They Bet I Would Leave, I Proved Them Right Chapter 07

They Bet I Would Leave, I Proved Them Right Chapter 07

By the next morning, the whole school knew I’d entered the program early.

The principal made the announcement himself.

Mara Ellsworth, the state’s top STEM scorer, had been selected for a classified federal research fellowship.

The binding Early Decision agreement wasn’t a regular college acceptance.

It was a classified appointment.

I was the only one chosen in all of Bellhaven.

The smug looks on the faces of the girls who’d cornered me in the hallway the day before vanished fast.

One of them tracked down Nolan.

“We were just messing around.”

“How were we supposed to know she’d actually leave over it?”

Nolan looked at her.

“Who kicked over the bucket?”

The smile slid off her face.

“My hand slipped.”

“And the camera?”

“That was an accident too.”

Nolan grabbed the phone out of her hand and threw it into the fountain.

She screamed.

“Are you insane?”

“My hand slipped.”

He threw her own words back at her.

But it didn’t make him feel a thing.

The day before, when I’d stood there dripping wet, he hadn’t moved.

Defending me now was like stitching up a wound after the patient had already bled out.

It was too late.

Grant tore the gym apart looking for it.

The medal he’d tossed into a box of junk ended up wedged under Brielle’s clothes rack.

One corner was already dented.

He picked it up and wiped it clean, the memory hitting him like a blow: he was twelve years old.

He’d just won his first game, and he came running straight to me.

“Mara, hold on to this for me.”

“When I win nationals, I’ll give you that gold medal too.”

I’d looked at him and asked:

“Why me?”

And he’d said:

“Because you’re the most important person in my life.”

Now he had a full athletic scholarship locked in.

And he couldn’t even see my posts anymore.

Graham tried to recover the hard drive.

He hired three separate data–recovery teams.

They managed to pull back a handful of corrupted files.

One was the video of us burying a time capsule when we were ten.

In the footage, I had dirt smeared across my face, dead serious.

“I hope we’re all still together when we turn eighteen.”

Behind the camera, ten–year–old Nolan laughed.

“Duh. We’ll still be together when we’re eighty.”

The video cut to static right there.

Graham stared at the black screen.

For the first time, he understood.

Some things, once you delete them, don’t come back.

Reid tracked down my cloud backup.

It was password–protected.

He tried all four of their birthdays.

He tried the date we’d all first met.

All wrong.

On the last attempt, he typed in my birthday.

It unlocked.

There were no group photos on the drive.

Just one folder.

[Mara Ellsworth.]

Award certificates. Research notes. Videos my parents had sent. And footage I’d shot by myself: the night sky over Westreach.

It hit them all at once.

All those years, I’d had a life of my own beyond tagging along with them.

But every time I talked about deserts, energy systems, and research labs, they said it was boring.

And after they’d all tuned out, Brielle would always add the same thing.

“That’s so far away for a girl to go all by herself.”

And the four of them would talk me into staying.

They never asked me.

Not once did they ask if staying was what I wanted.

Brielle started to feel the shift.

She had all their attention now. It didn’t feel the way she thought it would.

Grant stopped building furniture for her.

Graham took the camera back.

Reid killed the tribute video.

Nolan didn’t reach out to her once.

She cornered Nolan.

“Are you all blaming me?”

Nolan looked at her.

“It was your idea.”

Brielle’s tears spilled over.

“But every single one of you said yes.”

Nolan had nothing to say to that.

She was right.

And that was exactly why none of them had the right to put it all on her.