Face-Slapping13 min read
I Bound Myself to a Little Orb and Broke Three Hearts
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I died on a mountain road and woke up in someone else’s life.
"Laney," I said as the world spun, "where am I?"
"You’re back," the little voice said, "and I’m your contract."
Laney—small, round, smug—floated over my shoulder like a stubborn moth. She looked nothing like the cold, clinical AIs I’d read about. She blinked, folded imaginary arms, and spoke like a teenage gossip.
"Don’t call me a moth," she pouted. "Call me Laney. Call me your bind. Call me the reason your life stopped being boring."
"I’m Evelynn Berger," I told her. "I’m not—"
"You're not you from before," Laney interrupted. "You’re Evelynn Berger now, the rich girl with pearl Maria shoes and a habit of throwing money at the wrong dramas. The original Evelynn’s life ended badly. She wanted two things before she died: to punish Reid Michel and Kimora Bennett, and to stop Hudson Cortez from abandoning himself."
"You mean... the boy in the alley?" I whispered. "Hudson?"
"Yes. He’s the brooding kind. He becomes famous and then... he disappears in his sorrow. The original Evelynn lost everything because of Reid, Kimora, and Baylor Barron. Your mission is to fix that. Bind with me. Complete my tasks. Wake up again."
I could feel my real body somewhere far away, useless. Pain kept surfacing. "Okay," I said, my voice tasting like cold metal. "I agree."
Laney clapped. "Happy day! Now let’s find Hudson."
We found him inside a narrow alley where the light was a reluctant blue. A few thugs circled him like vultures, and he stood like one of those ancient statues that still refuse to look defeated.
"Hey, you need help?" I sang out, perché like a gull.
He started, his eyes like two dark coins. "No."
"Look at his shoes," Laney whispered in my ear. "He notices small things." She winked—if orbs can wink. "He will remember you."
"Stop spouting matchmaker lines," I hissed. "Just do the hero bit."
Hudson called out once, low and reluctant, "I have money. Take what you want."
A giant cursed, "Big talk for a student, huh? Prove it." One of them stepped forward.
"Stop," I said, hands steady. "You’re picking on the wrong person."
I didn’t know how impulsive I would be when I inherited Evelynn’s world and money and arrogance. I felt braver than my bones warranted. I stepped forward; a numbness in my chest felt like a warning and an invitation.
Hudson's eyes flicked to me. "You—"
"I brought help," I said. "Not that you asked for it."
Laney hummed. "I called in favors."
A wall of black-suited kids—older students, couriers of a samizdat social order—blocked the alley. They dispersed the thugs like a silent tide. My shoulders dropped.
Hudson looked at me, surprised. He was painfully pale and impossibly slender; a walking contradiction of fragility and stubbornness. He touched the sleeve of his jacket like he couldn’t believe it kept him warm.
"Thank you," he said, very quietly.
"You're welcome," I replied, and I insisted on sounding careless. I wanted him to think this was my play, not mine and Laney's bargain.
He was awkward. He was silent a lot. But he borrowed the bottle of milk I had in my bag, and I made him drink. He coughed theatrically at first, then stopped, eyes on the table, like a boy remembering to breathe.
"You’re odd," Hudson said finally, as if that explained me.
"Flattering, I know," I said. "Are you always so stoic under attack?"
"Not always," he muttered.
That night I lay awake and Laney narrated what had been set into motion long before my arrival.
"Reid Michel takes what he wants. He takes money, attention, and girls who are easy. Kimora Bennett is Reid's charm and Baylor Barron spells trouble. Together they turned Evelynn’s life into an offering bowl," Laney explained.
"You want me to ruin them," I said, thinking of the way the original Evelynn had described betrayal and bankruptcy, ending in bar lights and an absence no one repaired.
"Publicly." Laney’s voice hardened. "The original asked for public punishment."
I sat up. "Public?"
"Yes—public, spectacular, visceral. They cheated, lied, and reveled. The world should watch them fall."
I pictured it. I didn’t want to be cruel for the sake of cruelty. But the original had felt erased. She wanted justice. I wanted to keep my promise. I clicked my teeth and listened.
Over days, then weeks, the web tightened. "You can play a role," Laney told me. "You have money. You have reputation. Use them. Use Hudson. Use Gemma. Use small cameras."
Gemma Wood was the one with quiet courage. She was the girl Reid had wronged without knowing the cost. I found Gemma in a dance studio, pale and defiant, balancing on her toes with a tenderness that made you breathe soft.
"Gemma," I said. "I need you."
"Why would I help you?" she asked, eyes still wet from practice.
"Because what Reid did... he thought he could buy people. He stole more than he knew."
She considered. Then she nodded. "Fine. He will regret it."
We started with small things. "Find evidence," I told Gemma. "Pictures, ledger entries, texts."
