She Asked Us to Give Up SATs for a Million-Dollar Promise Chapter 10

She Asked Us to Give Up SATs for a Million-Dollar Promise Chapter 10

Logan’s ending was no better.

He had always looked like the kind of kid every parent held up as the perfect example, but in this farce, he had been the boldest when it came to throwing money around.

He had taken out loans to take Stella on a cruise vacation and buy one outrageously expensive luxury item after another. The hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt crushed his entire family.

To pay off the debt, his parents sold their house, and the whole family had no choice but to move into a basement apartment.

His parents, both mild-mannered teachers, were completely heartbroken and said outright that from then on, they wanted nothing more to do with him.

Four families collapsed overnight.

While we were waiting for the SAT scores to come out, the classmate who sat next to me joked with me.

“Evelyn, did you hear Stella got beaten up?”

I didn’t understand.

My desk mate added, “It was Mason.”

As it turned out, just two days earlier, Mason, the one with the worst temper, had stormed to Stella’s place to settle the score.

He grabbed Stella by the collar, his eyes filled with vicious rage.

“This is all because of you, Stella. You ruined everything!”

“If you hadn’t insisted on that stupid System mission, why would we have skipped the SATs? Why would we be buried under tens of thousands of dollars in debt?”

As he spoke, he punched her.

Stella screamed again and again.

Ethan stood to the side and did nothing to stop him. There was no longer any adoration or urge to protect Stella in his eyes, only hatred that had sunk deep into his bones.

“You lied to us. All of this was your delusion. Stella, I regret ever knowing you.”

The gentle mask on Logan’s face shattered completely. When he spoke, only cold venom and resentment remained in his voice.

“For you, we gambled away years of hard work and destroyed our futures. Stella, you ruined our lives!”

Stella clutched her swollen, painful face, crying and laughing at the same time as she screamed back.

“What right do you have to blame me? You were the stupid ones! Look at you. The three of you always believed whatever I said.”

“I said Evelyn bullied me, and you believed me. I said a System had bound itself to me, and you believed that too. You believed everything. You were just the most obedient dogs I ever raised!”

The four of them blamed one another and threw each other under the bus, arguing hysterically.

The little group that had once been so close now looked as if they wanted to tear one another apart.

This farce was far from over.

The city Board of Education stepped in.

The SATs are a standardized college-admissions exam, and for countless students, they are the fairest shot at changing their future.

But Stella and the other three had gathered at an SAT testing center to cause trouble, tried to stop another student from taking the exam, and caused a serious disruption.

That very night, the Board of Education released an official statement.

[1. After investigation, Stella Collins, Ethan Foster, Mason Shaw, and Logan Hayes were found to have caused a disturbance on the day of the SATs and deliberately obstructed a classmate from entering the testing center, disrupting the orderly administration of the exam.]

[2. The Board has decided to place a permanent disciplinary mark on their academic records and ban them from registering for the SATs for the next five years.]

The statement caused an uproar online.

A permanent mark on their academic records and a five-year testing ban.

That essentially cut off Ethan and the others from repeating senior year, retaking the SATs, and going to college through the normal route.

A permanent mark on their academic records, a five-year testing ban, and not a single school in the city willing to take them back as returning seniors. There was no possibility of turning things around anymore.

My homeroom teacher messaged me privately, her tone full of emotion.

“Evelyn, I’m happy for you. Thank goodness you stayed clear-headed and didn’t follow the crowd. The four of them… they were far too foolish.”

I smiled and replied to my teacher, “Thank you. I’ll keep working hard.”

I replied calmly, “Thank you. I’ll keep working hard.”

After the livestream incident, the four culprits who had killed me in my previous life became complete social pariahs.

People dug through their social media accounts, and all their old posts flaunting luxury goods, motorcycles, and cruise vacations became the most ridiculous jokes.

For a while, the four of them became a laughingstock that everyone despised.