Face-Slapping12 min read
The Name That Would Not Be Stolen
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I remember the day at the kindergarten gate as if it were a photograph taken with a hand that trembled.
"Daddy only has one little treasure, Elyse. Don't cry, okay?" Daxton Delgado held Yulia Campbell close, his voice soft in a way I had never heard directed at me.
I stood in the shadow of a stroller, my small hands curled into fists. I said nothing. I watched him wipe the child's tears with a tenderness I had only ever been shown in the past, before the fire.
"Say hello to your sister," he told me that day, and the word sister tasted like a stranger.
"Hello," I murmured.
Yulia looked me over once—thin, darker than me, a hard, calculating look in her eyes—and then she pushed past.
"Don't pretend," she said under her breath. "Everything I wanted is mine."
Years later, the memory of that cold laughter kept me awake at night.
My mother—Madeline Fleming—had bought the house near the school because she wanted me to have opportunities she could never deny me. She wanted me to grow up and go where she never could. She taught me how to love storybooks, the smell of lemon soap, to sing when the kettle boiled.
She is the reason I knew my own name, Elyse Duncan, like a promise.
When she died in that fire, something else died with her in my home—the place where I was the little girl who could run into both his arms and hers. The house filled with strangers who smiled in daylight and flipped a switch at night.
"She's your sister now," the school counselor told me with a smile that did not reach her eyes. "Share."
"Share?" Yulia's eyes flashed when she spoke. "You are the mean one. You and your mother fit perfectly the villain in a story."
It was the first time someone called me a villain and made it sound like an accusation against the only person who had loved me.
They changed my life in six months. They changed the names on the papers that mattered. They changed the face that the world saw when it called "Lin Jia—" no, when it called my new name.
"From now on, you'll be Yulia's name," Daxton said once, with a small, dangerous smile. "This is for the family. For the future."
He showed me the documents as if they were a gift. They were not gifts. They were theft in blue ink.
I learned to be small after that. I learned to make my feelings invisible because showing them earned me being sent outside and locked until I stopped crying.
"You are impossible," he said the night he drew his hand across my mouth in rage. "Don't make me regret being patient."
The bruise on my cheek felt like proof that paper and ink could be backed by fists.
At the volunteer school in the countryside there was a man who kept us warm.
"Graham," I whispered when I saw him again, years later, in a coffee shop where I had arranged to pay for lessons. "Graham Stewart?"
He smiled, the same quiet smile he had given when he used to sit on a mat and read us stories. "Elyse. You came back."
"Why did you leave?" I asked him.
"You left me with one of the best presents a teacher can get," he said. "A student who will not give up."
"I want to win," I told him.
He agreed to teach me. He didn't know how much I would build my life on the hours between sunrise and the empty library.
"You can do it," he told me, more confidant in my effort than I was.
At night I ran laps until the soles of my shoes wore thin. I ate bread and made lists of formulas and dates, of every little unfairness I had been given. I saved coins until I could afford a tutor, until I could pay a man who had once been a provincial top scorer to teach me tricks I had never learned.
"You really think you can beat her?" Yulia sneered when she saw me studying under the lamp while she laughed at a banquet someone else had paid for.
"Do you?" I would ask back, quietly.
She had everything she needed: clothes, tutors, a family cheering her on, a house that smelled of success.
I had the slow, honest grind of nights without heat and the steady presence of a teacher who believed in me.
"Don't be ridiculous," she told guests one evening, as if my presence was a comic aside. "She studies. Cute. But not as cute as my scores."
"Let the tests speak," Graham said to me once, because he was my lighthouse and I followed his light.
On the day the exam results were posted, they chose a large hotel ballroom to celebrate Yulia's expected first place.
"Of course she will be first," Daxton boasted in front of the cameras. "We have every reason to be proud."
They ordered flowers, hired a performance, bought a stage and seats, and invited every neighbor, relative, and reporter they could charm.
I sat in the corner with my coat folded around me. I held the envelope that contained the proof I had been collecting for years, the copies of altered documents, the photos, the evidence that the names had been switched.
"Why are you here?" Yulia spat, pretending she did not fear what the future could do.
"To watch," I answered simply.
The big screen lit up and the host reached for the laptop that would reveal the province's top scorer.
"Congratulations to Yulia Campbell!" someone started to cheer—because the name on the printed program was hers.
The screen blinked. The webpage refreshed. A hush fell.
"What is happening?" someone whispered.
The page loaded again and the name that glowed at the top was mine.
"Elyse Duncan — Province First Place."
For a moment the room filled with an awkward silence so thick that the chandelier seemed to stop swinging.
"Impossible," Danielle Gauthier cried out. "That's a mistake."
"Check again," Daxton ordered, his jaw tightening.
They had rehearsed this celebration for weeks. They had planned the toasts, the cameras, the speeches. None of them had rehearsed for the possibility that the truth might refuse to be bought.
"What's your name?" a reporter demanded, shoving a microphone forward.
"I am Elyse Duncan," I said. "I earned this."
