Chapter 1

On the day the results for the National Physics Olympiad Selection were posted, the bulletin board at Oakwood Prep was packed.

I, Logan, was at the very top. As always.

Chloe was second. Also as always.

The gap between our scores was always prepensely and precisely locked at exactly 0.5 points.

She was the crown jewel of Oakwood Prep—the heiress to a billionaire estate, as arrogant as a peacock. I, on the other hand, was the scholarship kid from the wrong side of the tracks, cold and unbreakable as a block of ice.

"Logan, is this the piece of trash you call study notes?"

Chloe’s voice cut through the murmuring crowd.

Between her manicured fingers, she was pinching the physics notebook I had stayed up all night organizing. Just yesterday, in the pouring rain, she had cornered me at the lab door with red rims around her eyes, begging to borrow it.

At the time, she had sniffled, "Logan, I just want to see how the top scorer thinks. I don't want to lose so embarrassingly next time."

But now, right in front of the school’s top academic elite, she tossed that heavily annotated notebook directly into the trash can outside the hallway as if it were a piece of used tissue.

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