True Heiress vs. Fake Queen Bee novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Clasp

At the honor hearing Liv opens the bracelet's hidden clasp and wins, but Brielle hits back through Trudy's scholarship.

Brielle cried before the hearing even started.

She did it beautifully.

One tear, then a second, then a tissue pressed under each eye so her mascara didn't run.

The honor board sat behind a long table in a basement room of the student union.

Two professors, three students and a chair with a gavel she never used.

My bracelet lay in a clear evidence bag in the middle of the table.

I sat ten feet from it with my hands flat on my knees.

"She had six days to give it back," Brielle told them. "She chose not to. Doesn't that tell you everything?"

One of the student members, a boy in a fraternity polo, nodded along.

I had a folder in front of me with the paperwork the conduct office had sent.

I'd read it over and over since Sunday.

On the very first page, in the box marked "Complainant, legal name," it didn't say Brielle Haldane.

It said Brielle H. Tullis.

I'd stared at that H until my eyes watered.

The chair turned to me.

"Ms. Mabry. Your response."

"I have one question for her," I said. "If that's allowed."

"Through me."

"Fine. Ask her what's inside the clasp."

Brielle blinked.

"It's a clasp," she said. "There's nothing inside it."

"Ask her if she's sure."

The chair looked at Brielle.

Brielle looked at the bag on the table.

For the first time since she'd walked in, she didn't know her line.

"I'm sure," she said. "It's a normal clasp. My mother never took it off."

"May I?" I asked the chair.

She hesitated, then slid the bag down the table to me.

I took the bracelet out.

My fingers knew it better than my own phone.

You press the second sapphire from the clasp and pull the catch sideways at the same time.

My mother showed me how when I was five, sitting on her bed while she got ready for a party.

The little gold lid sprang open.

Inside was a slip of paper folded so small it looked like a grain of rice.

The room went quiet enough to hear the air vent.

I unfolded it with my thumbnail and held it up so the board could read it.

In faded blue ink, in my mother's slanted handwriting, it said, "For my girl. 7.14.07."

The professor at the end leaned forward and squinted.

"Ms. Haldane," the chair said slowly. "Can you tell us what that date means?"

Brielle's chin came up.

"It's my birthday."

"Is it?"

The chair opened a file and ran her finger down a page.

Then she opened a second file.

She looked at me for a long moment over the top of it.

"Ms. Haldane, your date of birth in our records is March ninth."

The fraternity boy stopped nodding.

"And Ms. Mabry," the chair said, "yours is July fourteenth."

Nobody said anything.

Brielle's tears were completely gone now.

"That's a coincidence," she said. "My mother wrote that when she bought it. It's the date she bought it."

"Then why would she write 'for my girl' on the day she bought it for herself?" I asked.

"Through me, Ms. Mabry," the chair said.

But she was already writing.

They sent us out into the hallway.

Brielle sat at one end of the hallway bench and I sat at the other.

She texted the whole time without looking at me.

Trudy wasn't allowed inside, so she was out in the lobby upstairs, probably eating her own fingernails.

When they called us back, the chair didn't sit down.

"Insufficient evidence for the complaint," she said. "The matter is dismissed. Campus police has authorized release of the property to Ms. Mabry."

She held the bracelet out to me across the table.

I fastened it on my left wrist.

My skin had been cold for six days and was finally warm.

Brielle walked out first.

She didn't hurry.

I caught up with her at the bottom of the stairwell, where nobody else was.

"Your middle name's Haldane," I said.

She turned around.

Up close, without the phone in her hand, she looked tired.

Then the smile came back on.

"Lots of people have middle names, Liv. Ask yours."

"Brielle. Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what? Going to college?" She stepped closer. "You want to win so bad, Liv? Easy. Walk upstairs and tell everybody your real name."

"Maybe I will."

"No, you won't." She tilted her head. "Because then Daddy's rule kicks in, right? Your name gets out, you come home."

My whole body went still.

Those were my father's exact words.

He'd said them in his study, with the door shut, three weeks ago.

"Who told you that?"

"Everybody tells me things." She looked at the bracelet on my wrist. "Enjoy it. You'll want to look at something pretty this week."

She went up the stairs two at a time.

I followed her into the lobby.

Trudy was standing by the vending machines with her phone in her hand.

She wasn't eating her nails.

She wasn't doing anything at all.

Her face had gone a color I'd never seen on a living person.

"Liv," she said. "I just got an email from the Haldane Foundation."

Brielle walked past her without slowing down.

Trudy turned the screen toward me.

"My scholarship's suspended. Pending a conduct review." Her voice cracked. "The complaint says I harassed Brielle Haldane on Saturday."

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