SubChapter 21
Patricia came with the final blow on a Friday afternoon, two months before trial.
"They found Chance's diary," she said. Her voice was flat, professional. "The police had it the whole time, but they only just finished analyzing it. She documented everything, Ileh. The essay theft. The argument. The ultimatum. And the last entry..." She slid a photocopy across the table. "The last entry was written the morning she died."
I read it with numb fingers.
September 14th
I'm meeting with Ileh today at 3 PM. One last chance to do the right thing. I know she won't. She's too scared, too desperate. But I have to try.
If she doesn't confess today, I'm reporting her tomorrow. I've already written the email. It's scheduled to send tomorrow morning if I don't cancel it.
I feel bad. She's my oldest friend. But Mom always said integrity matters more than friendship. And she's right. Ileh made her choice when she stole from me. Now I have to make mine.
I hope she surprises me. I hope she walks in and says "you're right, I'll confess." But I don't think she will.
Whatever happens, I did what I could.
"The prosecution is going to use this at trial," Patricia said. "It establishes that Chance was planning to report you the next day. That you knew it was your last chance to stop her. It gives you motive, means, and opportunity."
"There's more," she continued. "They found draft emails on Chance's laptop. Seven different versions of the email she was going to send to the scholarship committee. Each one detailed what you did, how you did it, when you did it. She had everything, Ileh. Screenshots of your submission. Screenshots of her own essay. Side-by-side comparisons. Even proof that you'd accessed her laptop when she left it unattended."
I couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe.
"The DA has withdrawn the plea offer. They're going for first-degree murder now. Premeditation. They're arguing you went there specifically to kill her before she could report you."
"That's not..."
"It doesn't matter!" Patricia's professional mask cracked for the first time. "It doesn't matter what the truth is! The evidence tells a story, and that story ends with you in prison for life. The jury is going to see a cold, calculating teenager who stole her friend's work, got caught, and killed her to cover it up. And there is nothing, NOTHING, you can tell me that will change how that looks."
She gathered her papers. "I can try to fight this. I will try. But Ileh... you need to prepare yourself. You're going to lose. And when you lose, you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison."
She left.
I sat alone in the interview room until the guard came to take me back to my cell.
SubChapter 22
That night, I lay on my thin mattress staring at the ceiling.
Rita was snoring softly on the bunk above me. Somewhere down the hall, someone was crying. The fluorescent lights never fully turned off, just dimmed to a perpetual twilight.
I thought about my mother, drowning in legal debt for a daughter who was going to be convicted anyway. I thought about my future, not college, not a career, not the life I'd worked so hard for. Just decades in a cell like this one, growing old behind bars, becoming someone I didn't recognize.
I thought about Chance. About the sound her head made hitting the marble. About her eyes, confused and hurt, staring up at me in those final seconds before everything went dark.
I had killed her. Not on purpose, not with malice, but I had killed her nonetheless. And then I'd spent months lying about it, covering it up, making it worse.
Everything I'd done to save my future had destroyed it more completely than any confession could have.
The weight of it pressed down on me until I couldn't breathe.
I rolled over, facing the wall, and did something I hadn't done in years.
I prayed.
Not to God, I'd never been particularly religious. But to anything, anyone, any force in the universe that might be listening.
Please, I thought desperately. Please make this stop. I can't do this anymore. I can't go to trial. I can't watch them destroy my mother. I can't spend my life in prison for something that was an accident.
Please. Make them stop. Make them go away. Make Detective James and Detective Reeves and the DA and everyone building this case against me, just make them stop.
I'll do anything. Give anything. Become anything.
Just please make this nightmare end.
The prayer felt hollow. Futile. Like screaming into a void.
I fell asleep to the sound of Rita's snoring and my own quiet tears.