Chapter 3

3: 3

Monday, I brought the torn-up acceptance letter to school.

My homeroom teacher, Mr. James, fit the pieces back together on his desk.

“The spot at Riverside Central is still yours. As long as you turn in the guardian paperwork, you can still enroll.”

But all my documents were locked in my mother's safe.

Mr. James was just about to walk me home when the office door swung open.

My mother came in with the principal and someone from the admissions office, a document folder in her hand.

Inside were chat logs and transfer screenshots from around the time of the placement exams.

Some stranger's account had sent me the answers, and the name on the receiving end was mine.

“This isn't real.”

My mother pressed her fingers to her brow.

“Summer, stop lying.”

She ran a family-education company and worked with plenty of training institutions.

Faking records and transaction histories was nothing to her.

She even produced a photocopy of the bank card my father had given me.

I'd had it for a single day before she snapped it in half.

Now it was proof that I'd cheated.

The admissions office froze my acceptance.

Word spread through the school fast. When I passed through the hallway, a few classmates dropped their voices.

“It's her own mom. She wouldn't really do that to her, would she?”

The graduation ceremony was that same day.

My mother shoved an apology statement into my hand.

“Go up and read it.”

The page said I'd been jealous of my sister, that I'd cheated for years, and that I'd framed my own mother.

“I didn't cheat.”

“Your sister didn't even finish middle school, and here you are standing on a stage getting an award. How do you think she'd feel seeing that?”

Her nails dug into the burn on the back of my hand.

“Go up. Or I'll have Consultant Lambert come get you.”

I walked to the microphone.

The first line read “I admit that everything I'm good at was stolen.”

My mother sat in the front row, phone raised.

She wanted to send the video to my sister again.

I folded the page.

“My grades weren't cheated.”

The auditorium went silent at once.

“The chat logs, the transfers, the answers, none of them are mine.”

“I'm willing to be investigated. But I won't apologize for evidence that was faked.”

My mother rushed up onto the stage, hand already rising to hit me.

Hundreds of phones went up at once below.

Her palm stopped in midair.

A few seconds later, she slowly lowered it, and the tears came anyway.

The crowd started whispering.

She knew exactly how to play the mother destroyed by her own daughter.

“I gave up everything to raise you.”

“And now, over one high school, you'd trample your own mother into the ground?”

People below sighed. Some started saying I was ungrateful.

My mother wiped her tears, but behind the phone the corner of her mouth curved up.

Back home, she took the door off my bedroom and threw all my textbooks into the bathtub.

“You like to read?”

“Then read.”

She grabbed my hair and pushed my face down into the swollen, sodden pages.

The smell of ink and rotting paper flooded my nose. I clutched the rim of the tub until two of my nails broke off.

“Edwina never even got the chance to study. Who are you to be picky?”

She didn't let go until I was nearly out of air.

A statement voluntarily giving up my acceptance landed in front of me.

“Sign it.”

“From now on you'll wait tables at a restaurant. Whatever Edwina did, you'll do too.”

“She never waited tables.”

I lifted my head.

“She's studying abroad. She even sent me a gift.”

A glass grazed my temple and shattered against the wall.

My mother's voice suddenly went soft.

“Sign it, and I'll be nicer to you from now on.”

For over a decade, every time she wanted me to give something up, she'd promised the same thing.

I picked up the pen and wrote four words at the bottom of the statement.

“Evidence is forged.”

My mother dragged me into the laundry room and chained the door shut.

I was locked in the dark for two days.

The third night, she got a call and left.

I felt around under the washing machine for the screwdriver I'd hidden ahead of time.

The old lock was rusted. It took me almost an hour of grinding just to work one screw loose.

When I reached my arm out through the gap in the door, the metal edge cut it open.

Blood ran down my arm. I wrapped it any which way with the hem of my shirt.

I didn't stop.

I was going to get those videos.

Only by proving she'd lied did I have any chance of getting out alive.