Chapter 18: The Answer

Rory's POV

"It's typed," Sage said.

She was sitting cross-legged on her bed with my phone in both hands, reading the fake letter for the fourth time.

"That's your whole review?" I said.

"Your handwriting is so bad that the registrar once asked you to print. He typed it. He didn't even try."

She handed the phone back.

"Also, you would never write 'please forgive me.' You'd write 'I'm sorry' and then criticize the room."

"That's not funny."

"It's a little funny."

I was standing at the window with my arms crossed, and my pulse was hammering.

Six thousand people had read my name at the bottom of a lie.

Ben sat on the edge of my desk chair, very still, with the speaker still at his feet.

"I want to answer it," I said. "Right now. I want to post the forty-one photos."

"No," Ben and Sage said together.

"Why not?"

"Because he posts one lie and we post a pile of screenshots."

Sage held up a finger.

"People scroll past a pile of screenshots. They don't scroll past a room."

"What room?"

She reached under her pillow and pulled out a printed sheet.

It was the Homecoming schedule.

At the bottom of the page, in small type, someone had written my name.

"Open mic, last slot, right before the donor remarks," Sage said. "I signed you up at eight this morning."

"Sage!"

"I'm a menace. We've established that."

I sat down on my bed, because my knees had gone loose.

"He's going to stand up there and call me a liar in front of the entire school," I said.

"Then we are going to be standing there first."

She took out her own phone and held it up.

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