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Friday, January 31st
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I hear taps on the balcony door and my head immediately turns to the direction of the sound. I get up from my bed, leaving my show to continue playing in the background. I walk over to the balcony doors and see Ambrose standing below, still in his winter fest tux.
Ambrose looked good. A little too good. I was jealous at the fact that I couldn't see him at first and it was only until Maya posted those pictures that I was able to see him. I open up the doors and walk out towards the small outdoor space.
"My parents are home," I whisper to him.
I'm coming up.
There was no point in trying to change his mind. He was just as stubborn as the first time I met him.
Once he climbed up, he pulled us inside the room. Closing the door behind me to keep the cold out.
"What're you doing here? My parents are home and they're goi—"
His lips are planted onto mine and I feel myself melt under his touch. His hands were cold as his fingers grasped onto my jaw to hold my face up right.
I wanted to see you and give you that dance.
"What dance?" I ask.
I couldn't dance. Not tonight anyways. It wouldn't feel right if it wasn't with you.
I couldn't help but chuckle as he settles into the starting position by putting his hands on my waist.
"But there's no music," I say.
He shrugs. Imagine it.
We started off by swaying slowly like we did a few nights ago and ironically there was a slow song playing from my laptop. One of the scenes from the show had a song playing in the background as one of the main characters is having their moment.
I silently laugh to myself at the perfect timing. Just like the timing of my dad's heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.
We both begin to panic and basically push each other off. My dad storms into the room and wears a disappointed look on his face.
"Ambrose, you know you're not allowed here, kid," my dad says. Ambrose looks down in a shameful way. "Time to go home."
I'll text you.
I nod at him and give him a quick smile before he leaves my room. Ambrose gives my dad one last look before I watch him disappear out into the hall.
A few minutes later, I watch my dad switch out the door knobs with a new lock that only he has the key to. I failed to realize that the little gnome that sat in our backyard garden was a hidden security camera that had a clear view of the entire backyard.
For the past month, my dad had been watching Ambrose sneak into my room. While I thought that we hadn't been caught, he was just building up evidence and waiting for me to mess up or come clean about it.
"There, all done." He puts down the power drill and tucks it into his tool box.
I cross my arms over my chest and narrow my eyes at him. "This is ridiculous, you know."
"We had an agreement and you broke that agreement. Now, if you do well in your interview, and only if you do well I will change back the locks."
"We weren't even doing anything bad!"
He sighs. "It doesn't matter if you were or weren't. You still broke a rule and that is why you couldn't be trusted to be given the opportunity to go to the dance." He takes his tool box and heads out of my room.
I sit on my bed releasing a groan as I begin to feel trapped and confined once again. My phone buzzes on my nightstand and I reach for it. A text from Ambrose.
How bad is your punishment?
There was a hidden camera :/ he changed the locks on the door
I'm sorry, it was my fault
No it's not.
I should've remembered that my dad pulls these kind of things
It's late, you should go to sleep.
🙁 Ok
goodnight Ambrose 💕
Goodnight angel 💗
I smile at his text and settle into bed. At least my night got a little better.
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Saturday, February 8th
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My parents waited outside of the dean of admission's office as I awkwardly stood in the admissions director's office. Mr. Crane's office overlooked the campus as I watched from the window above. Everyone looked so determined walking to their class and some just chilled underneath some trees with friends. If I didn't fuck up this interview, that would be me this upcoming fall semester.
The door opens behind me and I see Mr. Crane walking in. Mr. Crane was not as intimidating as I thought he was. His face is framed with black round glasses and he wears a navy blue suit. He wasn't tall nor had a large frame. He was quite short actually, I think he was only a few inches taller than me.
"Good morning Ms. Sinclair, I hope you've been liking Harvard so far," he says, smiling at me.
I nod enthusiastically. "Yes, of course Mr. Crane. It's a very nice campus afterall."
"Please sit. Did you bring your transcripts?"
I sit in one of the empty seats in front of his desk and pull out the transcript from my bag. Handing it to him he shuffles through them and pulls out my list of achievements.
"Managed to be class president for four consecutive years, played softball for three years, and even starred in multiple after school clubs," he mutters, "Impressive."
"Thank you Mr. Crane, I have worked extremely hard these past few years." I began to wring my hands on my lap as he continued to read through every inch of the documents.
