. Now.”

I give Travis a small nod. “I should go.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t move out of my way, forcing me to brush past him. The air between us crackles with an energy I haven’t felt in sixteen years. “I’ll see you around, Rena Morris.”

I walk down the steps toward the professor’s desk, my back straight, not daring to look back. I can feel Travis’s gaze on me. I can feel Alina’s burning with a new, dangerous jealousy. The game has changed. Every piece on the board is in a new position. And for the first time in a very long time, I am the one in control.

Chapter 3

Rena

Professor Finch’s office is a fortress of books. They line every wall from floor to ceiling, a silent, judging audience. He sits behind a massive oak desk, steepling his fingers. He doesn't invite me to sit.

“Ms. Morris,” he begins, his voice low. “Your analysis in class was… unprecedented.”

“It was just math, Professor.”

“Do not be glib with me. That was not just math. That was a leap of intuition backed by a structural theory most of your peers won’t grasp for another ten years. Where did it come from?”

I meet his stare. Lying to this man feels like trying to sneak a pebble past a mountain. “I’ve been studying ahead. I look for patterns. The Vexler design has a beautiful pattern, but it also has a fatal one.”

He leans back, his chair groaning in protest. “You understand the implications of what you said? You publicly accused one of the world’s most respected architects of gross negligence.”

“I accused a design of being flawed. The architect’s reputation isn’t my concern. The physics are.”

A long silence stretches between us. He studies me, his eyes sharp, analytical, like he’s looking for the stress fractures in my own argument. I don't flinch.

“Very well,” he says finally, a strange note of something that might be respect in his voice. “I am putting a note in your file. Not of reprimand. Of commendation. Do not make me regret it.”

“You won’t, Professor.”

He dismisses me with a wave of his hand. I walk out of the office, my heart thrumming. A victory. A real one. But the elation is instantly smothered by a cold, suffocating dread. I look at my phone. Three weeks. I just proved I can see the future of a building. Now I have to prove I can change the future of my family.

I duck into an empty alcove in the hallway and dial my mom’s number. My thumb hovers over the call button. I feel nineteen again, a terrified girl about to tell a crazy lie. The phone rings twice before she picks up.

“Rena! Honey, what a surprise. Is everything okay?” Her voice is warm and familiar, a sound that feels like home.

“Mom. Hi. Listen, I need you to do something for me.” My voice is shaking. I try to control it.

“Of course, sweetie. What is it?”

“The trip. To the lake house. For your anniversary. You can’t go.”

There’s a pause on the other end. “What? Why not? We’ve been planning it for months. Your father just had the boat serviced.”

“I just… I have a bad feeling. A really, really bad feeling. Please. Stay home. We can celebrate here. I’ll cook.”

Her laugh is gentle, concerned. “Rena, what’s this about? Did you have a fight with Alina? Is school stressing you out?”

“No, it’s not that. It’s the trip. The drive. Route 9 is dangerous. Please, Mom. For me. Just cancel it.”

“Honey, we’ve driven that road a hundred times. You’re not making any sense. Are you sick? Do you have a fever?”

Desperation claws at my throat. I sound like a lunatic. I know how I sound. “I had a nightmare. That something happened. It felt so real. I can’t explain it, but you have to trust me.”

“Oh, sweetie,” she says, her voice full of maternal pity. “It was just a bad dream. We’ll be perfectly safe. We’ll call you the minute we get there, how about that?”

“No! That’s not good enough! You can’t go!” I’m almost shouting now, my knuckles white as I grip the phone.

“Rena Morris, you lower your voice. Everything is fine. We are going. We’ll see you Sunday night. I love you.”

“Mom, wait…”

The line goes dead. I stare at the phone, a useless black rectangle in my hand. It didn’t work. Of course it didn’t work. She thinks I’m a hysterical teenager. For the next three weeks, I try everything. I call my dad. He’s even more dismissive. “Rena, stop worrying your mother. We’re fine.”

I call my younger brother, Leo, begging him to fake an illness, to create a distraction, anything. He’s only fourteen. He just gets confused. “But Mom and Dad are excited. Why would I do that?”

I try to book a flight home for that weekend, planning to physically block the driveway if I have to, but the flights are all sold out for a university football game. Every door slams shut. Every path leads to the same place. History is a current, and it is pulling them away from me with terrifying force.

On the fated day, I sit on my bed in the dorm room, staring at the clock. I don’t go to classes. I don’t eat. Alina comes in once, takes one look at my face, and leaves without a word. My phone is clutched in my hand. I watch the minutes tick by. Three o’clock. Three fifteen. Three thirty. The time of the accident.

I tell myself it’s different this time. Because I tried. Because I warned them. That has to count for something. The universe can’t be this cruel twice.

At four seventeen, my phone rings.

It’s not my mom. It’s not my dad.

It’s my aunt Carol’s number. Just like before.

My hand is so slick with sweat I almost drop the phone. I swipe to answer. My throat is closed. I can’t speak.

“Rena?” Her voice is thick with tears, broken. “Honey… there’s been an accident.”

The world dissolves into a high-pitched ringing in my ears. The words are the same. The static on the line is the same. The crushing weight that collapses my lungs is the same.

“Your parents… Rena, they’re gone.”

I drop the phone. It clatters to the floor. A choked sob escapes me, a sound ripped from somewhere deep inside. It’s not possible. I failed. My knowledge, my second chance, it was all for nothing. The grief is a physical thing, a monster with its hands around my neck, squeezing.

In my first life, I stayed right here. I curled into a ball on this lumpy mattress and let the world go dark. I let Alina call whoever needed to be called. I let myself break.

But as the darkness threatens to pull me under again, a face swims into my vision. Not my mother’s. Not my father’s. Not even Travis’s.

Leo.

In my first life, he was alone for hours in that silent house. Waiting for our parents to come home. Waiting for someone, anyone, to come for him. I didn’t. Not until the next day.

I push myself off the bed. My legs are trembling. My body is a vessel of pure, screaming pain. But my mind is clear. History repeated itself. But I don't have to.

I grab my keys. I don’t pack a bag. I just walk. Out the door, past a stunned Alina in the common room, down the stairs, and out into the crisp autumn air.

I don’t remember the drive. It’s a blur of traffic lights and street signs. All I see is my little brother’s face. When I pull onto my street, it’s just as I remember. A police car is parked at the curb. Neighbors are whispering on their lawns, their faces etched with pity.

I walk through the front door. My aunt Carol is on the phone in the kitchen, her back to me, her shoulders shaking. A police officer I don’t recognize starts to approach me with a gentle expression.

I ignore them all. I walk straight up the stairs, my feet silent on the runner. I go to his room. The door is slightly ajar.

He’s sitting on the floor, tucked between his bed and his desk. He’s made himself small. He’s not crying. He’s just staring at a model spaceship in his hands, his face completely blank with shock.

He looks up as I enter. His eyes are wide and lost. He looks so young. So alone.

“Rena?” he whispers, his voice small enough to break my heart.

I don’t say anything. I cross the room in three strides and drop to my knees in front of him. I wrap my arms around his thin shoulders and pull him against me.

For a moment, he’s stiff. Then, he collapses. His body starts to shake with huge, silent sobs. He buries his face in my shoulder, and I hold him tighter.

This is it. This is the moment everything truly changes. Not in a lecture hall. Not on a blueprint. Here. In this room, holding my brother.

“I’m here, Leo,” I whisper into his hair, my own tears finally falling. “I’m here. And I am not going anywhere. I promise you.”