After Rebirth My Class Beauty Led Cheating and I Stayed Silent Chapter 09

After Rebirth My Class Beauty Led Cheating and I Stayed Silent Chapter 09

June 10th. The second day after everything blew up.

The news finally spread the way I had expected it to.

Not through the class chat. Sienna had locked it down the day before by muting everyone. She was still trying to control the flow of information.

No, this time it spread through the parents’ group chat.

Mom came out of the kitchen after taking a phone call, her face completely drained of color.

“Tessa… the school sent out a notice. Something big happened in your class.”

I looked up from my bowl. “What happened?”

“They said some students in your class got caught cheating on the SAT. A lot of them. Is that true?”

I swallowed the oatmeal in my mouth.

“I don’t know. My test center was in Building C. They were in Building A. I didn’t see anything.”

Mom’s eyes went wide. “You mean… you weren’t part of it?”

“I wasn’t involved in anything, Mom.”

The tension left her shoulders all at once, and one hand went to the edge of the table to steady

herself.

“You scared me half to death…” She pressed a hand to her chest.

“Mrs. Dawson from next door just called and said Brielle was in trouble, that she had to go to school

and sign some kind of statement. My legs almost gave out.”

“It has nothing to do with me.’

“Really?”

“Really.”

She let out a long breath and sat down across from me, her fingers still trembling a little.

I set down my spoon and reached across the table to hold her hand.

“Mom, don’t worry. I’m okay.”

She squeezed back hard.

Her eyes reddened, but she didn’t cry.

“You’ve always been such an easy kid,” she whispered. “You never make me worry.”

I didn’t answer.

Because in my last life, I made her carry the worst kind of grief a parent could ever carry.

Around noon, Delaney sent me a flood of messages.

Everything she had seen, everything she had heard, all poured out at once.

Delaney:[Tessa, I’m telling you, when Grant came out of the questioning room today, his legs were shaking so badly he had to brace himself against the wall. Brielle dropped to the floor and started sobbing, and her mom was crying right there beside her. The craziest one was Ethan. Apparently he

confessed almost immediately because they showed him a crystal-clear, close-up surveillance

feed of him adjusting his earpiece during the exam.]

Delaney: [And also, Sienna didn’t come to school today. I heard they took her somewhere else. Not

the admin office kind of thing. Like…]

She typed several words, deleted them, and then finally sent three,

Delaney:[The police.]

I stared at those words for a few seconds.

Then I typed back.

Me: [Yeah.]

Delaney kept going.

Delaney:[I’m freezing all over. I didn’t do anything, but I’m still scared. Tessa, how are you this calm? Did you seriously not see any of this coming at all?]

I closed the chat box without answering that part.

Then I opened a news site.

There still wasn’t anything on the front page.

But if the timeline matched my last life, there would be within three days. First an official statement from the testing authority.

Then national media pickup. Then public outrage.

Three days.

i turned off my phone and went back to my book.

That evening, someone rang the doorbell.

I went to answer it.

It was Grant.

He stood outside in a faded, heavily pilled T-shirt, his hair a mess like he hadn’t washed it in two days. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw.

His eyes were bloodshot.

“Can you come out for a minute?”

I looked at him for a while.

“We can talk right here.”

He froze for a second, probably not expecting me to refuse him entry.

I stepped out, pulled the door shut behind me, and leaned against the hallway wall with my arms folded.

“Say what you came to say.”

His lips moved once. Then again.

His throat worked.

And then he said something that made my blood go two degrees colder.

“Tessa, can you testify for us? Say we were coerced. That we weren’t willing participants.”

I stared at him.

His eyes slid away from mine and fixed on the corner of the hallway instead.

“You’re the only one in the class who wasn’t involved. People will believe you. If you say that…”

“Say what?”

“That Sienna forced everybody into it. That we had no choice. If we didn’t go along with it, she would’ve ostracized us.”

“Frozen you out.”

I repeated the words softly.

But Grant flinched like I’d burned him.

“Grant, you said something in the class chat last month. I remember it very clearly.”

His face changed.

“You said, ‘Sienna’s doing this for everyone. Anyone who doesn’t support her is a traitor “”

The color drained from his mouth.

“That was things were different then…”

“How?”

I uncrossed my arms and took one step forward.

He took one step back until his shoulders hit the wall across from me.

“Three days before the SAT, you chased me around telling me to support Sienna. You said if I didn’t cooperate, it meant I couldn’t stand seeing other people succeed. Then the minute everything blew up, you came here asking me to lie for you.”

I spoke one word at a time, my voice flat and heavy as a steamroller.

“Grant, think very carefully about what you’re asking me to do before you ever dare bring it to my

face again.”

His face went white, then red, then white again. His lips moved several times, but no sound came

out.

I turned, opened the door, and went inside.

Just before I closed it, I looked at him one last time.

He was still standing there in the hallway, shoulders hunched in on themselves, like a vine after the trellis had been ripped away.

Then the door shut.

The latch clicked into place with a quiet sound.

Soft.

Final.