After Rebirth My Class Beauty Led Cheating and I Stayed Silent Chapter 11

After Rebirth My Class Beauty Led Cheating and I Stayed Silent Chapter 11

June 15th.

One week after the incident.

The class group chat no longer existed.

Someone must have left first and triggered a chain reaction, because one person after another followed until finally the group was gone, and Sienna’s profile photo had turned gray/

Her account had been deactivated.

News about her reached me in pieces, drifting in from different directions.

Ethan’s mother posted in the neighborhood Nextdoor thread that Sienna had been formally

charged.

Formally charged.

Eighteen years old. Fresh out of high school. A girl in the first bloom of adulthood, now carrying a

criminal academic fraud charge.

The sentencing range was three to seven years.

How many she would actually get depended on the court.

But she was the primary organizer.

She contacted the outside ring, bought the equipment, recruited participants, assigned

frequencies, and laid out the cover story everyone was supposed to stick to.

Every one of those details stacked the deck against her.

Her parents had hired a lawyer.

There was only so much a lawyer could do.

The evidence chain was airtight.

Surveillance footage.

Radio monitoring records.

Physical devices, some of which students hadn’t managed to destroy before they were stopped.

Multiple student statements backing each other up.

The case was rock solid.

I heard most of that from Delaney.

Her mother worked at the county courthouse, not on this case specifically, but news moved fast

through the system.

“Tessa, do you know who has it worst?” Delaney asked.

She was sitting on the chair beside my desk with her legs tucked up under her, chin resting on her

knees.

“Who?”

“Naomi.”

Naomi Parker. Quiet girl. Sat a few rows back. Decent grades.

On her own, she probably could have gotten into a solid state school.

“Her mom went to school yesterday and made a scene. Said Naomi had been pressured into it, that

she never wanted to join in, that Sienna and Grant pushed her until she gave in.”

“And?”

“It didn’t matter. Participation is participation. There’s no legal exception for ‘being pressured.’

The rule is clear. If you knowingly take part in cheating, you’re an accomplice.”

Delaney’s voice got lower and lower.

“She had a real shot to college…”

I didn’t respond.

Outside the window, a bird kept singing, bright and clear, as if nothing in the world had happened.

“Tessa.”

“Yeah?”

“What you said that day, about how you stopped it in your last life… what did you mean?”

I turned to look at her.

There was nothing prying in her expression. No morbid curiosity. Just confusion and a careful kind

of concern.

I stayed quiet for a long time.

Long enough that she started to say, “Forget it, if you don’t want to talk about it…”

“I had a very long dream,” I cut in.

“In that dream, I stood up and blew the whistle. I told Mr. Hollis. Sienna got disciplined, and the whole plan fell apart. Then the class hated me for it. Grant asked me to meet him on the roof, and twelve people cornered me and threw me down the stairwell.”

Delaney’s pupils widened sharply.

Her fingers tightened around the fabric of her jeans.

“…A dream?”

“A dream,” I said. “One that felt real enough that when I woke up, I decided I would never again be the person who stood up first.”

She stared at me for a long time.

Her lips trembled once.

Then she reached out and grabbed my wrist.

Her grip was tight enough for her fingertips to press into my skin.

“You did the right thing,” she said, voice rough.

“I don’t care if it was a dream or something else. You did the right thing.”

I didn’t pull away.

I let her hold on.

Outside, the bird kept singing. Sunlight slipped through the narrow gap in the curtains and

stretched into a long, thin strip across the floor.

I looked at that strip of light.

It was bright. Warm.

Exactly like the light I saw at the end of that stairwell in my last life.

Only this time, I was standing in it.

Not lying beneath it.