After Rebirth My Class Beauty Led Cheating and I Stayed Silent Chapter 01

After Rebirth My Class Beauty Led Cheating and I Stayed Silent Chapter 01

Three days before the SAT, Sienna Hale slipped a skin-toned micro earpiece barely larger than a grain of rice out of the inner pocket of her school blazer.

“Starting tomorrow, we use this,” she said.

“There’s a professional team outside solving the questions in real time. The answers get fed straight into your ear.”

“The gear’s custom-built. It won’t show up on a metal detector, and it runs on a military-grade frequency, so signal blockers won’t touch it.”

All thirty-seven students in the room crowded in, their pupils reflecting the earpiece, wide and unfocused with excitement.

In my last life, I stood up.

I told them a device like that would never make it past the new millimeter-wave screening at the SAT testing center.

I told them the “military frequency” was a lie, that any abnormal signal would be flagged by a radio surveillance van in under three seconds.

I told them that if they got caught, it wouldn’t be a mere disciplinary write-up.

It would be criminal prosecution, coordinated exam fraud, carrying up to seven years.

No one believed me.

Grant Mercer was the first to kick back his chair. “You just can’t stand seeing Sienna win.”

I reported the plan to Mr. Hollis, our senior class advisor.

Sienna got hit with a major disciplinary infraction, lost her arts scholarship recommendation on the spot, and scored a miserable 820 on her third mock exam.

Three days later, Grant texted me and said he wanted to make peace in person.

The second I pushed open the rooftop door, twelve people were waiting by the metal railing.

“Sienna’s life matters, but yours doesn’t?”

A fist crashed into the back of my head. My knee slammed into concrete.

As I tumbled down the fifth step, I heard Grant laughing above me.

“That’s what you get for running your mouth.”

The crack in my spine was sharp and clean, like a piece of chalk snapping in half.

Then I opened my eyes.

The fluorescent lights were blindingly white, and Sienna was standing at the front of the classroom again, smiling as she held up that same skin-colored earpiece.

The three arguments that had rushed to my throat, I swallowed back down. stroke by stroke.

*******

The fluorescent lights flickered over the desks while thirty-seven pairs of eyes stayed locked on the tiny thing balanced on Sienna’s fingertip.

I could see Brielle Dawson’s throat bob as she swallowed. Her lips moved soundlessly, already calculating how many points this could buy her.

In the back row, the boys shoved each other their faces flushed, with the feverish excitement of gamblers staring at a winning hand.

The room smelled like June heat, sweat, and chalk dust.

[I’ve seen this before.]

My spine was intact. My fingers moved. My toes flexed. There was no gaping wound at the back of my head, bleeding out until the moment I died.

I gripped the underside of my desk so hard my nails bit into the wood, and the pain that shot through my fingertips felt real. Human. Alive.

Sienna’s voice came out sweet and polished, like a hyper-sweetened radio broadcast.

“There’s one set per person, forty-three total. Thirty-seven for our class, and three each for the top kids in Rooms Three and Five next door. I’ll front the money for now, and after the test we split the cost. Eight hundred dollars each.”

She lifted her chin and smiled. “Eight hundred bucks for a college acceptance letter. Worth it or not?”

“Worth it!” Brielle shot to her feet first, slapping her desk.

Agreement rippled from the front of the room to the back in a loud burst of scraping chairs and overlapping voices.

Grant turned around to look at me.

He sat two rows ahead and off to the side, shoulders broad, the swirl of his hair familiar from more than a decade of knowing him.

In my last life, I thought that silhouette meant youth and pride. In this life, I knew it was the last thing I saw before he shoved me to my death.

“Tessa, what do you think?” he asked with a smile.

At this exact moment in my last life, I stood up.

I gave them three pieces of earnest advice. I thought I was stopping a disaster.

What I got in return was a five-story fall.

I raised my eyes , letting my gaze slide over Grant’s face before settling calmly on Sienna.

“Sounds good.”

Two words.

My voice stayed even. My breathing stayed steady. No hesitation. No objection. Not one word more.

The room went still for half a second.

Sienna narrowed her eyes just slightly.

She had probably expected me to object to her.

She had probably prepared her rebuttal, prepared to sic Grant on me, prepared for the whole class to laugh me out of the room.

But I gave her nothing.

Then that half-second passed, and she smiled.

The corners of her mouth liftedwith the relaxed ease of a victor realizing the battlefield was entirely empty.

“If even Tessa Rowan thinks it’s fine, then it’s settled.”

[Then it’s settled.]

I let go of the desk.

Tiny splinters were lodged beneath my nails, and four crescent marks burned red across my palm.

No one saw.

When the final bell rang, Brielle squeezed into the seat beside me and nudged my arm with her elbow.

“I seriously didn’t think you’d go along with it. Last month you were still talking about the academic honor code.”

“That was last month.”

I zipped up my backpack and stood.

As I passed Sienna’s desk, she was bent over a notebook, sketching out a seating chart.

From the corner of my eye, I caught the notations she’d written beside each name: testing room numbers, seat assignments, device frequencies.

In my last life, that page ended up on Mr. Hollis’s desk as proof to discipline her.

In this one, it would end up sealed inside an evidence bag.

I didn’t stop. I walked out of the classroom and into the orange light at the end of the hall.

The sunset stretched every shadow long and thin.

At the turn in the stairwell, I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes.

My heartbeat thundered inside my ears.

It wasn’t fear.

It was something colder than that, as if all warmth had been hollowed out, leaving nothing but ice flowing through my veins.

[In my last life, I stopped her. She got disciplined, lost her scholarship track, and scored an 820. Then they beat me to death.]

[In this life, I didn’t stop her.]

[I knew exactly how far this would go.]

[But it wasn’t my problem anymore.]

Someone called my name from down the hall. Grant.

His footsteps echoed over the bare concrete.

I didn’t turn around. I kept walking down the stairs.

“Tessa, wait!”

He caught up with me in the lobby on the first floor, a light sheen of sweat on his forehead from running.

He took a breath, then flashed that bright, easy smile of his.

“Why didn’t you oppose it today? I thought for sure you’d cause a scene.”

I looked at him.

That face was just as young as it had been when he sent me straight into hell.

“Why would I object?” I said. “Sienna planned everything perfectly. What was I supposed to say?”

He blinked, then his smile widened. He reached out and ruffled my hair.

“That’s more like it. Sienna’s actually a really good person. You should hang out with her more. Stop keeping to yourself all the time.”

The moment his fingers brushed the back of my head, a streak of cold revulsion shot up my spine like live voltage, from my tailbone all the way to my skull.

I took half a step back.

“Yeah,” I said. “I should go.”

I turned and walked away, my pace calm and measured, never breaking into a hurry.

By the time I stepped through the school gates, the late-June wind was pushing waves of heat against my face.

I lifted a hand and wiped at the dampness near my temple, unsure if it was sweat or something else.

For one second, the back of my hand came away wet from the corner of my eye.

But only for that second.

From today on, I would not shed one more tear for any of them.