Chapter 5: Suspended

LATER THAT NIGHT

At 7:42 p.m., a PowerPoint titled

“PleaseLetMeNapFinal.pptx” appeared in the shared folder.

Neatly organized. Color-coded. The preview icon showed custom pastel slides with animated transitions.

Uploaded by: L.Moreno

At 9:03 p.m., that same file quietly disappeared from the folder.

No trace. No backup.

Jade leaned back in her chair, legs kicked onto her bed, grinning like a cat in a canary shop.

“Oops.”

Serene, on FaceTime, applied lip gloss without looking in the mirror.

“Hmm. Must’ve been a system error.”

Jade held up her mug.

“To corrupted files.”

Serene clinked her screen with her water bottle.

“And to public embarrassment.”

They sat back, savoring their petty triumph.

Now all that was left… was to wait for the fallout.

The next day

ECONOMICS CLASSROOM

PRESENTATION DAY

Whispers filled the room.

“She didn’t re-upload the file.”

“Serene said she ghosted their group chat.”

“She’s toast.”

At the front, Professor Langley adjusted his glasses.

“Miss Moreno? You’re next.”

All heads turned.

Lyra rose from the back row in slow motion, wrapped in an oversized ivory cardigan that looked like it belonged to a luxury cloud.

Fuzzy slippers.

Hair is still slightly damp.

A thermos in one hand, USB in the other.

She walked past Serene and Jade, who were already celebrating internally.

Lyra plugged in the USB.

Click.

A pastel presentation filled the screen, minimal and elegant, titled.

"The Fiscal Cycle of Capitalism, and Why I Deserve a Nap"

Gasps.

Professor Langley blinked.

“You… brought a backup?”

Lyra’s voice was soft but clear.

“Three. One here. One in my cat’s collar. One in a password protected G****e Drive buried under two layers of decoy files titled ‘Tax Notes’ and ‘Absolutely Not A Presentation.’”

The class snickered.

She clicked to the next slide of animated transitions, tasteful graphs, color palettes in gentle lilac and mint.

Jade turned pale.

Serene gritted her teeth.

Lyra concluded five minutes later, bowed slightly, and turned to leave.

But not before passing by their table and whispering.

“You should’ve emptied the recycle bin. It still has your ID logged in.”

Then she dropped a single pink macaron on Jade’s desk and walked off like a princess exiting a duel.

PROFESSOR LANGLEY’S OFFICE – After Class

The room was quiet.

Too quiet.

Jade and Serene sat rigidly across from Professor Langley’s desk, trying very hard not to make eye contact with the large printed document resting between them.

Langley steepled his fingers, expression unreadable. He tapped one finger on the edge of the paper.

“This,” he said evenly,

“is a full system activity log from the shared student drive.”

Neither girl blinked.

He flipped the paper around for them to see. Highlighted in yellow

a line of digital evidence.

USER: J.Lamont

ACTION: Deleted file

‘PleaseLetMeNapFinal.pptx’

TIME: 21:03

“This log,”

Langley continued, voiced cool as granite,

“shows that the deletion occurred from your login, Miss Lamont.

Would you care to explain?”

Jade’s mouth opened and closed like a startled goldfish.

“I...I don’t know how that happened,” she blurted.

“That must’ve been...like...a tech issue or something?”

Serene jumped in too quickly.

“Maybe it was a glitch. Those folders crash all the time, right?”

Langley leaned back in his chair. He didn’t look amused.

“Miss Moreno also submitted the presentation to my inbox, privately. Time-stamped. Locked. With version control metadata.”

He paused.

“That suggests she expected sabotage.”

Serene’s jaw twitched.

Jade swallowed hard.

Langley folded his hands together.

“I’ll be filing an academic misconduct report. You’re both on immediate academic warning. Your parents will be notified, and a formal investigation into the violation of university tech policies will begin next week.”

Serene’s face is drained of color.

