SubChapter 12
The car ride home was suffocating.
My mother drove in silence, her hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles turned white. I could feel questions building inside her, pressing against her lips, but she kept them locked away. For now.
When we pulled into our driveway, she turned off the engine but didn't move to get out.
"I need you to tell me," she said quietly, still staring straight ahead. "Did you plagiarize that essay?"
"Mom, I already told you..."
"I'm not asking as your mother. I'm asking as someone who needs to understand what's happening." She finally looked at me, and her eyes were wet. "Because that detective...he has evidence, Ileh. Physical evidence. And if you did this thing, if you stole from Chance and then..." She couldn't finish the sentence.
"I didn't hurt her." That much was true, in the way I needed it to be. "I didn't plan to hurt her. I would never..."
"But the essay?" Her voice cracked. "The scholarship?"
I could tell her the truth. Right here, right now. Confess to the plagiarism, beg her to understand the pressure I was under, the desperation. It wouldn't fix everything, but it might salvage something.
Or I could keep lying.
"The essays were similar because we studied the same materials, used the same sources. We were in the same AP Literature class, Mom. Professor Hendricks even commented on how similar our approaches were, that's normal when students learn from the same teacher."
I watched her want to believe me. Watched her grab onto this explanation like a lifeline.
"Okay," she said finally. "Okay. But we need a lawyer. A real one. Not a public defender, someone good."
"We can't afford..."
"I'll figure it out." She opened her door. "I'll take extra shifts. I'll borrow from your aunt. Whatever it takes."
Guilt twisted in my stomach, sharp and vicious. She was willing to go into debt to defend me. To protect me from consequences I absolutely deserved.
"Mom..."
"Don't." She held up a hand. "Don't tell me not to. You're my daughter. That's all that matters."
But it wasn't all that mattered. And we both knew it.
SubChapter 13
The lawyer my mother found was named Patricia Chen. She was in her fifties, sharp-eyed, with an office in a converted house downtown that smelled like old books and expensive perfume.
We met her two days after the police interview. She'd already reviewed the case, or what existed of it, and had a yellow legal pad covered in notes.
"Let me be direct," she said, settling into her chair across from us. "Detective James has circumstantial evidence. Strong circumstantial evidence, but circumstantial nonetheless. The bus footage, the cell tower data, the witness who saw someone running, none of it definitively places you inside Chance Williams's house at the time of her death."
"So they can't arrest her?" my mother asked hopefully.
"I didn't say that." Patricia's eyes flicked to me. "They can arrest on probable cause. And depending on what else they find, they might have enough. But right now? Right now we can fight this."
"What about the essay?" I asked. "The plagiarism accusation?"
"That's actually more concerning than the death investigation, legally speaking. If the scholarship committee determines you committed academic fraud, they can revoke the scholarship, demand repayment of any funds already distributed, and report you to Riverside University. Your admission would likely be rescinded."
The room spun slightly. "So I'd lose everything."
"Potentially. But..." She leaned forward. "...the plagiarism accusation is separate from the death investigation. Detective James is using it to establish motive. He thinks you killed Chance to prevent her from reporting you. Without the plagiarism motive, his case gets significantly weaker."
"So what do we do?" my mother asked.
Patricia looked at me for a long moment. "We fight the plagiarism claim first. We argue that similar essays are common among students from the same class. We point out that Chance never formally reported you, never submitted her essay to the committee, never documented her concerns anywhere except in a private email to a friend. We make it seem like she was speculating, not accusing."
"And if that doesn't work?" I asked.
"Then we negotiate. Maybe you withdraw from Riverside, forfeit the scholarship, agree to academic probation. Make it go away quietly before it becomes public." She paused. "But Ileh, I need to know, did you plagiarize that essay?"
My mother's eyes were on me. Patricia's eyes were on me. The weight of their expectations pressed down like a physical force.