She smuggled cameras into coffee houses and downloaded receipts. Laney rummaged the internet like a thrill-seeking detective. I played the part of privileged, harmless heiress with a fast smile and faster shoes—pearl Maria shoes that never quite lost their shine.
Hudson and I grew close by accident and design. We studied together. He tutored me in physics and elliptic functions; I tutored him in being seen. We argued about small things: the right coffee, the wrong jacket, whether music should be loud. He taught me how to calculate the tangent of a trajectory and I taught him how to let his shoulders loosen by a centimeter.
"You’re impossible sometimes," Hudson told me once.
"So are you," I said, reaching for his hand. He didn’t pull away. He looked at his palm and seemed to question whether it belonged to him.
"You’re keeping me here," he whispered.
"Good," I said like a promise and a dare.
Then we struck.
"Make noise," Gemma whispered. "Make it blow up."
We released the first file at noon when the school yard was a galaxy of lunchboxes and idle fingers. A thread started with a rumor. Then the video, then texts: Reid Michel smiling with a string of paid favors, ledger entries showing embezzled funds moved like chess pieces.
Reid’s face went pale. His final smirk faltered. "They won’t believe that," he said at first, calm and arrogant.
They believed. The school forum erupted. Phones chattered. People gathered like a flock around a boar.
Reid pushed back. "It’s fake," he said in the headmaster's office. "Someone’s doctored the files. I would never—"
We showed backup — real receipts, bank timestamps, more videos. The room went small, every person leaning forward like gravity had been asked to incline.
Then Kimora Bennett’s messages slid into the thread—snapshots that rinsed his defenses in sunlight: offers, promises, a plan to buy a company. She had danced between them all with a smile. Baylor Barron’s photos—whatever had bound him to lawsuits and champagne—fell like falling teeth.
Their faces changed. Smug became doubtful. Doubt became fear. Words were clawed out of mouths.
"Is there a mistake?" Reid said, voice high.
"They can’t do this," Kimora insisted, hair suddenly too clean. "I didn’t—this is—"
The progression was set: their egos, once full of swagger, cracked. I watched them wobble under the weight of their own greed. It was violent in the way only pride can be. People recorded. Phones glowed like stars. "I told you," whispered someone in the hallway. "She got them."
We didn’t stop. The second demonstration was bigger, held by us without official sanction. We booked a local community hall and invited every student and parent with the subtle audacity of girls who know how to make gossip into tickets.
"Why would they come?" Hudson asked, wariness in his voice.
"Because curiosity travels faster than judgment," I said. "Because people want to see morality in motion."
On the day of the hall, I felt like a director. Laney provided timing; Gemma and I draped the room with calm. The hall filled quickly. The murmur rose like surf.
I walked onto the stage, feeling the glare on my chest where my pearl Maria shoes kept time with my heartbeat. "Today," I said, and the microphone grabbed my voice and made it whole, "we will show you how greed and gossip can destroy people. We will show you the truth."
"You're mad," someone hissed behind me.
"Maybe," I said into the light. "But sometimes mad is what makes chains break."
Then we let the documents roll.
I watched them again—their faces, the way Reid’s jaw worked like a trap resetting, the way Baylor’s hands twitched toward a defense that wouldn't come. Kimora looked as if someone had turned a light up inside her and it showed everything ugly.
"You're going to regret this, Evelynn," Reid spat when the slideshow ended. "You can't just—"
"Watch me," I answered.
The punishment had to be public—no backroom settlement, no tidy apology. The rules of the contract were cruel and sharp: if they had played the world, the world would see. They had gone past private wrongs into theft and repeated manipulation. They needed to be painted in light so bright they would flinch.
So I framed the proof as a public reckoning.
We had the headmaster speak. We had students step forward and tell what they had seen. People spoke with trembling voices: of bribes taken, of opportunities bought, of class funds used like a personal slush. Phones recorded. Parents recorded. Several older students livestreamed directly.
Reid’s expression moved like a film strip. At first he was defiant—pride is stubborn. "This is lies," he said. "You all are gullible."
Then the first bank timestamp played. "This proves it," said Gemma, calm and blunt.
He smiled, a thin thing. "You can't prove intent."
"Watch again," the video said. A recorded meeting—months old—played: Reid arranging a plan to move funds. His voice, casual and indifferent, asked for receipts to be altered.
The hall shifted. A woman in the third row whispered, "I knew it. I knew he'd be taking things." Phones clicked. Someone called for school administration. The headmaster rose like a man in a weather change.
Reid’s face drained. "No," he said at first like something mechanical. "This is not—"
Kimora laughed. It had been a thing done when they thought no one would notice. Now her laugh turned brittle. "You were always so... theatrical," she said, but her tone begged an audience to buy a lie.
"Stop!" a parent cried. "This is enough!"
