Revenge11 min read
I Built a Phony "Senior" — Then Let Her Fall
ButterPicks12 views
I wake up with the taste of iron in my mouth and a memory like a broken film reel: a crash, a jail cell, a cheap leather bag thrown at my face, a delivery of a bright university letter that wasn't mine. I close my eyes and count heartbeats. The room around me is the same as it was the first time I woke into this life: sunlight crosshatching through thin curtains, a poster on the wall with a math formula someone once circled, the old wooden desk where I learned to copy answers and keep secrets.
"Imogen." My cousin's ankle bangs the doorframe and she says my name like a bell striking. "Hurry up. You're making us late."
"Late for what?" I drawl, testing the weight of my voice in this second chance.
"School. Exams. You know. Don't act dumb." Bristol Cash pushes the door wider and steps in, heels clicking. She smells like perfume and polished confidence. "And don't forget, you promised."
"Yes," I say. "I'll—I'll do what I can."
She smirks and shoves a folded piece of paper into my palms. "This is the open-book cheat-sheet I hid last time. Don't mess it up. If you mess it up, you make me look bad in front of my friends. My dad's buying a dinner tonight if I score top. Don't waste it."
I fold my hands around the paper. I feel the old ache, that hollow place where my life was taken. I remember the courtroom day I never attended because she fled and I took the fall. I remember the smell of the machine shop where I worked after release, the last machine's cold teeth, the way my last life ended without mercy.
This time, the air tastes like possibility.
"Do you feel okay?" she asks, watching me as if she could measure the lines of my face for lies.
"Fine," I say.
"Good. Be helpful. You're staying after to finish my homework, right?"
"Right."
Her heels click out. The door closes. Silence folds around me like a paper blanket.
I sit. I read the paper she gave me. It is a thin list of answers—the same carelessness she always showed when someone else did the thinking. I could hand them back to her. I could hand her the life she stole. But revenge needs more than returning a blow. Revenge needs a plan, patience, and the right stage.
Two nights later, sitting in my small bed with my phone in my lap, I create an account named "Beida Senior" and I begin to sell the only thing I have: knowledge of the future. "Senior" is not real; the identity is a mask. The questions to come have been tattooed into my memory by the life I lived before. I photograph practice tests, type them, rearrange answers, and wrap them in an authority I never had and will never admit to having.
"Who is she?" Bristol messages, her thumbs frantic. "Is she really from Beida?"
"Yes," I text as 'Beida Senior'. "I have close friends who help with selection. Limited copies. First come, first served."
She doesn't haggle. She pays. She brags. I watch her puff up with each correct answer I feed her on paper. She climbs the ranks—a little higher, a little higher—until the praise in her house becomes a background hum I can use.
"You're amazing, Imogen," she says once, after a test, eyes glittering. "You never know how smart you are. You should try for Beida too."
"Maybe someday," I say, and lie.
I am careful at first. A correct answer here, a wrong one there to keep her from becoming unassailable. I make sure that when teachers ask her to explain methods in class, she falters. "Sorry," she says, clutching her stomach, claiming a headache. "Maybe later."
But everyone loves a winner. Her name becomes high on lists. My hands ache at night from typing and from weighing each lie.
"You're so lucky to live here," my aunt, Ana Schulz, says at dinner, clasping my arm with practiced affection. "Tomas—" she glances to her husband, my uncle, Tomas Cummings, "—we were right to bring you. Family helps family."
I let her think I'm grateful. I don't tell them I'm steadying a glass over a cliff.
As months pass, the pattern repeats. Bristol climbs; her confidence invests itself in new shoes, dinners, and an attitude that treads on people's boundaries. She spares no one—especially not me. She presses herself into the center of conversations and plays my presence like an ornament to her success.
"Don't forget," she says more than once, "you're my little helper. You owe a lot to me."
I nod, because playing small keeps my mask safe. I laugh when she laughs and let her wear the crown I've forged.
The day the award board at school announces a scholarship ceremony, I already have a blueprint. It will be their stage, the auditorium packed with parents, teachers, and cameras—an audience hungry for narratives of triumph. I will use that hunger against her. I'd thought about the factory machine's iron teeth a thousand times, but I never wanted blood. I wanted exposure. I wanted her to feel, at the height of her shine, the floor give way.
On the morning of the ceremony, I walk into the auditorium carrying a slim binder. My palms are steady. I sit in the third row, halfway left—the perfect spot to be seen by the camera. Bristol flashes me a smug smile from the front row, flanked by Tomas and Ana, who beam like peacocks.
"Dress nice," she whispers in passing, as if she had given me a gift.
"I will," I reply, and mean it.
They call the first award. The stage lights are too bright, and a hush tunes the room. One by one, teachers announce names. Tears appear in some parents' eyes. Bravos punctuate applause.
When the principal announces "Special recognition for academic integrity initiatives," the hall leans forward.
"Today," the principal says, "we also expose practices that betray our trust."
