Chapter 3

The room went still.

Lily stood in the doorway, cheeks red, but she kept going.

"I'm not making this up. My little brother was born deaf. I've been signing my whole life. What she just signed was 'I didn't do it.'"

Ms. Harris narrowed her eyes. "You're sure? This isn't something to joke about."

Lily raised her head.

"I know what I saw. I wasn't guessing. And Clara's never spoken a single word at this school. Everyone knows that."

The office fell silent. My parents' expressions shifted.

Eleanor looked at me.

Her lips parted.

Something close to guilt flickered across her face.

Then Chloe sniffled.

"Sis, even if you don't want to admit what you did, you shouldn't be paying someone to act it out with you. To pretend you're mute."

Whatever guilt had been in Eleanor's face sealed shut.

Richard's head whipped toward me, eyes burning.

"Clara, congratulations. To avoid the consequences, you'd actually stoop to faking a disability? Dragging another student into your act? You're rotten to the core."

My hands shook as I reached into my pocket and pulled out the disability certification I'd kept folded for years.

I tried to show them.

The second my fingers touched the paper, Richard snatched it away.

He didn't even look.

He tore it in half with both hands.

The paper became pieces in an instant.

I stared at him. The tears broke.

"Keep acting. Go on, keep it up." Richard's voice was pure contempt. "You know what? You need a lesson. Since you love pretending so much,I’ll send you to a boot camp for troubled teens. Let's see how long the mute thing lasts when the people there get their hands on you."

Eleanor pulled Chloe tighter, looking at me with open disdain.

"Clara, we were truly wrong about you. We never imagined you'd sink this low just to dodge responsibility. You've disappointed us beyond words."

Chloe leaned into Eleanor's arms.

The corner of her mouth curved up for a split second, but her sobs never stopped.

"Dad, Mom, please don't be like this. Maybe she just had a moment of bad judgment..."

"A moment of bad judgment?"

Richard laughed coldly.

"This is who she is. She'll never change. Keeping someone like this in the family only drags us down. I'm calling Carl right now. He runs the reform program. He can come pick her up himself."

Ms. Harris stood off to the side, her face shifting.

She looked at me, then at my parents, and sighed.

She waved Lily toward the door.

"You should go back to class. We'll handle this."

Lily opened her mouth, but Ms. Harris's look stopped her.

She gave me one long look, full of sympathy and helplessness.

Then she turned and left.

I stood there staring at the torn paper on the floor.

And suddenly, I laughed.

The innocence I'd fought with everything I had to prove was nothing but a ridiculous performance to them.

In this family, I'd never meant anything at all.

I slowly crouched down and began picking up the scraps, one by one.

The edges cut into my fingertips. I didn't feel them.

Nothing could compete with what was happening inside my chest.