"My essay and Chance's were similar," I said carefully. "Because we were friends. We discussed our ideas together. I may have been... influenced by her approach. But I didn't deliberately steal her work."
It wasn't quite a lie. It wasn't quite the truth. It was the kind of answer lawyers appreciated, technically accurate, morally ambiguous.
Patricia made a note. "All right. Here's what we do. We don't talk to Detective James anymore without me present. We don't answer questions from anyone, not students, not teachers, not Chance's family. If he wants another interview, he schedules it through me, and I'm in the room. Understood?"
"Yes," I said.
"And Ileh?" Her voice softened slightly. "If there's anything you haven't told me, anything that might come out later, I need to know now. I can't defend you if I'm surprised."
"There's nothing," I lied smoothly.
She held my gaze for three seconds longer than comfortable, then nodded. "All right. Let's get to work."
SubChapter 14
That night, I made a decision about the diary.
I'd been obsessing over it for weeks, what Chance had written, whether she'd named me, whether it contained evidence that could destroy me. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized: it didn't matter.
If the diary contained damning evidence, Detective James would have used it already. He would have confronted me with Chance's own words, shown me entries where she documented my theft, my threats, my guilt. The fact that he hadn't meant one of two things: either the diary didn't contain anything useful, or it was ambiguous enough to be interpreted multiple ways.
Either way, I couldn't get to it. The police had it, or Chance's mother had it, and any attempt to access it would only make me look more guilty.
I had to let it go.
I opened my encrypted notes one last time and deleted the entire section labeled "Diary - Unknown Variables." Watched the text disappear character by character.
Some things were beyond my control. I had to accept that.
My phone buzzed. Mira: Hey. Haven't seen you at school. You okay?
I'd been avoiding her since the police interview. Not completely, that would be suspicious, but I'd been strategically absent. Sick days, early dismissals, studying in the library during lunch instead of the cafeteria.
Just stressed. College stuff.
Her response came immediately: Can we talk? I'm worried about you.
I stared at the message. Mira was one of the only people who still seemed to genuinely care. Who hadn't written me off as guilty or treated me like I was radioactive. But she also knew too much. Had seen too much.
Still. Completely cutting her off would be worse.
Tomorrow? Coffee after school?
Yes. Same place.
I set the phone down and returned to my laptop, pulling up the scholarship committee's website. Reading through their policies on academic integrity, appeals processes, investigation procedures.
If they came after me officially, I needed to be ready.
My mother knocked softly on my door. "Ileh? Can I come in?"
"Yeah."
She entered carrying a cup of tea, chamomile, the kind she made when she wanted to soothe me. She set it on my desk and lingered, clearly wanting to say something.
"Ms. Chen seems good," she said finally. "Professional."
"Yeah. She does."
"And she thinks we can fight this. That you'll be okay."
"I hope so."
Another pause. Then: "Ileh, I need to ask you something. And I need you to be honest with me."
My stomach tightened. "Okay."
"That day, September fourteenth. When Chance died." She sat on the edge of my bed. "Did you see her? Even for a moment? Even if you didn't... if nothing happened, but you saw her?"
This was it. The opportunity to tell a partial truth. To admit I'd been there, but frame it differently. Plant the seeds for a defense strategy.
But if I admitted being there, even innocently, it opened doors I couldn't close. Created new questions. New inconsistencies.
"No, Mom. I didn't see her. I was at Riverside, then the library. That's the truth."
She studied me the way she had a thousand times before, when I was seven and denied breaking her favorite vase, when I was twelve and swore I'd studied for the test I'd failed, when I was fifteen and promised I hadn't been at that party.
Every time before, she'd eventually found out I was lying.
"Okay," she said softly. "I believe you."
But I could hear the uncertainty in her voice. The doubt that hadn't been there a week ago.
She left the tea and closed the door behind her.
I sat in the darkness, listening to her footsteps retreat down the hallway, and felt the walls closing in from yet another direction.