Revenge12 min read
She Took My Birkin, But Couldn't Steal My Life
ButterPicks11 views
I will start with the moment I realized I was already in the story everyone was whispering about.
"It was on the forums," Eden said, voice low. "Someone posted a video of you. In the dorm. Changing."
I closed my eyes and let the word hit me like cold water.
"Who posted it?" I asked.
Eden looked at me, eyes that had watched me through a hundred lazy nights, and said, "They're saying Kennedi did. They say she filmed it."
"Kennedi?" I repeated. "Kennedi Johansen?"
"Yes."
"Why would she—" My voice broke.
"Because she's Kennedi," Eden said simply. "She always wanted more. She hated that you had a Birkin and acted like it came easy."
I thought of the photo I had posted months before — the Birkin my mother had insisted on giving me for my twentieth birthday, the one I photographed with a shrug and posted because my mom wanted the world to see. I thought of Kennedi's tiny, greedy smile when she first saw it. I thought of the cheap plastic bag that arrived with her "new" Hermes that turned out to be one of those eight-hundred-yuan fakes bought online.
"She used to comment," Eden said. "You remember. Messy little jokes. Then the post: 'Look! My boyfriend bought me Hermes. So lucky!' with your bag as the picture."
I pictured that post now: the same photo I had taken, cropped and repurposed, hung on Kennedi's account like a trophy. I told myself to be calm. I told myself the internet would forget. But that evening, after Eden left, I called Heath.
"Where are you?" I asked as soon as he answered.
"Outside your building. I heard," he said. "Are you okay?"
"No," I said. "But I'm fine."
He arrived fast. I knew his car smell and the way he rolled his shoulders when he was tense. He was steady. He was always steady. He sat on my bed, looking at me with a face that was all hands and warmth.
"Don't worry," he said. "Give me your phone. I'll handle it."
He put a hand on my temple like he was checking fever. "We delete what we can. We collect what we have. We call lawyers if we need to. And you do not talk to anyone until I say."
"Okay."
We pulled the thread and found a knot. Kennedi had filmed me with a pinhole camera she hid across the room. She bought it after she was humiliated that night in the French restaurant when she misread a menu and tried to order the restaurant's name. She drank expensive wine, demanded that we pay her back, and then later chewed everyone out when we couldn't. The last time I saw her bright laugh it was over a bottle she called 1945 and didn't know that 1945 meant price.
"Why would she go so far?" I asked Heath the night after he came to my room and sat cross-legged on my floor.
"Because some people think other people's lives are props," he said. "Because she needed something to hurt you with after she was exposed. Because she is messy."
"Messy."
"Yeah." He rubbed my shoulder. "And messy people make messy choices."
A week before, Kennedi had been mad because I told her that her boyfriend wasn't that generous. She bristled when I said Heath's LOEWE cooling mat cost three thousand six hundred, the exact mark, and when I said he was rich and willing to spend on things that made me comfortable. She barked, "Your boyfriend is so stingy!" and when I shot back she flinched.
"You're so smug, Jayden," she had said once. "You think money fixes everything."
"Money doesn't fix everything," I answered then. "But it can buy a decent mattress."
She had laughed like a knife. Later she posted the photo of my Birkin and wrote her lie: "My boyfriend bought me Hermes, so in love!" The post stayed up for only minutes before she deleted it, but the damage was starting. Then she bought a fake Birkin. Then she showed it off. Then she threw herself at every version of status she could find.
"She scopes people," Eden told me. "She uses people."
A few nights later, I found out more.
"She has access to campus systems," Kaylin said, eyes wet and voice trembling when she finally told me the whole truth. "She told me she knew a teacher. He could make things go her way with applications. She said she could help me get a scholarship. She said if I helped her I would be safe."
"You helped her?" I asked.
Kaylin looked down, the shame deeper than the story. "She said she was friends with Nicolas Meyer. She showed me text messages. She said she could make sure I got the award, that she had connections. I was stupid. I wanted the money. My family—"
"You let her put your things in Jayden's suitcase?" I said softly, thinking of the night the dorm aunt found the perfumes and the packed items that matched Kennedi's complaint. "You framed me?"