“You’re calling our parents?”

“This isn’t high school,”

Langley said sharply.

“It’s a formal inquiry. Tampering with another student’s work is taken very seriously.”

Serene slumped in her chair like a marionette with cut strings.

Jade looked faint.

Langley was mid-sentence about policy violations when...

Knock-knock.

The office door creaked open.

Enter Lyra Moreno

Casually leaning on the doorframe, sipping from a lavender thermos that read

"World’s Sleepiest CEO."

Her hood was up, and she looked mildly confused as if she wasn’t entirely sure which building she’d wandered into.

“Oh,” she said softly.

“Is this a bad time?”

Langley sighed but gestured her in.

“Just wrapping up. Thank you again, Miss Moreno, for your foresight.”

Lyra strolled in like she had all the time in the world. She nodded once, like she barely remembered why she was there.

Forgot to mention I sent you a backup,” she said, blinking slowly.

“Version locked, emailed, hard-copy printout, and a cloud sync. Just in case.”

Langley nodded.

“Very responsible.”

“Yeah,”

Lyra yawned into her thermos lid.

“Felt like a sabotage week.”

She turned her head lazily toward Serene and Jade, still pale and silent in their seats.

Then, in that same soft, syrupy tone.

“Don’t worry,” she said.

“I only reported one of you.”

Jade’s eyes widened.

Serena stiffened.

Lyra smiled slowly, dreamy, mildly terrifying.

“I like keeping the other one guessing.”

She backed out of the office with the same casual grace she entered.

“Okay, bye. Gonna nap now.”

Door closes.

Langley looked between Serene and Jade, stone faced.

“I’ll let you two decide which one of you she meant..

After a while

ADMINISTRATION LOBBY

The polished floors reflected the tension in the air.

Jade sat on the bench outside the Dean’s office, fingers twisted in the hem of her designer sweater. She was pale, chewing on a nail she usually paid to have professionally polished.

Serene stood by the window, arms crossed, sunglasses on indoors, like she was trying to stage a photoshoot in a crisis.

“Well?” Jade whispered.

“What do we do?”

Serene didn’t flinch.

“We fix it.”

“How?!

Our parents are being called in. There’s going to be a formal report. Langley knows it was me.”

“He doesn’t know it was me.”

Serene flipped her hair, still calm.

“And we don’t know who Lyra actually reported.”

“That’s worse!”

Jade hissed.

“She’s literally playing psychological chess!”

Just then...

DING.

Serene’s phone lit up with a text.

MOM: Arriving.

Dean’s assistant says you’re in trouble? I’m bringing your father.

DAD: Can’t believe I left a board meeting for this.

Serene muttered something under her breath and started typing furiously.

“She’s so dead,” she said darkly.

“She wants a war? Fine.”

Jade looked up, horrified.

“We’re already in a war! And she’s winning with thermoses and naps!”

Just then, Lyra passed the hallway behind them.

Hood up.

Headphones in.

A sleep mask is pushed up like a headband. She didn’t even glance their way.

She waved absently at the front desk and murmured,

“Please tell Dean Fairchild I declined the parent meeting. I’m emancipated.”

The receptionist nodded like this was totally normal.

Jade stared.

“She… what?”

“She legally removed her parents from the narrative,”

Serene said through clenched teeth.

“She’s a Bond villain,”

Jade whispered.

“A sleepy, polite Bond villain.”

Lyra actually heard them and looked at Jade and Serene but eventually Walk passed the hallway..

LATER

The office was all mahogany and silent. A large clock ticked like a gavel behind the desk.

Dean Fairchild, sharp-eyed and stone-faced, sat behind an intimidating oak desk. Neat folders were stacked in front of her evidence.

Labeled.

Color coded.

With one very sarcastic subject line highlighted in red ink.

“Just In Case Y’all Try Me – L. Moreno”

The door opened.