A murmur ripples. I feel Bristol posture straighten. She knows her performance is safe, I suppose. She has done the hard part: the part that earns applause. She sits like royalty waiting for the encore.
"At our school," the principal continues, "we value honesty. Recently, we found coordinated cheating patterns across multiple exams. Thanks to a parent and a student's courage, we traced transactions and communications related to academic fraud."
A hand taps my shoulder. Dagger Hawkins—the classmate who once goaded Bristol into a silly bet about who would be 'reigning queen' of grades—nods at me in a quick, encouraging way. He is not my 'male lead' in any romantic sense; he is a beacon of truth in this scene. He has been in my corner in small ways: a bored chuckle in homeroom, a scribbled message of support across a desk. He is steady.
"Would the student willing to come forward please stand?" the principal asks.
I stand. The auditorium exhales as one. Bristol's eyes go sharp. Tomas shifts in his seat. Ana's grip tightens. I walk up the aisle with the binder like a weapon folded in paper.
"Imogen Martin," the principal says. "We are grateful."
I step onto the stage. I feel light as if the past life sank out of me. I stand under the lights the way she used to—without permission, without apology.
"Show them," Bristol whispers, from the edge of the stage, as if any detail could be hidden now.
I open the binder. The first page is a screenshot: a transfer receipt with a date and a name—Bristol's account and a virtual bank I created. The second page is the message thread, with Bristol typing: "Please send the test. I need perfect scores" and the 'Beida Senior' reply I wrote a hundred nights ago. The third page is a photocopy of an exam paper with identical wrong answers reproduced in Bristol's handwriting and in the test sheet I had sent out—tiny matching erasure marks, the same smudge on the lower left.
"This is evidence," I say, my voice clear. "It shows purchase, communication, and the identical answers that allowed Bristol Cash to pass off others' work as her own."
Gasps like wind through dry grass.
Bristol's hand flies to her throat. "You can't—" she says.
"You didn't have permission," I reply. "You didn't have talent or time. You had money and a market. You built a fake idol out of my efforts. For that, you bought your way to praise."
A teacher stands. "We've also found multiple students whose answer patterns mirror the supplied sheets. Many were coached to act sick to avoid explaining methods in class. When asked to explain, the student would 'feel ill' or 'have a headache'."
Bristol's face stiffens. Her mask of composure locks in place for a heartbeat, then slips.
"No, no—this is fake," she says to the room. "This is—it's a lie."
A whisper starts: "Is she denying it?" "Why would Imogen do this?" "But she—" voices fragment.
Tomas stands abruptly, startled anger making him taller. "This is slander," he says loudly. "Who is to say these aren't forged—"
"Sir," I say, looking directly at him, "you called the shots of a family used to getting what they want. You called an early dinner for praise. You never asked whether she earned it. Does that make you complicit? Those receipts are from your daughter’s card."
Silence. The room tightens like a fist.
Bristol's denial curdles into panic. She stands up, a small animal exposed. "I paid for extra materials! So what? Everyone uses tutors. This is normal. You can't humiliate me in front of my parents."
"There's a difference between tutors and buying test answers," the principal replies. "We have timestamped messages and matching paper evidence. This isn't just 'help.' This is organized fraud."
A student near the back pulls out a phone. "I'm recording," she says. "You should know this is going online."
"Don't!" Bristol cries. She runs a hand over her face, smearing mascara. "Imogen, why? Why would you do this now?"
"Because," I say softly, "you stole my life once."
"That's not true." Her voice claws at the word.
"It is," I answer. "You always did the taking and the smiling. You left blood on my hands by choice when I was tied to fate. I took back my chance so I could build the stage to show what you built on."
Her eyes flick to the parents in the room. They have started to look away. One father clutches his daughter and shakes his head. A mother whispers, "How could she—" like a prayer turned accusation.
Bristol's face undergoes a shape change. She blanches from the center outwards, like paint pulled off a wet wall. Her jaw trembles. "Please. This isn't—" Her voice fails. She tries to reach for me onstage, but a teacher places a hand on her shoulder, steadying her as if she were dangerous.
"You're under investigation," the principal says. "School board will handle the rest."
"Investigation?" Bristol wails. "You can't do this to me. I worked hard! I deserve—"
"You bought the work," I say. "You didn't earn what you took."
Her strength leaves her in stages. First, indignation. She paces, waving her hands like someone trying to swat invisible flies. Then, disbelief. She whispers, "This can't be happening," repeating the words like a charm against reality. Next, defiance—she shouts a denial so loud the crowd flinches. Then she crumples, a small body shaking in a school uniform that suddenly looks too cheap for her claims.
"Don't look!" she screams at anyone who dares take a photo. It only makes the crowd lean in harder. A student laughs once, sharp. Someone else starts a slow, dangerous clap—two beats, then three; the sound spreads and multiplies. Phones come up. Someone says, "She always pushed people away. Karma."