"I didn't want to, Jayden," Kaylin sobbed. "She said she'd take care of it. She said if I didn't, she'd tell the teacher I was lying about my family. She said she'd ruin me. She said she would make sure I never got scholarship aid."
"Why didn't you tell me?" I said, but the answer was already there. Kaylin trembled and said, "I was afraid."
We all make bad calculations under fear.
The school investigation was a fulcrum. Heath used his contacts, and Helga Lang, my aunt and the university principal, moved faster than I knew possible. "We will be fair," she told me, hands like iron, when she sat across from me in her office. "But we will not allow exploitation."
"Thank you," I said. "For coming."
"I'm your aunt," she replied. "And I'm a principal. Neither role lets me stand aside when someone hurts my family."
We had the evidence: the camera, shipping receipts for the cheap device, chat logs where Kennedi boasted of the "perfect plan" to embarrass me, and messages to Kaylin promising influence. Nicolas was implicated by a stack of emails: he had been playing favorites. The investigators found bank records that suggested gifts and payments. The story was not small in their eyes.
The day of public reckoning was set in the auditorium — the library room that doubled as a hall for student meetings. I stood alone backstage, feeling like all the places in my life had been cataloged. The lights beyond the curtains were already full. The student body filled the seats. I could see faces I knew: professors, the dorm aunt, students who had gossiped, friends who had stayed silent, and the cameras that some students always brought.
"Are you nervous?" Heath whispered behind me.
"A little," I answered. "Are you?"
He took my hand briefly, squeezed, let go. "I'm here."
Someone on stage cleared a throat. The dean began with a practiced face. "This is an investigation outcome hearing. Everyone will have a chance to speak. We aim for truth."
The first person they called was Kaylin.
She walked to the stage like someone stepping on ice. Her palms were pale. The lights made her look smaller.
"Kaylin," the dean said. "You have something to report?"
She swallowed. "I... I was coerced by Kennedi Johansen. She offered me help with scholarship applications in exchange for—" Her voice broke, and she looked at me. "In exchange for helping her place certain items in Jayden's suitcase to frame her."
I felt the room tilt. Whispers. A student laughed once, a harsh sound cut off by a dozen stares.
"Why?" someone in the crowd shouted. "Why would you help?"
Kaylin's voice came out thin and honest. "Because she promised she could make sure I got the money my family needs. She threatened my scholarship otherwise."
"And the teacher?" the dean asked, looking at Nicolas.
Nicolas Meyer, who had been sitting in the front row with his arms folded, rose slowly. His face had the kind of calm that looked practiced.
"Nicolas, your emails show a pattern," the dean said. "You provided preferential recommendations."
"I—" Nicolas started. His voice was flat. "I only..."
"Only what?" the dean said, and for the first time Nicolas looked off his script.
"Only tried to help a student," he said. "I didn't do anything illegal."
"Helped by changing forms and passing names to a student who then used them to manipulate scholarship decisions?" the dean pressed.
Nicolas shifted, as if his chair could hold him together. The room started to close in.
"Someone filmed Jayden without consent," the dean continued. "That person has admitted placing a camera in her room. The footage was distributed. That person is Kennedi Johansen. Kennedi, stand."
Kennedi Johansen, who had been sitting in a cluster of girls near the right aisle, looked up like a person interrupted mid-sip. She stood as if the floor had given way.
"I didn't mean—" she began, voice defiant, not shy.
"You installed a camera," the dean said, reading from the official report. "You bought the device, you hid it in the dorm, you returned and removed the memory. You then passed the material to an external party who posted it online. You conspired with others to discredit a fellow student."
"That's a lie!" Kennedi shot back. "You can't—"
"Kennedi," the dean said quietly, "we have bank receipts, messages to Gavan Marchetti's account, and your own confessions. We have Kaylin's testimony and records of your communications with Nicolas Meyer. You passed threats to Kaylin to coerce her participation. We have witnesses who say you bragged about 'getting even.'"
There was a loud murmur. Cameras tilted like sunflowers. The dean continued. "You are hereby expelled from the university, effective immediately. Nicolas Meyer is suspended pending further action and referral to a professional ethics board. Any legal violations will be followed up by law enforcement."
The crowd reacted.