There, in the center of their fake happiness, I opened the folder and held up the documents that had been my armor for years: the official records, the transcripts, the proof that the names on the registration had been swapped, dated and stamped and signed.
"Those belong to me," I said, raising my voice so that every camera could hear. "These are my scores. My documents. My mother's house was meant to keep my name safe. Someone stole my identity."
"She lies!" Daxton barked, like a beast ripped from a cage. "She is making this up. You are trying to ruin my family."
"Show the proof," a reporter challenged. "Let the audience decide."
I had planned this moment in quiet for years. I had not expected the room to tilt and spin the way it did when the cameras focused on the printed record.
"These transcripts," I said, "were bought and altered. They swapped the names—my name with Yulia's. They took my life and gave it to her. They stole my mother's work and erased my history."
"You're lying," Yulia screamed. "You can't prove—"
"I can." I handed a small flash drive to a tech volunteer I trusted, and the hotel screen filled with the voice recording of our father arranging the swap, the messages from a clerk who had been bribed, the scanned images showing the tampered forms with timestamps that could not be falsified.
The chatter in the room turned into a rising hum, and then into a roar.
"This is fraud," a reporter said, eyes wide.
Daxton's face had drained of color. For the first time the cage around his composure cracked. He started to stutter, to point, to accuse in circles, but the cameras only pounced on every fragment.
"Why did you let her live as an ordinary child?" a television host asked, breath sharp. "Why did you move her records?"
His mouth opened and closed like a stunned animal.
"She is a liar," he repeated, each syllable flung like a thrown stone in an attempt to distract from the evidence.
People in suits began whispering, their smartphones already capturing everything. I saw hands reach for their phones and felt a wave of power flow through me.
"You did this," Graham said quietly beside me, calm and steady. "You know this is what she always wanted—"
"Don't bring him into this!" Daxton snapped.
"Everyone saw you ripping apart her clothes!" a woman shouted from the crowd. "I remember the little girl with the teddy bear."
"Why didn't anyone speak up?" another voice asked, and the question hung like a mirror in front of every face.
Now the cameras followed every word. Journalists leaned in. Guests who had once laughed at my lack of shine now stood with their mouths open.
"How could you?" someone cried. "How could you change the girl's name, her identity like a coat you don't like anymore?"
"Is this legal?" another asked, eyes on the police liaison on site who was as surprised as the rest.
"This is a criminal matter," the reporter said into the live mic, and the words landed like a gavel.
"Daxton Delgado, Ms. Gauthier—" the news anchor read aloud the transcript that had been posted online in minutes, "—these records are under investigation. Evidence shows tampering and identity theft."
Daxton lunged forward. "No—this is slander! They're lying!"
He pushed through a line of stunned guests toward me, but his path was stopped by a cluster of cameras and pressing reporters.
"She made this up to ruin us!" he shouted, voice breaking. "She is a liar! She is ungrateful!"
"You beat her!" someone cried. "You beat her until she couldn't wake up!"
The room's breath condensed into pity and horror.
Yulia's face, once a mask of arrogance, began to crumble in stages. First she looked confused, then terrified, then furious.
"No, no, it's not true," she sobbed. "I am your daughter—my name is—"
"Silence." Daxton slapped a hand over her mouth.
A reporter snapped a photograph at that moment. The flash captured the hand, the panic, the already-trending hashtag.
On social media the clip from the ballroom spread like wildfire. Millions watched—the evidence, the confession, the blush of shame. Headlines did not take time to craft themselves; they assembled in seconds.
"Identity theft exposed at celebratory banquet," one headline read. "Province exam topper unmasked as abused child."
The humiliation of being found out pressed against the walls of that ornate ballroom.
"And now?" a young reporter pressed, daring him. "What will you do, Mr. Delgado? How will you answer these charges to the education bureau? To the public?"
He had no answer. He had only the small, animal defense of denial.
They tried to leave, ushered by the hotel's security, but the hotel doors that night were no barrier to the storm outside. Phones recorded them as they were escorted into cabs, the cameras continuing their work. The footage continued to multiply online.
I watched as the people who had applauded them now whispered, photographed, scolded. Friends who had been present turned away.
It was a public unmasking; it was not a sentence, but it was the first blow. It was the exact reversal of the private cruelties that had been inflicted upon me for years.
When the police came—because the broadcast had been shared with authorities within minutes—they did not come quietly. Investigators arrived, notebooks open. The education bureau sent officials. Lawyers called. The banquet that had been a coronation became a crime scene.
They took statements that night in the back rooms of the hotel. People who had once laughed at us signed affidavits and told the truth under oath.
Later, in the months that followed, the stories ran and re-ran. The online community that had seen the evidence did not forget. The story became a case, and the case became a movement.
The public punishment was only beginning.
At the hospital, where I had secretly followed the trail of documents and recordings, Daxton finally crumbled. He ran—literally—until his breath failed him. When he was found, his shoulders went loose like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He had no house of cards to prop him up.
