Part 4
Part 4 · 2 min read ·
Stephanie let out a sharp, choked gasp, backing up against my mother’s seat. “Mom… do something! Tell them he’s lying! Tell them Jessica made all of this up!”
My mother stood frozen, her eyes wide, staring at the projection screens flanking the stage. Dean Harrow hadn’t just read the document; the university’s legal team had authorized the display of the forensic audit summary directly onto the auditorium’s main screens for the board and the public to see.
There, in bold digital text, was the IP address trace originating from my parents’ router. Below it were time-stamped chat logs between Stephanie and Luca, alongside the bank wire confirmation routing two thousand dollars to the computer science student who had hacked the testing portal.
A woman sitting two rows behind my family leaned forward, her voice echoing loudly: “You tried to ruin your own sister’s life?”
Stephanie whipped around, her face twisted in rage. “Shut up! You don’t know anything about us!”
“I know enough,” the woman scoffed, holding up her phone, which had been recording the entire spectacle.
Dad buried his face in his hands, completely shrinking into his suit jacket. He wasn’t crying out of remorse for what they had done to me; he was cowering from the sudden, public collapse of the artificial perfection he had spent decades curated for the neighbors.
Dean Harrow set the paper down on the podium and looked straight at Stephanie. “Stephanie Vance, you are instructed to step out of the auditorium immediately. Officers are waiting in the foyer to take your formal statement regarding the federal cybercrime charges.”
“No!” Stephanie shrieked, tears finally spilling over her mascara, ruining her flawless makeup. She pointed a trembling finger up at me on the stage. “She’s the one who ruined this family! She thinks she’s better than us just because she got a scholarship! She’s been looking down on us for four years!”
I stepped closer to the microphone, my voice steady, calm, and completely unbothered by her outburst.
“I never thought I was better than you, Stephanie,” I said, looking down at her from the stage. “I just wanted to survive you.”
The silence that followed my words was absolute.
Stephanie looked around the crowd, desperately searching for a single sympathetic face among the thousands of students, faculty members, and parents staring back at her with open disgust. Finding none, she turned and bolted down the aisle, her high heels clicking frantically against the floor until the heavy double doors at the back of the hall slammed shut behind her.