"You're lying!" Kennedi shouted. "You don't have the right! I—" Her voice faltered and then sharpened into a new tactic. "This is all because I'm loud! She's the one who's been showing off. You're just defending your rich cousin."
Several heads turned to look at me. A few students leaned forward, eager to see how I would fail.
Heath stepped in front of me without asking me. "Shut up," he said. The word landed like a brick. People turned to see him standing, his jaw tight.
Kennedi's face went from angry to startled to a thin mask of control. "He's defending you because he's rich," she said. "You paid him off. Everyone can see."
A student spat at the stage. "Liar."
"I didn't pay anyone," Heath said coldly. "I loved her. I won't let you lie about that."
The crowd divided: some shouted that she should be punished, some jeered, some clapped slowly. The audience noise rose and fell in waves.
Kennedi's expression changed. At first, she was angered, eyes hot and proud. Then she realized the room had turned its face away from her. She took a step back. Her voice dropped. "You can't—"
"Can't what?" the dean asked.
"Can't do this without proof!" she cried, trying to rally. "All of you—"
"Proof?" someone in the back whispered. "You left receipts at home when you packed. Your messages to Gavan are dated. Kaylin gave us your bank transfers."
Kennedi's breath became quick. She barked, "Kaylin, you promised you'd cover me! You promised you'd—"
Kaylin's face had hardened. "I was scared. I was ashamed," she said. "I thought you'd help me. You said you'd get me the scholarship. I believed you."
"Where is the camera?" the dean asked.
"It was in the bedpost," Kaylin said. "She placed it across from Jayden's bed and said she'd wait until she had something to use. She took it out after recording."
Kennedi's hands went to her face. Her fingers trembled. The crowd watched the metamorphosis like it was a televised surgery: arrogant to incredulous to denial to crumbling.
"You are expelled," the dean said. "Security will escort you off campus."
Kennedi snapped, "You can't do this to me. My parents will—" She tried to gather a phone call like armor.
"Call all you want," the dean said. "This is university business. We have a right to protect our students."
The crowd's reaction was a mixture of satisfaction and shock. People who had once sympathized with Kennedi now used phones to film her exit. Some whispered, "Karma," others said, "That could've been any of us." A few, crueler, laughed.
Kennedi crumbled under the weight of it. She tried to protest to the security guards, then to the dean, then to anyone who would listen. Her voice went higher, then thinner. "You're ruining my life!" she sobbed. "You can't do this! I'll—"
She called names. She accused. For ten minutes she cycled through measures: denial, counter-accusation, scorn, finally, begging.
"Please," she said, eyes raw, to the small circle that followed her out. "Please. I'm sorry. Please, I'll do anything."
People around her recorded every step on their phones. Some students, who had once envied her, now spat words: "Traitor," "Fake," "Loser." A few older students clapped slowly. "Good," one woman muttered. "She needed to learn there are consequences."
When Kennedi stumbled out through the side doors, people followed at a distance, not to see her leave but to taste the finality of justice. She was no longer the glossy thumbnail in someone else's highlight reel. She was a person whose choices had been measured and found wanting, then displayed.
Later, when the auditorium had emptied and the dean had closed the session, Nicolas Meyer sat alone in the front row. His shoulders were hunched. He didn't stand to argue. He took the dean's silence like a verdict.
"He won't teach for now," the dean said to me quietly as I left. "There will be hearings. We will protect students and process everything through the right channels."
"That's fair," I said. "But I don't want revenge. I want it to stop."
"It will stop," Heath said, and he meant it.
Outside, the campus felt like a place that had been washed. People carried their ordinary lives back into the gray afternoon. But the internet is a tidal thing. Later, rumors would ebb and flow.
What the auditorium scene gave me, besides the public truth, was something I hadn't expected: a recognition from the students who had seen me only as a rumor. Some came up, hesitant, muttering apologies. "I shouldn't have liked her post," one said. "I didn't know." Another handed me a note: "Sorry for believing the rumor."
Heath was there through all of it. "You did the right thing," he kept saying. "You were brave."
"Was I brave?" I asked once, because the night I sat with the deleted posts still saved, the one I had to keep, I had felt only exposed.
"You were," he insisted. "You kept your dignity when they tried to strip it. That is brave."