Serene’s parents swept in first, power-walking in tailored suits and judgmental stares, Bluetooth still in her father’s ear, mother’s designer bag pristine and gleaming.

Jade’s mother followed shortly after disheveled, cheeks flushed, clutching Jade’s transcript like a religious artifact. Her heels clicked unevenly on the polished floor.

Serene and Jade trailed behind, stiff and silent.

Dean Fairchild didn’t rise.

She slid the evidence folder toward them.

“Let me be very clear,” she said coldly.

“This is not a high school drama. This is academic sabotage. If Miss Moreno hadn’t submitted a time-stamped version directly to Professor Langley, she would have failed the assignment.”

Serene’s mother scoffed, placing a manicured hand on the desk.

“Surely there’s another explanation. These girls have impeccable records.”

Dean Fairchild’s eyes didn’t waver.

“We are not accusing both of them. Only one of them had the deletion traced back to her login.”

All heads turned to Jade.

Her mouth fell open. She blinked rapidly, tears welling.

“I....I didn’t mean to.....”

Her mother gasped, betrayal flashing across her face.

“You what, Jade? You touched another girl’s academic work?”

“It was just a file....”

“It was sabotage,” the Dean snapped.

“And an official violation of the university’s academic integrity code.”

Serene’s father turned to her at last, voice low and biting.

“Did you do it?”

Serene met his gaze without blinking.

“No.”

The Dean’s brow arched.

Serene smoothed her blazer and leaned forward, voice ice calm.

“Maybe the real issue isn’t the file. Maybe it’s Lyra Moreno.”

“Excuse me?” the Dean asked flatly.

“She’s… secretive. Disruptive to group dynamics. Always has a backup plan, always suspiciously well-prepared. Doesn’t that seem strange? Isn’t it possible we’re looking at the wrong people here? That she set this up?”

Dean Fairchild stared at her.

Dead silent.

“You’re suggesting,” she said slowly, “that a student protected her own work too thoroughly, and therefore… must be guilty?”

“I’m saying,”

Serene replied smoothly,

“maybe we’re not the villains here.”

Jade’s head snapped toward her.

“You’re crazy,” she mouthed.

Serena kicked her under the table.

Dean Fairchild stood.

“Here is what’s going to happen,” she said firmly, ignoring the parental scoffs.

“Miss Lamont will be placed on a one-week academic suspension and receive a formal warning in her file.

Miss Moreno will be informed of the outcome and offered a re-evaluation bonus on her presentation.”

Jade gasped. Her mother blanched.

“This will ruin her scholarship.”

“Actions have consequences,” Dean Fairchild said.

She turned to Serene, the gaze narrowing.

“And Miss Moreno? You will also be suspended for one week. Not for deletion but for attempting to manipulate this meeting into a conspiracy theory. That’s conduct unbecoming of a student at this institution.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

Serene’s mother snapped.

“You’re punishing her for being intelligent?”

“I’m punishing her for being manipulative,” the Dean said, not missing a beat.

Serene’s father stood slowly, removing his Bluetooth.

“You have one warning,” he said in a low, lethal voice to Serene.

“Disgrace this family name again, and I’ll pull you from this school so fast your shoes won’t hit the floor.”

Serene stiffened, jaw clenching.

Her mother tried to interject.

“It’s that Lyra girl. I’ve seen girls like that....cold, calculating...”

Dean Fairchild cut her off.

“Ms. Moreno has maintained perfect grades, no disciplinary history, and somehow still kept her cool despite being bullied and sabotaged.”

“She’s not the one on trial here.”

Jade’s mother stood, furious now...at everyone.

“So she gets away with everything because she’s quiet? Because she’s strange?”

Dean Fairchild handed her the folder.

“No, Mrs. Lamont. She gets away with it because she’s right.”

The room fell into silence.

And from her seat, Serene slowly folded her arms. Her eyes glinted ....not in defeat, but in calculation.

Because this wasn’t over.

Not for her.