Excerpt from My Flawless Life by Yvonne Woon, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The bathroom was empty. I checked my appearance in the mirror. People used to say I dressed like Audrey Hepburn—prim and sleek in crisp white shirts and tailored trench coats that made me feel like I was walking through a vintage black-and-white photo of Washington, DC. I still

had most of my old designer clothes and wore them even though I had nowhere to go. Up close, they were showing signs of wear, but I couldn't afford new ones, so I had to make do with what I had.

I wiped a smudge from beneath my eye. I'd gone a little heavy on my eyeliner that night, but I didn't hate it. It made me look tough, like someone who flicked other people's opinions about her into a tray like ash.

The door opened.

Heather Harmond didn't look like an heiress. She didn't appear glamorous or wealthy, and if you didn't know her last name, you'd never guess that her great-grandfather started one of the biggest weapons manufacturing companies in the country. Heather was neither confident nor powerful like her father, nor conventionally beautiful like her mother. She was quiet and awkward, with only a few friends, and walked around school hunched, as though she was coiling into herself, hoping that everyone would leave her alone to her hobbies.

"Hey," I said, catching her eye in the mirror over the sinks.

"Hey," she said.

I took out a stack of business cards from my pocket. On top was Brandon from UPenn, along with four others I'd coaxed out of alumni under the pretense of being Heather.

"Contact them whenever. They're expecting to hear from you."

Heather looked sheepish as she took them from me and thumbed through the cards, reading their names and titles.

"I only needed four," she said.

"I know, but I threw in an extra just in case."

Though Heather didn't have to network in the conventional sense—she had a trust fund and definitely never needed to work, let alone go to college—her parents were the kind of people who wanted their offspring to prove to them that they could "make it on their own," which they defined by a series of arbitrary expectations that they enforced without warning in an attempt to try to mold her into the kind of daughter they thought they should've had. All of this Heather had relayed to me two weeks prior, when she'd contacted me to ask if there was any way I could do it for her. Much to her parents' distaste, she suffered from anxiety and was willing to pay me a sizable sum to get a handful of business cards to show her parents. I sympathized with her. Though being rich was nothing to pity, being bullied and belittled by your family members was unpleasant at best, and having a trust fund didn't make it go away.

"Do you think they'll notice that it wasn't me if I ever meet with them in person?" Heather asked.

"No way. They've already forgotten my face. I picked these men specifically for this reason. They're the kind of people who think girls are interchangeable."

Heather looked unconvinced, but we both knew it didn't really matter if I was right. "I probably won't meet them in person anyway," she said. "My parents want me to collect business cards so they have proof that I'm not as big of a failure as they think I am. Whether or not I follow up is beside the point. Everyone knows I'm getting into Princeton no matter what I do."

"Do you even want to go there?" I asked.

"It's inevitable. My name is on two of the buildings."

"Are they good buildings, at least?"

Heather grimaced. "A gym and an athletic facility."

"What is it with rich people and sports buildings?"

"It's the only part of college that alumni can still participate in," Heather said. "A library would have been nice, though."

"At least it's not a dorm," I offered. "Filthy, sagging futons. Hookups. Vomit."

Excerpted from My Flawless Life by Yvonne Woon. Copyright © 2023 by Yvonne Woon. Excerpted by permission of Katherine Tegan Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.