They tried to stitch a defense. "We can explain," Reid said, his voice shaking now. "It’s a misunderstanding. I would never—"
"Denial," Laney whispered into my ear, quietly pleased.
Then the second phase: shock.
"Did you see that?" someone shouted. "The receipts were signed. He took the fundraiser money."
Reid’s eyes blinked, as if he could make the truth go back into his skull if he just blinked hard enough. Kimora covered her mouth with her hand. Baylor stomped, red-faced, a man who had expected applause and instead got a mirror.
They were not villains in a movie. They were children of pride, messy and human. They reacted howwired animals might: first frozen, then running through the stages of denial and terror.
"It’s fake!" Kimora yelled. "You can’t do this to me!"
"Don't touch me!" Reid begged as a cluster of students surged forward, phones raised like flares.
Baylor shoved back at a boy who filmed him. The crowd gasped. Somebody laughed; others shouted for calm. A parent started clapping slowly—the sound like a match struck. More claps answered, then boos and then silence, waiting for the collapse.
Reid fell apart three minutes later. He looked like a marionette with its strings cut. He didn't have words then, only shaking and the kind of apology that is no longer theatrical because it comes from a place of real fear.
"Please," he whispered. "Please, I didn't mean—"
No one handed him help. I felt a sliver of guilt. "Stop," I told myself. "You wanted them brought low."
He knelt in front of the hall. That kneeling was the change all the internet posts had demanded. He slapped the floor with both hands like a boy who had been denied the future. The auditorium roared. Phones went wild—the video went viral in minutes. People were taking pictures, recording his plea.
"Please! Please, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—" Reid’s voice was wet. His suit knees bent and folded as he sank lower and lower until he was on the floor, hands clasped like a supplicant.
Kimora's denial turned into bargaining. "Let me explain!" she cried, scrambling for explanation as if words could rebuild her house. "I—it's not what it seems! I never—"
The crowd shifted again. A woman snapped a photo. A teenager pointed like a judge. Someone else recorded the pair with a steady hand and a cold, professional voice: "This is what happens when you steal from a house built on trust."
Kimora's face crumpled. "I am sorry," she said, and the sorry was immediate, deep, raw. She went from outrage to shock to pleading in five seconds. Her mask dropped.
"Please," she begged at last, tears streaking her makeup—makeup that had been perfect an hour ago. "Please don't make me a monster. I'll do anything."
There were murmurs then—some scoffing, some sympathy. People were filming and not turning off their cameras. Phones were gossamer planes carrying the moment to a world ready to judge.
Baylor tried to maintain a macho face but then tried to bargain with a parent for silence, lifted collar like armor and failed. "We can fix this," he said. "I can pay—"
"No," the headmaster cut in. "We will follow the law. Sideline means aside. You will return the funds."
And then, the collapse. We had forced them into a corner where their only move was to be human. Reid tugged at his tie and ripped it off, suddenly desperate. He slid on his knees down the aisle, hands reaching for the stage like a man pleading with the tide to turn back.
"Please," he choked. "Everyone, please. I'm sorry. I can't... don't make my parents—"
Cameras recorded. People wept. A girl clapped slowly because moral balance is not always pretty. A man recorded with a blank face and called it journalism. A parent in the back started a chant, "Justice! Justice!"
"Beg," Laney breathed, satisfied and cold.
They begged. They sobbed. They tried to explain and failed. People had different reactions: some rushed to comfort the victims; others scrolled and shared as if it were a story that needed telling. Phones flashed like little suns. Somebody shouted, "Record everything!" and everyone obeyed.
"Why are you doing this?" Reid gasped suddenly at me, looking up. "Why are you doing this to me?"
"Because you stole," I said. "Because you didn't care whose lunch fund you ate."
He whimpered and tried to claw back whatever dignity he had left. "Please—please—"
"Get him out," the headmaster ordered quietly. "We will turn over the evidence to the authorities and the school board."
Hands came and took them. Phones continued to click. The crowd stayed to overview the aftermath, to talk, to gawk. Some shouted, "Shame!" Others muttered about how high school drama had become a courtroom. A few people applauded.
I walked off the stage with Laney by my ear, and she hummed like an approving bell.
"They hit all the marks," she said. "They went from arrogant to broken, from denial to begging. They behaved exactly as your contract required."
"But they're kids," I said badly. "This is devastating."
"They made devastation for people," Laney said gently and exactly. "You made them feel what it is to be exposed."
I had to sleep that night with a sense like acid in my throat and a small relief like a bandaged wound. Hudson held my hand on the couch and didn’t speak much. Gemma called me later and said, simply, "They will not mess with anyone for a long while."
"Will that ever be enough?" I asked Hudson at dawn while coffee cooled between us.