They arrested him publicly on a mountain road where he had hidden for a day as if distance could erase action. A live feed captured the moment: a man dragged from a cave by police dogs, eyes wide with disbelief as officers put handcuffs on him.
The footage of him was not like any courtroom drama. It was raw, immediate, the public seeing the man who had torn a child's life asunder trying to flee like someone caught in his own lie.
"He is being charged with falsifying official documents, bribery, and assault," the reporter announced to millions who watched.
People who had once been at the banquet now watched the man split from their social circles. Posts that had praised them turned sour. Sponsors withdrew. Friends distanced themselves.
Yulia, who had been the proud centerpiece of so many selfies and hashtags, now lay in a hospital bed with bandages and silence. She had been pushed into a wall in a blind, violent moment; the fracture to her skull and the hope the doctors had once given her now stood in the balance.
In the glare of public outrage, Danielle Gauthier's calculations could not save her. She had cajoled, permitted, and stood by the theft. She sobbed in courtrooms and in news interviews, but the public had already judged.
The punishment took many faces: the relentless news coverage that displayed the evidence, the parents who confronted Yulia's past victims in public panels, the loss of reputation that translated into a loss of the social currency the family had hoarded for years.
People filmed them as they came to trial, not with glee but with a hard, necessary witnessing. "We will not let this happen again," one survivor said into the camera, holding hands with other victims.
The exposure was merciless, and the way they fell from grace was not just because of arrests or headlines. It was the small, ongoing humiliation of being recognized and called out by people who had once ignored us on the street. People whispered in markets. They turned their backs on invitations. Their social circles dissolved into threads that could not support them.
Yulia died from complications after her brain injury. The news of it hit like an unexpected storm. Some said it was poetic justice; others said it was tragedy; I felt neither triumph nor happiness. Her death was a heavy silence that swallowed the last of the noise.
Daxton went to court. He faced the accusations and the videos and the witnesses. The trial was public, televised, dissected in every detail. He tried to reconstruct himself in front of a judge: a father who had been misguided, a man who had panicked. The words rang hollow.
"Your honor," he began in one courtroom scene that was watched by millions. "I did what I thought was best for my family."
"Forcing a child's identity to be stolen?" the prosecutor asked, voice level. "For beating her? For failing to stop the abuse when it was happening?"
The courtroom murmured each time a new piece of evidence was played: the voice recordings, photos of the shredded dresses, testimony from neighbors who had seen the beatings, my own testimony that had been recorded.
He tried to look defiant. His face changed in stages: first the practiced anger, then shock as more details emerged, then denial, then pleading, then the slow collapse of someone whose story no longer fit.
"Please," he begged at the sentencing hearing. "I was—"
"—greedy," I said from the witness stand, voice steady. "You thought the world could be bought. My mother could not be bought. My name could not be bought."
There are punishments that do not happen in a single place. They happen in the slow evaporation of respect, in the pages of documents that show a life of small compromises collapsing into criminal acts. They happen in the faces of people who realize they had been wrong.
The exposure was the punishment, and it had a hundred visible parts: a live banquet unmasked, a man arrested on a mountain side, town gossip became national conversation, the family's parties turned into court appearances, the girl's past victims stepping forward in crowded interviews to name what had been done to them.
And there was the final, small thing: a little teddy bear I had kept from childhood, sitting on my shelf like a calm witness. When suspicions were raised, people pulled at memory—the way my mother had smoothed that bear's ears. Photographs of me as a child with that bear circulated with captions like "She survived, and she fought back."
They were punished in public. They were punished by the slow dismantling of the life they had tried to buy. The cameras were witnesses. So were the strangers whose lives were better for the truth being told.
After the verdicts and the sentences, after the change of names back to mine, after the education bureau corrected the records and the world gave me my name back in its official way, there was a hollow time where the days were quiet.
"You did well," Graham told me once as we stood outside the school I had finally been allowed to attend under my true name.
"You didn't do this for me," I said.
"I did what any teacher would," he said. "I taught you to be brave."
There were other things I chose in the years that followed. I refused lucrative jobs. I decided to go where my voice would be needed, not where money would buy me silence.
"You're going to the mountain school?" he asked, incredulous.
"Yes," I said. "There are children who need someone to believe in them. Someone needs to show them their name belongs to them."
He reached out and squeezed my hand. "Then go."
Years later, when parents would bring in children who looked at me with hesitation and fear, I would say their names aloud the way my mother had taught me, and watch the corners of their mouths lift.
"What's your name?" I would ask each child.
They would tell me.
"Say it proud," I would say.
At night, I would think of the hotel chandelier and the flash of cameras, and of the small paper proofs that had been hidden in a folder for years. I would think of the long road of small, stubborn days that had led me there.
"You did it," Graham would say sometimes.
"I did," I would answer.
And when the small hands of a child touched the teddy bear I had kept, I would tell him the story, not to relish revenge but to explain that names are not just labels. Names are memory and promise.
The world had tried to steal mine and, in the process, hung its crimes where everyone could see. I kept my eyes open and my voice steady, and the rest followed.
The End
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