Chapter 3 - The Scholarship Sabotage
Emily spent the first day of her unjust suspension crying silently in her cramped, dimly lit bedroom.
She could hear her mother pacing in the kitchen, frantically calling temporary employment agencies for any available work.
Every time the phone rang, Emily prayed it was the school calling to apologize, but it never was.
Noah texted her repeatedly, promising he was working on a way to recover the deleted video from his phone's deep cache.
On Tuesday afternoon, Emily decided she could not just sit at home waiting for her entire academic life to fall apart.
She snuck out the window and took the city bus down to the local public library to do some research.
She needed to understand why Mrs. Harper was so desperate for a twelve-hundred-dollar phone from a broke student.
Emily logged into the library computer and pulled up the school district’s public financial disclosures for the year.
She cross-referenced Mrs. Harper’s name, looking for any recent debts, lawsuits, or unusual monetary transactions.
After two hours of digging, she found a buried press release regarding the highly coveted Crestwood Merit Scholarship.
The scholarship awarded a full, four-year ride to any university, plus a fifty-thousand-dollar living stipend.
Emily was currently ranked number one in the senior class, making her the undisputed frontrunner for the award.
She scrolled down the digital page to see the name of the student currently ranked exactly second in the class.
The name staring back at her in bold black font was Chloe Vance, the principal’s daughter and Mrs. Harper’s niece.
The broken phone was never actually about extortion or getting a free piece of technology.
It was a meticulously planned setup to ruin Emily’s perfect grade so Chloe would inherit the massive scholarship fund.
Emily printed the document, her hands trembling with anger as the pieces of the puzzle finally clicked together.
She pulled out her phone to call Noah and tell him about the massive, school-wide conspiracy she had uncovered.
Noah answered on the first ring, his voice breathless and filled with intense, unmistakable panic.
“Emily, you need to hide, they know we are trying to recover the footage,” Noah whispered frantically into the receiver.
“What are you talking about, who knows?” Emily demanded, standing up so quickly her wooden chair scraped the floor.
“I took my phone to a data recovery specialist downtown, but someone followed me from the school,” he explained quickly.
Before Noah could say another word, the sickening sound of breaking glass echoed loudly through the phone speaker.
Noah shouted in surprise, and the call abruptly disconnected, leaving Emily listening to a dead, silent dial tone.
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Emily ran out of the library, terrified for her friend, only to see a dark sedan slowly idling near the bus stop.
The tinted passenger window slowly rolled down, revealing Mrs. Harper holding Noah’s backpack in her lap.