"It was enough," he said slowly. "For some. For me, you saved more than a reputation. You kept me from folding myself into a smaller thing."
Laney buzzed happily. "Mission progress: two-thirds."
"Two-thirds," I echoed. We both knew the last task's weight would not be a stunt. It would be the hardest thing.
Days until exams ticked down with the small, merciless patience of those clock hands you can’t will faster. Hudson worked hard; I watched him do what he needed. He wrote code at night and fed stray cats. He smiled at the bookstore clerk and helped a neighbor change a tire. He didn’t flare up into melodrama. He was steadier than anyone had predicted.
We traveled to quiet places: a university library with rain-streaked windows, a museum with modern art that felt like confessions in paint. We ate food that was bland and good. Once, Hudson laughed and the world felt briefly like an easy thing to be in.
"Do you still think about it?" I asked him—about the past life where he had not gone to exams and had let a darkness move under him.
"Sometimes," he said. "But you were there. You told me to be better than sorrow. I think I can do that."
He did. He took his exam. He passed. The world crowned him with numbers and lists. The press liked the story about the kid who built a game and then finished high school. Investors murmured about startups, and headlines called him a prodigy. People tweeted. Laney sent a string of satisfied beeps.
It would have been enough.
But the contract said something more: the man’s final end had been a suicide in the other life. We had to ensure he never went there. It was more than checking boxes. It was a promise to two ghosts: the original Evelynn who wanted justice, and Hudson’s future self I had been warned about.
We looked harder for signs.
Laney poked into message timelines and found the days when he had thought about leaving—emails from offers that asked him to skip study and fly to meetings, investment deals with contracts that used the word "exclusive" and "permanent." One company wanted five years, which was a lot for someone who still believed in exams. That company had tried to buy him out when his game prototype went viral.
"That was the fork," Laney said. "He almost sold the future of himself for a quick launch."
"Why would someone who can code be so tempted?" I asked.
"Because people tell you the shortcut is success. Because you’re young; everyone’s shouting directions. Because when it’s presented as an ultimatum, it looks like a hand reaching out."
Hudson placed his head on my shoulder. "I almost took it," he said. "But when you told me to sit the exam, that moment—"
"I wasn’t sure I meant it," I admitted. "I was trying to be selfish."
"You weren’t selfish," he said. "You were needed."
Months throbbed forward. We grew and pulled at the threads of our small lives. The world had stung the arrogant and rewarded steady work. The bad guys had gotten their public lesson; their humiliation became a cautionary tale carved into the school’s memory. Reid and Kimora’s fall did not solve everything; we had not become some moral police. But people had learned to look, to question.
"Would the original Evelynn have been satisfied?" Gemma asked me once, staring at the river in the park.
"I don’t know," I said.
"You did it differently," Gemma said, and she sounded like a judge who had seen reformation and not revenge. "You kept someone from dying. You made them pay. You helped him live."
In late spring, after exams and after quiet triumphs, before the world had a chance to forget the hall or the kneeling, I found myself back at the alley where we first met. The air smelled like rain and lemon; Hudson’s scarf smelled like coffee. I slipped my foot into my pearl Maria shoe and thought of how ridiculous and perfect it felt to still wear one of the original Evelynn’s possessions.
"Did you ever think you would do this?" I asked Hudson.
"No," he said. "But you said you would guard me. And you did."
Laney hummed around us like a tiny firefly. "宿主," she teased in her odd mix of sincerity and mocking—an old habit we’d formed—"we did good."
"Don't call me that," I replied fondly.
He kissed my forehead, like a benediction.
"And when they look back," I said, thinking of the community hall and the kneeling—the scene that had gone viral and burned into memory—I wanted the last thing to be ours, not a headline.
Hudson smiled. "They will remember the pearl shoes."
I laughed. "They will remember the orb."
Laney flickered, pleased. "And the physics cheat sheet you never used," she added.
We walked away from the alley holding hands. My shoes clicked on the pavement; it was a small metronome that marked the life I had patched and chosen. The world around us kept being messy and human and difficult. But on that day, the quiz of living seemed kinder. For once, the publicity I had wielded had not only humiliated; it had protected.
We left the alley behind. Behind us, the town hummed with lives that would continue to be complicated, unfair, miraculous. Behind us, the hall’s videos would travel and stutter and teach. Behind us, three people had been broken and had to rebuild.
Laney whispered, just loud enough for me, "Two lives saved. One more to go."
"We'll do it," I said, and I meant every word.
I slipped my hand into Hudson’s again. My pearl Maria shoe clicked once, twice. The sound was small—like a tiny answer—but I knew it was right. The little orb hummed faster. Justice had been noisy and public, ugly and necessary. I had learned to wear it.
It would not be easy to be good, but we were getting better at it—hot and clumsy and stubbornly alive.
The End
— Thank you for reading —