"Yes, I do remember seeing your application, but there seems to be a recent change," he says, "you seemed to have drastically dropped your high grades and barely seemed to pass your exams. Looks like there was quite a gap between you submitting your application and until recently. Why's that?"
It feels like a softball was lodged into my throat at the sudden question. "U-uh, um, I was going through a very tough time."
"Everyone goes through tough times, Ms. Sinclair. Should I give everyone a chance to be admitted if that's the case?" He deadpans.
I sigh. "My friend was admitted to the hospital after a three car collision. He slipped into a coma. He was the only person that I felt like understood what I had gone through. You see Mr. Crane, I was sexually assaulted by my ex-boyfriend earlier that month and my friend helped me heal from that. I thought that by being at his side and never leaving him would repay what he did with me. I've been blamed for what happened to me, and he's the only one that never did," I say, taking a deep breath, "I know that that's not the excuse you expected to hear, but I can't lie about why my grades were slipping. It's not because I was out partying, which would be far more less embarrassing than the actual truth, it's because it was hard to share the same space and social group with your abuser. I constantly skipped school, ignored everyone, and even sacrificed my grades to stay away. Which resulted in falling into a pit of depression. It wasn't until earlier last month that I was beginning to feel like myself again. He's helped me out a lot."
He moves onto his desktop and types away on his computer. I could see from the reflection on his glasses that he's looking at my profile on the portal. "That's odd," he says, "Looks like you were accepted at first."
I furrow my brows at him. "What do you mean? I didn't receive any email stating that I was accepted. I only received a notification that my decision was ready to view."
"Yes, that's right. Oh, I remember now," his face changes into realization, "we did have a security breach just before the holidays. That resulted in a lot of students losing their classes and some even losing their admission to the school. It seems that you were just one of the unlucky students that happened to be in the way of those pesky hackers."
"Wait, what?"
"Your grades are unbelievably high and I was also impressed by your essays. I guess if you really came all this way to get a second chance really does show that you want to be here. We didn't want to alarm anyone else, but we did get our system hacked into just before the admissions were sent out to students. I'm deeply sorry that this happened to you," he says, "and I'm also sorry that you were put into a vulnerable place when you told me the truth. I really do hope that you've found peace with your friend." He gives me a polite smile and hands me back my papers.
"So what does this mean?" I ask.
"Would you like to be a part of the freshmen class this fall?" He asks.
"Do you really mean that? So you're going to change my admissions status?"
He nods. "Yes, I will change it back to its original status to accepted."
I feel relief knowing that I was never rejected to begin with. It was all a misunderstanding and I hope that those hackers would pay their due for the amount of stress they caused me.
"Harvard has always been my dream school. I would be ecstatic to attend, Mr. Crane."
"Just one more thing," he says, "try not to get into more trouble and keep your grades up. You have a bright future ahead of you and I trust that Harvard would be lucky to have someone like you. Especially if you're looking to become a lawyer."
"I will sir, I promise."
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Monday, February 10th
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Ambrose and I grabbed our lunches and headed over to the table with Aurora and Maya.
"So how did it go?" Maya asks, "the interview, I mean."
"It went well. Only thing is that the admissions director said something about their system getting hacked. Apparently many students had their admissions status changed and others lost their classes," I say.
"Sorry, excuse me," Aurora says, looking a bit nervous. She stands from her seat at the table and walks away.
I look at Maya questioningly and she just shrugs at me. "Do you know what's going on with her?" I ask Ambrose, who also shakes his head at me.
"So are your parents finally done hovering over you?" Maya asks.
I nod happily. "Yes, finally. My dad still needs to change back my locks. I think he forgot so I need to remind him."
Maya furrows her eyebrows. "Why did he change your locks?"
Embarrassment burns onto my cheeks. "Oh," I chuckle sheepishly, "Uh, Ambrose has been sneaking into my room for the past month when I was grounded. My dad caught him with our hidden camera."
A smirk appears on her lips. "Sneaking in huh? Ambrose you horn dog."
Ambrose begins to choke on his juice and coughs. I lightly pat his back and Maya continues to wear that devious smirk. "So there's no denying."
Not fair. You know I can't say anything.
Ambrose manages to sign as he continues to fight for his life.
"We weren't doing anything particularly bad," I say, "we would just study like we always did."
"Bad?" Maya chuckles, "Relax I was just teasing. Now I know why Ambrose didn't want to dance. It's because he had a lady in his sight and left early."
