Chapter 4

The lecture hall was packed, standing room only.

The moment I walked in, the chatter dropped to a hush. Dozens of eyes swung toward me. I walked straight to an empty seat in the front row and sat down, pulling out my notebook.

The bell had just rung when the doors were shoved open. Rhonda stormed in with three relatives in tow. Trailing behind them, shoulders hunched and eyes darting anywhere but at me, was Sean.

"Giselle, get out here!" Rhonda's shrill voice rang through the hall.

The professor at the front frowned and set down his chalk hard. "Ma'am, we're in the middle of a class. Please leave."

Rhonda ignored him completely, charged up to the podium, and dropped to her knees. The room erupted.

"Everyone, judge for yourselves! I busted my back raising this girl, gave her six hundred dollars a month, and she still says it's not enough!" She shrieked, working herself up.

"She's out there taking loan-shark money and selling herself! I'm dragging her home today if it kills me. I won't let her humiliate herself any further!"

The relatives jumped in, egging her on. "Giselle, your mother's hair went gray for you, how can you be so ungrateful? Just drop out and go home with your mom. Stop ruining this school's reputation!"

Accusations came from every direction.

"Whoa, so it's actually true? That's disgusting."

"How does someone like that get to study medicine? It's a disgrace."

"Just drop out already, look how pitiful her mother looks, crying like that."

Sean hung back behind the crowd, the corner of his mouth curling with satisfaction.

I looked at Rhonda kneeling on the floor, closed my notebook, and stood up. I walked to the podium and stared her down. "Are you done with the performance?"

Rhonda's head snapped up, malice flashing in her eyes. "You ungrateful brat, get over here and come with me right now!"

I walked to the computer at the podium, pulled out the professor's flash drive, and plugged in my own.

"Since everyone's here," I said, "and since you clearly want the whole school to know exactly what kind of person I am."

I hit the keys hard, and the screen lit up on the projector. "Then let's take a look at exactly how I spent that six hundred dollars."

The screen flickered, and a table appeared, sharp and clear. The Family Attendance Chart. Several lines in bold red text glared out.

Send a voice greeting by six a.m., miss it and lose five dollars. Reply to messages within ten seconds, late and lose ten dollars. Answer video calls within three seconds, miss one and lose twenty dollars. Any balance left at month's end must be returned in full, or next month's allowance gets cut in half.

The room went dead silent. Every eye locked onto the absurd chart.

I clicked the presenter remote. The next slide was a dense wall of transfer and refund records.

"On the first day of the semester, she posted a screenshot of a wire transfer in the family group chat, building her image as the perfect mother. In reality, I had five minutes to decline the money, or I'd get chewed out."

A voice-to-text message from Rhonda popped up on screen.

[Decline it, now! You're actually going to keep it? All the family money is your brother's. Transferring it to you is just for show, so the relatives see it!]

A wave of gasps swept through the crowd. I clicked forward again.

"For the last two weeks, I couldn't carry my phone during lab work, so I missed her check-ins."

My allowance balance, docked into the negative, appeared on screen. Right behind it, a medical record stamped with the campus infirmary's official seal.

"I was starved for three days straight. Severe stomach ulcer, compounded by low blood sugar, and I collapsed on the side of the road. And while I was hooked up to an IV, what was my darling brother doing?"

The last slide was the text Sean had sent me to gloat, along with the spending records I'd dug up on that six hundred dollars: luxury hotel rooms, expensive bar tabs, and a stream of virtual gifts thrown at a livestreamer.

"This is the mother whose hair supposedly went gray for me. This is the good mother who gives me six hundred dollars a month."

I looked out over the shocked crowd, my voice level. "She didn't come here today to take me home. Her precious son racked up five thousand dollars in loan-shark debt from gambling. She wants to force me to drop out and work so I can pay it off for him."

The classmates who'd been sneering at me moments ago were now looking at Rhonda with an entirely different expression.

Rhonda's face went white. She scrambled up, humiliation curdling into rage, and pointed at me. "Bullshit! You made all of this up! I'm your mother. So what if I asked you to help pay it back?"

Sean had lost it too. "You bitch, what proof do you have that I gamble? Just your word?"

I looked at the two of them and calmly clicked forward again. "Fine. Since neither of you will admit it, take a look at the last one."

I glanced at Sean, the corner of my mouth curling into a cold smile. The screen flashed, and a page loaded, covered in stark red markings.

Sean stared at the screen, his face draining to ash.