Chapter 4 - The Crack in the Porcelain
That afternoon, the atmosphere at Riverton Prep shifted.
Lily told me about it in the truck on the way home. She sat against the passenger door, her hands tucked inside the sleeves of her mother’s jacket, her eyes watching the rain smear across the side window.
"Nobody talked to me today," she said.
"Is that better or worse than yesterday?" I asked.
"Better," she whispered. "But it was weird. Chloe wasn't in third period. Someone said she was in the principal's office with her mother. And Mr. Renner didn't look at me once during math. He just kept staring at his laptop like he was waiting for it to explode."
"They're realizing that actions have consequences, Lily," I said.
"Did you do something, Dad?" she asked, turning her head to look at me. Her eyes were wide, filled with a mixture of hope and fear that made my heart ache. "The kids are saying someone hacked the school’s server. They’re saying all of Chloe's old detention records are being posted on the student forum."
"I didn't hack anything," I said truthly. "But I told them they couldn't keep hiding what they did."
We pulled into our gravel driveway. The old house looked small and tired under the gray sky, but it was ours. It was the house Hannah had chosen because of the three wild apple trees in the backyard.
"Go inside and get some dry clothes on, Lil," I said. "I have to finish a job at the shop."
"Okay," she said. She hesitated at the door, her hand lingering on the brass knob. "Dad?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for washing the jacket."
She went inside, and I drove back to the garage.
Dave was already there, sitting at the workbench with three different laptops open. The blue light from the screens illuminated the walls of the shop, casting long, angular shadows over the tool racks.
"Vance is trying to move his money," Dave said as I walked in. "He’s initiated four separate transfers from his development company’s accounts to an offshore entity in the Cayman Islands. He’s trying to clear the deck before the state audit gets triggered."
"Can he do that?"
"Not if the accounts are frozen," Dave said. "I sent a copy of the contract negotiation files to a contact of mine at the federal banking compliance office. They’ve flagged the transactions for potential money laundering. As of twenty minutes ago, Mayor Thomas Vance’s personal and corporate accounts are under a temporary administrative freeze."
I leaned against the workbench, the weight of the last twenty-four hours finally catching up to me. "What about the school?"
"Denham’s panicking," Dave said with a dry chuckle. "He called Vance seven times in the last hour. He’s also called his daughter’s university financial aid office. He’s looking for a way out, Sam. He’s going to try to throw Chloe under the bus to save his own skin."
"We don't let him," I said. "He’s as guilty as she is. He’s the one who gave her the license to do whatever she wanted."
"We won't have to," Dave said, tapping his screen. "Look at this."
He turned one of the laptops toward me. It was a live feed of the school's internal student forum. A thread titled “The Real Chloe Vance” had been pinned to the top of the page. It contained screenshots of the deleted parent complaints, the disciplinary logs, and a list of the donations made by the Vance foundation to the school's athletic department right after each incident.
The comments were moving so fast the screen was a blur of text.
“No way. She got away with that?” “I knew she was a bully, but this is insane.” “Look at the dates. The day after she pushed Maya, her dad bought the school a new scoreboard.” “Where is the principal? Why isn’t he saying anything?”
"The students are doing our work for us now, Sam," Dave said. "Once the truth gets into the wild, you don't need a court order to make people look. They’ll look because they love a scandal. Especially when it involves the girl who spent her whole life pretending she was perfect."
"It's not enough," I said. "They still haven't apologized to Lily."
"They will," Dave said, his voice turning cold. "The mayor has a press conference scheduled for tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM on the steps of City Hall to announce the new transit contract. He thinks he can still pull it off if he ignores us."
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"We're going to that press conference," I said.
"I've already got our press passes," Dave said, pulling two laminated cards from his pocket. "Let's see how he handles a crowd when the questions aren't on his script."