"You will not be able to explain away the bank transfers or the chat logs," Dagger calls from his seat at the back. He sounds like a judge. "How many bought from you? How many were coached to pretend a headache?"
Her face collapses into pleading. "Please, please—I'll return the money. I'll apologize. I won't go to college. Please don't—"
"Apologies don't fix stolen futures," the principal says. "There are parents here who feel betrayed. Students who trusted you now can't. We'll involve the authorities if needed."
I watch Bristol beg, and the room watches too. The smear of makeup on her face looks sudden and small. A man near the balcony whispers, "Shame suits her." Another mother weeps for her child, who was betrayed into hubris.
The punishment is public and slow. It goes from her social standing to her support system. Word spreads faster than a rumor. Social media churns. Clips of her collapsing in the auditorium travel like wind. Classmates whisper at lunch: "She bought answers." A couple of students who had listened to her insults now turn away. Teachers who once excused her behavior pivot to protect those she had stepped on.
Bristol stands in the center of a vortex she made for herself.
Her change is not immediate. She tries legal threats—"slander"—but the evidence is too clean. She bargains with administrators—"I'll speak to the press"—and they refuse. She tries to spin a narrative that it was everyone else who did wrong, but the camera footage, the bank timestamps, and the identical hand-smudge patterns on test sheets tell a single story.
We watch her face in stages: smugness, then a flash of hunger when the applause came; shock when the binder's first page is exposed; denial and rage, then bargaining, and finally a collapse into something like grief. People who once admired her look away. Tomas grits his teeth in the lobby, his public pride cracking. Ana's eyes go red; she looks like someone whose carefully painted life has disintegrated into dust.
When the ceremony ends, families stream out in hushed groups. Bristol's father stands in the doorway as if unsure whether to follow. He stays behind for a long time, watching his daughter sit with her head in her hands. The reporters ask for comments, and finally he mutters, "We will handle this at home."
At the ending of it all, the thing I wanted most isn't violence or revenge. It is the sound of truth landing. It is the small relief that my name was on the letter this time—the acceptance letter that proved I had a future not just a past. I send a picture of it to Bristol that night: a smile, a page, my name in black ink on the bright card.
"Bristol," I type, and press send, "Beida Bluebird might not be for you, but there's a place for everyone who earns it."
She doesn't reply.
In the weeks that follow, the punishments fracture into other shapes. Teachers refuse to call on her; scholarship panels strike her from consideration. The board insists she attend restorative justice meetings and community service—tasks that place her in front of the same people she mocked. Many of her classmates record the sessions; they watch her serve, and she cannot warm herself with applause. Parents who once bellowed praise at dinner instead shake their heads.
At the supermarket a woman says, "Aren't you Bristol Cash? I heard—" and keeps walking. Her phone blinks with messages: invitations shrink into fewer and fewer, engagement withers. Once hidden by high scores and trophies, she now moves through a crowd that parts in discomfort. When she tries to attend a small gathering with the same girls who once praised her, they turn their chairs toward the wall. One of them says aloud in the group, "How can we trust someone who buys everything?"
Her pleas grow quieter. "I made a mistake," she tells the mirror, and it sounds less like a confession than a small, helpless apology. It is not enough, because some mistakes steal what cannot be returned.
Months later, I write a letter—anonymously—to a magazine about pressure and false idols. They publish a piece that doesn't name names but describes a trend: some students buy success. The story hits a nerve. Parents ask schools to be stricter. The school board tightens review policies. Bristol's name becomes a cautionary tale.
Sometimes I see her in the grocery aisle. She moves like someone who has had a fever and is recovering; there is caution in her eyes and no swagger. She looks at me once, briefly, then away. I do not gloat. I do not point. I only let my quiet future grow. I got my letter. I call my mother. I book a ticket home. I sit with Tomas and Ana one last time, but I do not ask for favors. I only let the truth sit in the light.
On the last night before I leave, Bristol knocks on my door. Her face is hollowed in a way no makeup can fix.
"Why'd you do that?" she asks in a small voice.
"Because I finally chose my life over your fear," I say.
Her eyes search mine for something that hasn't been there, and maybe they find a sliver of the girl who once copied answers for fear. "I'm sorry," she says.
"Sorry isn't always the end," I answer. "But it's a start."
She bows her head. "You got Beida."
I nod. "I got a place I earned."
She sniffles, and I hear a small, real sound—maybe remorse, maybe regret.
"Good," she says. "I hope you make something with it."
"I will," I say. "And I hope you learn to make your own."
When I close the door, the hallway is quieter than before. Outside, the city is awake with students walking to futures that are uncharted. Mine is bright with the letter I held. I tuck the binder into my bag for a moment—not to use, but to remember the way paper can reveal truth. Then I go to sleep with room in my chest for more than revenge. I fold my plans into a map of real life: classes, friends who study, a dorm window that opens on possibility.
"Goodbye," I whisper to the house that taught me to be small. "Hello," I whisper to the road that waits.
The End
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