Chapter 1 - The Broken Screen
The classroom was suffocatingly quiet after the final bell rang for the afternoon.
Emily stood firmly by her desk, staring down at her worn-out sneakers while her hands shook uncontrollably.
Mrs. Harper towered over her, holding up a shattered designer smartphone with a look of pure, unadulterated disgust.
“I do not care about your mother’s current employment situation, Emily,” the teacher said, her voice dripping with venom.
“I left my phone on your desk for two minutes, and now the screen is completely destroyed.”
Emily wiped a stray tear from her cheek, her voice barely a whisper as she tried to defend herself again.
“I swear to you, Mrs. Harper, it was already cracked when I walked up to hand in my assignment.”
The teacher slammed her hand on the wooden desk, making the terrified girl flinch backward.
“You bumped the desk, knocked it over, and you are going to pay the twelve hundred dollars to replace it.”
Emily felt the air leave her lungs at the mention of that massive sum of money.
Her mother had just been laid off from her waitress job two days ago.
They barely had enough money saved in the jar at home to cover this month's rent and groceries.
“Please, I cannot pay that, my family is under severe financial pressure right now,” Emily begged, her voice cracking.
Mrs. Harper crossed her arms and offered a cold, calculating smile that sent chills down Emily's spine.
“Then I suppose you will be failing this semester’s final project, which will conveniently ruin your perfect GPA.”
Emily gasped, knowing that her entire future and college scholarship depended on maintaining that perfect academic record.
“You cannot threaten my grade over an accident that I did not even cause!” Emily cried out defensively.
“I can do whatever I want in my classroom, and who is the principal going to believe?” Mrs. Harper sneered.
From the back row of the empty classroom, a heavy textbook suddenly dropped to the floor with a loud thud.
Mrs. Harper spun around, her face pale as she realized they were not actually alone in the room.
Noah, the quietest boy in the junior class, was sitting perfectly still at his desk.
He slowly lowered his own smartphone, the red recording light glaring brightly on the screen.
Mrs. Harper lunged across the room, snatching the device right out of his hands with surprising speed.
She threw his phone against the cinderblock wall, shattering it into a dozen plastic and glass pieces.
“Now neither of you has any proof of this little conversation,” she hissed maliciously.
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Noah calmly reached into his backpack, pulling out a second, identical smartphone with a faint smile.
“That was just my old decoy phone, Mrs. Harper, because the real recording is already safely in the cloud.”