The legal police took statements from Kennedi. The man who had first uploaded the video to the group chat, the rich boy Gavan Marchetti, was summoned. Gavan had been drinking and showing off in a web of arrogance when he decided to post. He apologized through his lawyer later, but the damage was already recorded.
The punishment wasn't only official. There was social collapse. Kennedi's parents came and were mortified. They tried to salvage what they could, to beg and bargain. The other girls who used to cluster around Kennedi drifted away when they realized she could not keep them safe. She sat alone in a small apartment, her phone ringless. She called me repeatedly at first, then the calls turned into texts pleading forgiveness, then threats, then silence. The day she tried to show up at a party and was refused entry, she saw the truth: popularity is only good as long as people choose to prop you up.
As for Nicolas, his formerly steady smile was fractured. Students passed him in the corridor and averted their eyes. He went through a review that humiliated a man used to cloaks of influence. The ethics board stripped him of privileges and recommended retraining. He stood in staff meetings like a man who had been found out. His colleagues looked at him like they might look at a broken instrument.
"Don't be soft," Heath told me one evening when we walked along the river near campus a week after the disclosure. "Let it bleed where it needs to. But don't make your life about vengeance."
"I won't," I said. "I just want to keep living."
"You will," he said. "We will."
The web posts that had tried to humiliate me were erased one by one as law and goodwill moved in. The video that had been the worst thing I could imagine was traced back, and Gavan faced consequences too. He stood before a panel with his smug grin and was told, "You participated in a crime." The law may have scolded with fines and obligations; the university had expelled one and suspended another. Social consequences, however, were the harshest. They watched the videos of themselves before they knew better and felt the weight of public shame. Some cried. Some shrugged. Most learned something in the bruising silence.
But I learned too.
"People will try to use anything as a weapon," Helga said once, over tea in my aunt's sunlit office. "You counter with truth and with people who will stand for you."
"And don't forget," Heath added, "stay off campus forums for a while."
We laughed, a small, brittle sound, and then something softer.
Weeks later, life returned to its quiet pattern. I still had the LOEWE mat on my bed; it smelled faintly of new fabric and of Heath. The Birkin — my mother's Birkin — lived in my closet and I took it out sometimes to stare at the careful stitches. I kept the receipt in a drawer. It was a small proof of the life I had, not because it was expensive but because it was given.
"Do you ever worry you'll be attacked again?" Eden asked me one night as we sat in the hall peeling sunflower seeds.
"Sometimes," I admitted. "But I also learned who will stand with me."
"You mean Heath," she said. "And your aunt."
"And Kaylin," I added. "She was brave in the end."
"And you," Heath said when I told him later. "You stood up. People see that."
I had one last worry: that the world would never stop being petty. But Heath looked at me and said, "We'll keep our life small and true. We'll protect each other."
"Okay," I said, and smiled.
Months later, when the campus had another scandal, everyone pretended to forget the old one. People moved on. Kennedi's name appeared occasionally as a cautionary tale. Nicolas's career tiptoed forward under new supervision. Kaylin found a quiet job in the city and wrote me long letters that were awkward and grateful. Eden graduated with a scholarship. My relationship with Heath grew ordinary and singular: movie nights, loud arguments about nothing, a hand on my back as we navigated a bizarre world.
One evening, after we had laughed at some terrible comedy and shared fries, Heath asked, "Are you going to wear that little dress we never saw you in?"
"No," I said. "It feels strange."
He smiled. "Then wear it when you want to. Not for anyone else."
"Promise?" I teased.
He put his hand on mine. "I promise. But I'll protect you whether you wear the dress or not."
I leaned my head on his shoulder that night and thought of the auditorium, of the lights and the crowd and the moment truth was said aloud. I thought of the LOEWE cooling mat and my mother's absurd Birkin. I thought of how small things could become big weapons in the hands of people who wanted to hurt.
"I should be embarrassed that the whole school saw me in my underwear," I said softly.
Heath kissed my forehead. "You were seen. You were brave. The rest is gossip."
I smiled. "Fine. Then let's live."
And we did: awkwardly, stubbornly, and together, like two people sharing one stupid cooling mat and a thousand small, uncomplicated days.
The End
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