Lia
My phone is a grenade on my nightstand. Every few seconds it buzzes, another notification of hate exploding in the dark. I’ve turned it face down, but I can feel the venom radiating through the wood.
Psycho. Liar. Charity case freak.
The words are a permanent scroll behind my eyes. I pull my blanket tighter around my shoulders, but the cold is inside me. A deep, isolating cold that suspension and a million hateful comments can chill you with.
A knock on the front door makes me jump. My parents are in the living room, their voices low and worried. I hear the lock click open. I hear my dad’s cautious voice.
“Can I help you?”
A different voice replies. One I know. Smooth, calm, and completely out of place in my tiny hallway. Adrian Stewart.
My heart starts hammering against my ribs. What is he doing here? The student council president. Blackwood’s golden boy. He was on stage when it happened. He saw the whole world turn against me. Did he come to deliver the final blow?
I swing my legs off the bed, my feet cold on the floor. I creep to my bedroom door, cracking it open just enough to see.
He stands in our entryway, looking completely at ease in his pressed chinos and Blackwood blazer. He somehow makes our house look smaller, shabbier. “I’m here to see Lia,” he says to my dad. “It’s important.”
My dad’s shoulders are tense. He’s about to refuse when I step into the hall. “It’s fine, Dad. I’ll talk to him.”
Adrian’s eyes find mine. There’s no pity in them. No disgust. Just an unnerving focus. My parents exchange a worried look but retreat toward the kitchen, leaving us alone.
“What do you want?” I ask, my arms crossed tight against my chest. My voice is brittle.
“I’m not here to accuse you,” he says, getting straight to it. He doesn’t waste time with apologies or small talk. He just pulls out his phone.
He hands it to me. On the screen is a screenshot. It’s a magnified image of the video, a mess of pixels around where my hand supposedly shoves Serena. He’s circled a small, almost invisible distortion in red.
“This was edited,” he says, his voice low and certain. “A single frame splice. The timestamp skips a millisecond. It’s almost perfect.”
I stare at the screen, then back up at him. My breath catches in my throat. He saw it. He actually saw it.
He takes his phone back and adds, “And I think you’re the only other person at Blackwood who would be good enough to see it.”
That’s what breaks me. It’s not an offer of help. It’s a statement of respect. He’s not seeing me as a victim or a villain. He’s seeing me as an equal. An expert.
“Why?” I whisper. “Why would you look for it?”
“Because I’ve seen this before. Not the same situation, but the same tactics. Mob justice fueled by a lie.” His expression hardens for a second, a flicker of something old and painful in his eyes. He shakes it off. “I run a blog. An anonymous one. You might have heard of it. ‘The Stewart Standard’.”
The air leaves my lungs. The Stewart Standard. The anonymous student legal aid blog that’s been a quiet force at Blackwood for two years. It’s helped kids fight unfair plagiarism charges and navigate disciplinary hearings. It’s famous for its meticulous, evidence based arguments. Everyone has wondered who was behind it.
It was him. The entire time.
My defenses crumble. This isn’t a trap. This is a lifeline.
I make a choice. The first real choice I’ve made since this whole nightmare began.
“Wait here,” I say. My voice is stronger now.
I walk back into my room and go to my desk. I pull out my old laptop and my encrypted external hard drive. The one with all my real work on it. My ghost work. The archives of my entire history with Serena.
I bring it all into the living room, setting the laptop on the coffee table. Adrian watches me, his expression unreadable. I plug in the drive, type in a thirty two character password, and navigate through nested folders until I find the one I’m looking for.
Its label is simple. ‘Stairs.’
I click play.
I don’t watch the screen. I watch him. I watch his eyes as the raw, unedited security footage plays in the silence of my living room.
The footage is clear. Serena is walking ahead of me down the stairs, complaining about a sponsor. She turns to make a point, the hem of her ridiculous gown catching on her heel. She stumbles backward, arms flailing.
The video shows me lunging forward, my hands reaching out not to push, but to catch her. To stop her fall. I wasn’t fast enough.
Adrian stares at the screen. He watches the loop twice. He sees the truth, undeniable and clear as day.
Slowly, he lifts his gaze from the laptop to me. The look in his eyes has changed completely. It’s not just focus anymore. It’s a blaze of something else.
Respect. And a cold, hard anger on my behalf.
“I knew it,” he says, his voice quiet but intense. “I knew she was lying.” He looks from me back to the image of Serena tripping over her own vanity, frozen on the screen. “We’re going to burn her empire to the ground.”
