She Tried to Ruin My Future and I Ruined Her First Chapter 03

She Tried to Ruin My Future and I Ruined Her First Chapter 03

“Evan, you ripped my pass out of my hand and personally gave it to Lila. Now you’re saying I never gave it to her. Don’t you hear how ridiculous that sounds?”

He shifted his weight, his eyes darting away.

Lila lifted her chin and looked at me with stubborn, watery eyes. “Sienna, I’m the one who lost your pass. If you’re mad, take it out on me. Don’t make things harder for Evan.”

I looked at her and almost laughed from sheer disbelief.

Was losing someone else’s exam pass supposed to be some kind of badge of honor?

“You want me to take it out on you? Fine,” I said. “Then answer me this. Why didn’t you hand everyone their passes back when we gathered outside the hotel this morning?”

Her voice was trembling with tears again. “I… I thought there were too many people around, and it would be safer to hand them out once we got here.”

“Safer?”

I stepped closer.

“Lila, I asked you for mine when we left the hotel, and you said you’d hand them out on the bus. I asked again on the bus, and you said we were almost there and you’d give them out together.”

“I asked a third time at the security gate, and you told me to stop being paranoid. Now there are less than ten minutes left, and suddenly you’re telling me mine is gone?”

I stared straight at her. “Do you seriously think I’m stupid? Everyone else’s is fine, but mine just happened to disappear?”

The string of questions drained the color from her face.

She clutched the hem of her shirt until her knuckles turned white, then said in a shaky voice, “I just wanted to pass them out all at once. How was I supposed to know yours would go missing? Sienna… please stop pressuring me.”

I held her gaze and said coldly, “You’ve been putting on this act for three years. Don’t you ever get tired?”

Her whole body went rigid.

“Freshman year: the track meet. You ‘offered’ to hold my gear, then soaked my sneakers in ice water. I had to run the 800-meter in shoes that weighed five pounds.”

“In sophomore year, I applied for a scholarship. You were collecting the forms for the teacher, and even though I turned mine in early, you waited until the deadline and said you never got it.”

“In junior year, the school handed out review packets. Every single person in class got one. You said you’d left mine on my desk, but I never saw it.”

I took another step forward. “My lunch card going missing. Homework that somehow never got turned in. Senior photos that had to be retaken over and over. And now this. Now it’s my exam pass.”

“Lila, I’d really like to know,” I said, voice sharper with every word, “who exactly has been forcing who all this time?”

The crowd’s murmurs died out. I could see the gears turning in their heads.

Then, right on cue, Lila burst into loud, broken sobs.

“Sienna, it’s all my fault. I’m sorry. I’ll apologize, I’ll get on my knees, I’ll beg, I’ll do anything if you’ll just forgive me.”

There it was again.

The classic move. The public shaming strategy.

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Do it. Get on your knees. Start begging, and don’t stop until I tell you to.”

She froze.

Clearly, she had not expected me to say yes.

Evan’s face darkened at once, and he yanked her behind him.

“Sienna! Lila already apologized. What else do you want? And what’s the point of dragging up old stuff right now?”

Then he turned, eyes narrowing.

“Or I could say this instead. You clearly didn’t want Lila holding your pass yesterday, so who knows? Maybe you came back later and took it yourself.”

The second he said that, something bright flashed through Lila’s eyes.

“Sienna,” she said quickly, tears still hanging on her lashes, “you took the pass back, didn’t you? Please, just take it out and show everyone. Don’t do this to me.”

I nearly laughed in her face.

The sheer audacity of the gaslighting was almost impressive.

And with Lila standing there looking all frail and broken and pitiful, the crowd started tilting back in her favor almost immediately.

“Yeah, she didn’t want to hand it over yesterday. Maybe she took it back herself.”

“If that’s true, then Sienna’s seriously disgusting for trying to frame Lila.”

“Let’s be honest, she’s probably just jealous because Evan likes Lila.”

The whispers turned against me all over again.

Lila looked at me through her tears, and this time I caught it clearly, that faint little flash of satisfaction in her eyes.

Then someone in the crowd suddenly shouted, “Ms. Bennett’s here!”