Chapter 3 - THE ACCOUNT
By three o’clock, the entire school knew I was Dr. Harper’s daughter.
By three-ten, half the school had decided that meant every grade I had ever earned was fake.
A video of the cafeteria incident spread online with the caption: PRINCIPAL’S SECRET DAUGHTER GETS SPECIAL TREATMENT AFTER PRANK.
The clip began after the bucket hit me.
Of course it did.
It showed Dad giving me his jacket, Sloane looking shocked, and security entering the room. It did not show six months of taunts. It did not show Chloe blocking me against a locker. It did not show Piper dumping my lunch into a trash can two weeks earlier.
It made me look powerful.
That was almost funny.
Dad drove me home in silence.
At a stoplight, he finally said, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For not knowing.”
I looked out the window.
“I made sure you didn’t know.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“It should. It means I was good at hiding it.”
He gripped the steering wheel tighter.
“Mia.”
“I wanted to handle it myself.”
“And how was that going?”
I didn’t answer.
That night, someone threw a rock through our front window.
It landed in the living room beside a framed picture of Mom.
Taped around it was a printed message.
LIARS DON’T BELONG AT WESTBRIDGE.
Dad called the police.
“Why would someone do this?” I asked.
Dad studied the note.
“Because people get desperate when they think evidence exists.”
At eight-thirty, Ben Ortiz called.
Dad put him on speaker.
“I checked the access logs,” Ben said. “The deletion happened Friday at 11:42 p.m.”
“Who logged in?”
There was a pause.
“Vice Principal Crowe.”
Melissa Crowe had worked at Westbridge for fourteen years. She handled student discipline, parent complaints, and scholarship reviews.
She also adored Sloane Mercer.
Dad sat down slowly.
“Are you sure?”
“The username is hers.”
“Could it have been spoofed?”
“Maybe. But there’s more.”
Ben sounded like he wished there wasn’t.
“At 11:39 p.m., her badge opened the security office.”
Dad closed his eyes.
Then Ben said, “The cloud backup may still have the deleted footage.”
I leaned toward the phone.
“May?”
“Someone tried to disable automatic backup too.”
Dad stood.
“Can you recover it?”
Ben hesitated.
“I already started.”
“And?”
“One clip came back.”
Dad and I waited.
May you like
Ben’s next words changed everything.
“Mia isn’t the first student they did this to.”