I look at Ambrose who's looking at me with a side-eye glance.
What?
"You left the dance early? But you came late to my house," I say. Adding up the times.
"He left around 9," Maya says, munching on a fry.
I didn't mention it because I didn't think it was super important to talk about at the time, but I gave Tiffany a ride home as I was leaving.
"I didn't see Tiffany all night," Maya mutters, she looked deep in thought as if she was racking through her memories of that night.
She was for a second. Then she said she got into an argument with Ethan and he left her abandoned at the school. I offered her a ride and she took up on the offer. We talked for a bit and then she headed inside.
"What did you guys talk about?" I ask.
You and Ethan. About why she did you know what.
I slowly nod, gathering everything he explained. Tiffany was beginning to go down the same path as I did. Even though she didn't believe anything I told her, I couldn't stand back and watch her go through what I did. He was beginning to act aggressive with someone else.
"Did she say what they argued about?" I ask.
Ambrose shakes his head and that brings the conversation to an end. The final bell rings and everyone trails off to their classes.
Ambrose and I said a quick goodbye as we both parted ways to head towards our different classes. At least I would see him again in our last class.
As I was heading down the hallway, I noticed Tiffany rushed inside the girl's restroom with some of the girls on the cheer squad trailing behind her.
My interest was piqued and I headed over to the restroom as well. I knew that I would be late to my class and I couldn't skip anymore classes, but my gut instinct told me to just follow them.
When I went inside the restroom, the girls were huddled outside of a stall.
"Tiffany please, open up. Talk to us. What did he say?" One of the girls asks.
All of them were consoling her, trying to make her open up the stall door, but she didn't bother to. I could hear her light sobs echo between the walls of the stall.
I clear my throat and they all turn to look at me. They narrow their eyes at me. "What do you want?"
"Let me get to her. I know her better," I say.
They all look at each other and speak with their eyes. They walk away from the stall and one of them checks me as they're leaving. I roll my eyes, but sigh in relief as I hear the restroom door open and then close.
There's no one else in here and I make sure by checking underneath the stalls. Only Tiffany's Jimmy Choos are on full display.
"It's just us in here," I said aloud, "I made them go away." She sniffles in response. "I could hear you crying, you know I'm not going to judge."
"Go away," she says softly, her voice raspy.
"I'm not leaving until you tell me what's going on. Ambrose told me what happened at the dance."
The stall door clicks and it creaks open. It barely opens up and I take a step forward to reveal a crying Tiffany. Her mascara is running down her cheeks, her eyes are red, and her cheeks are flushed. But what seemed out of place was a large purple spot on her left eye.
It looked fresh. It wasn't from a cheerleading accident because it was only Monday, and there was no way that she would come up with an excuse like that.
"Did he hit you?" I ask, bluntly. I wasn't here to walk on eggshells although it probably wasn't the best way to approach the question.
"He did much worse than that," she says, "he went ballistic on me."
"What did he do? What happened?"
"He somehow found out that Ambrose gave me a ride home the night before and he showed up at my house bright and early. I thought he was there to apologize, but he greeted me with a slap," she says. She brushes away her tears with her fists in an aggressive manner. "He grabbed me by my neck and dragged me to my room. I really thought he was going to kill me, Evangeline."
"What else did he do?" I feel the bile rising in my throat as I struggle to ask the question. I knew what was coming and I was ashamed that I couldn't stop him from doing it again.
If only I wasn't a coward and actually came forward to report him.
"He did what he did to you," she croaks out, "he went back to normal after he was done. Later that night, I saw a picture going around that he was out with another girl. His friends were passing that picture around and that's how I saw it."
"An endless cycle," I mutter under my breath.
"She's from a different school. She's like some kind of genius. I did all sorts of research on her and found out where she went to school and who her parents were," Tiffany says, "Her dad is a scientist and her mom is a dermatologist. She's trying to become a doctor."
Her words were becoming muffled to my ears. Ethan was a ravenous monster with a never ending hunger of violating those that just wasn't doing enough for him. He would never be satisfied. He could do the same to this new girl and then toss to her side as he set his eyes on another.
Ethan Meyers has to go down.
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A/N: A bit of a short chapter today. I wanted to save up the most important scenes for the next chapter or else this one would've been 4000+ words.
I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter!
Alright I've run out of things to say lol see you guys in the next one!
- N ♡