Chapter 1

“Xander! Izzy! It’s time to wake up!”

He was having the weirdest dream. He’d heard his mother’s voice, but she’d been dead for thirteen years. Xander rolled over only to discover his bed was much smaller than he remembered, and he crashed onto the floor.

Mentally, he quickly assessed the extent of his injuries. At his age, Xander wouldn’t be surprised if he’d broken something. His eyes blinked open, and he gasped. Had falling out of bed fixed his eyesight? He’d needed to get glasses when he turned sixty and was nearly blind at this point.

But that no longer seemed true—he could see just fine.

Xander sat up and found that while the fall had jarred him, he was okay. He felt better than he had in years. All his aches and pains seemed to be gone. Then he glanced around, and the room seemed familiar.

“What the fu—?” Xander asked himself, but caught himself before he swore.

This looked like the room he’d lived in as a teenager!

He glanced down at himself, and his arms and legs resembled a boy’s.

’Did I really die and get sent back to do my life over?!’ Xander thought.

He jumped up and rushed to his dresser, which had a mirror above it, and saw his teenage face staring back at him.

“I told you two to get up. It’s your first day of school, and you don’t want to miss the bus!”

Xander rushed to the bathroom because he knew he’d never get ready if Izzy got there first. He quickly did his business and brushed his teeth. Then he saw his hair and winced. That haircut meant he’d been sent back to middle school.

Before they moved, his mom had taken him to get a haircut. Little did he know when he got into the chair that the older man cutting his hair had just retired from a long-time position on a Marine base. His job had been to give each jarhead the same cut: high and tight. Because the barber only knew one way to cut hair, Xander became the beneficiary of a military special.

The haircut hadn’t at first registered because, before he died, Xander wore a flattop. He remembered slamming a baseball cap over the atrocity. When his mom pulled up to take him home, she demanded to see it.

“Only if you promise not to laugh,” Xander pleaded.

She’d looked at him impatiently.

“Just show me.”

Xander pulled his cap off, and his mom burst into hysterical laughter. That led him to tell everyone at his new school that he’d lost a bet to his dad and that he didn’t always look like a freak. It wasn’t the best impression a new kid could make on their first day of school.

During his first life, he’d tried everything to get out of going. But the old soul he was now just shrugged. Xander knew he’d make friends, and the teasing would die down after the first week. Before, he’d been mortified, which caused him to be shy and lose confidence.

Speaking of the move, his dad, Wayne, was a contractor and had built them a new house in West Fork, Arkansas. They’d moved from Dallas, Texas, because his mom’s parents weren’t doing well. She’d convinced his dad to move there so she wouldn’t have to put them into a home.

Xander had always wondered about the ruse of his grandparents not being well because Grandma and Grandpa Davidson didn’t act sick when they arrived. The first time through, Xander never questioned it.

Later in life, he discovered the real reason for the move: his dad’s wandering eye. He’d had an affair with his office manager. But what caused Xander’s mom to force the move was his dad getting caught banging one of his clients’ daughters on a job site—the client’s seventeen-year-old daughter. When the client tossed around threats of a lawsuit and possible criminal charges, Xander’s parents decided it was time to leave town.

His dad promised to be faithful. Needless to say, when Izzy left for college, his parents divorced.

Looking back, Xander wished they’d separated sooner because his dad was a mean SOB, the type who never lost an argument and made you look like scum for opposing him. Wayne also felt free to deliver a backhand if he thought you’d disrespected him.

Growing up, Xander had loved visiting his grandparents. They lived in West Fork, near Fayetteville, on the north edge of the Ozark Mountains, in the middle of a forest on seventy-five acres of land with a cold spring.

His dad had built their house on Xander’s grandparents’ land. Wayne had chosen a spot on a ridge that overlooked the town and designed the home to blend with the area’s architecture. It had a Victorian-era flair with a modern interior.

Xander’s sister banged on the bathroom door, breaking him out of his morning reverie. Isobel was two years younger, in sixth grade, her last year of grade school.

“Xander! Get out! I have to get ready,” Izzy pleaded.

Xander opened the door and smiled at his sister. She’d died young of lung cancer. Izzy had run with a wilder crowd in high school and took up smoking. She’d been 34 when she finally succumbed, leaving a daughter whom Xander had taken in when Izzy’s deadbeat husband disappeared. Three years later, the husband died in a car accident. He’d gotten behind the wheel drunk and killed a family of four.

Izzy had a sweet disposition but had never been a morning person. He hugged her.

“What the...!” Izzy complained.

“Can’t a brother love his sister?” Xander asked.

Izzy gave him the stink eye.

“A weird one, maybe,” she huffed, pushing him out of the way.

Xander chuckled as he strolled to his room to get dressed. He first stepped over to his closet to grab a casual button-up shirt and then stopped himself. Did he really want to get his ass kicked the first day? His haircut would put a big enough target on his back, on top of being the ‘new’ kid. Xander wouldn’t stand a chance if he showed up looking like a seventy-year-old.

While his internal old man remained firm in his ‘I don’t give a fuck’ attitude, there were some things you just didn’t do. Instead, he opened his dresser drawer and pulled out a t-shirt with some anime characters on it, which he vaguely remembered. Xander put it back and found a plain red one instead. No need to be labeled a nerd, too. It would be best for him to try to fit in so he could make new friends. No one wanted to hang out with the new ‘special’ guy.

When he stopped to think about it, Xander found himself amused that he was trying to fit in. But life would have been easier the first time around if he’d done it, so that was what he would go with. His goal was to have a better life this time, and having friends would go a long way toward achieving it.