Camille hadn't touched a pencil in weeks.
She couldn't bring herself to. Her hands trembled now when she opened her sketchbook. Not from fear of failure, but from fear of what might already be inside it.
After the mirror message, the whispers started.
Soft at first — like static behind classroom chatter.
"She's the headmaster's daughter. You think she earned that scholarship?"
"Didn't she get that studio space Lyra was on the list for?"
Names were never mentioned.
But they didn't have to be.
Not when Mira walked into a room, quiet as a ripple, and everyone else suddenly remembered what they had chosen to forget.
The first sketch appeared in Camille's backpack.
She had reached in for her lunch card and pulled out a folded page — damp, curled at the edges.
Inside, a drawing:
Lyra, eyes wide, mouth stitched shut. A bubble above her read, "Crazy girls make great stories."
At the bottom:
"Property of C.Y."
Camille crushed it, hands shaking. But another appeared the next day — tucked into her locker.
Then another, slipped under her dorm door.
Then five, falling out of her sketchbook when she opened it during Art Theory.
She stopped attending studio.
On Wednesday, her English professor read from a list:
"Camille Yu. Please see me after class."
She stayed behind, palms sweating.
He closed the door. His eyes didn't meet hers.
"We've received several... irregularities in your academic file. Essays submitted from an IP address at your mother's office. Drafts with two sets of handwriting. Also—"
He sighed.
"Your name has been removed from the Honors Exhibition."
Camille felt the room tip sideways.
"Why?"
"We can't verify authorship. And we need the board to trust our standards. I hope you understand."
She left the room before she threw up.
That night, sticky notes were on her desk.
Three of them.
All written in neat, looping letters:
"Ghostwriter's Daughter."
"Silence is a scholarship."
"You watched her drown for an A."
She tore them down.
But the next day, there were seven.
Camille avoided the art building. But it followed her.
Drawings in her gym locker. One left on the library printer tray.
One sketch was so detailed, so accurate, it felt impossible:
Lyra's dorm room.
Messy, charcoal smudged. Canvases everywhere.
A journal left open on the desk.
A window slightly ajar — the lake in the distance.
In the sketch, someone stood at the door.
Watching.
Thursday night, Camille didn't cry. She sat in the dark, staring at the ceiling, and whispered into the silence:
"I didn't do anything."
And the silence whispered back:
Exactly.
The next morning, someone leaked faculty emails.
Camille's name was on them — along with phrases like "discretion advised,""favor secured," and "Camille needs an A on this."
Within hours, her inbox was full.
Not from students.
From blogs. Forums. Screenshots spreading in quiet circles. Her face beside the headline:
"Brackley Headmaster's Daughter Under Fire for Academic Fraud"
No one confronted her directly.
But someone left a framed drawing in her first-period seat.
Lyra — eyes open, floating in water.
Above her, scrawled in red:
"Still think silence saves you?"
Camille skipped class. Hid in the empty upper hall. No teachers. No whispers.
Just the echoes of her own footsteps.
Until she found a piece of paper taped to the wall beside the window overlooking the lake.
It was blank.
Until she stepped closer.
Then — in faint pencil — the words appeared, light-reactive graphite revealing itself under sunlight:
"She could've lived. If you had just said something."
Camille sank to the floor.
The sound of rushing water filled her ears.