The laughter grew louder. It filled the massive room, echoing off the high ceilings. Faces were turned toward me, pointing, mocking. Cell phones were being pulled out to record my humiliation.
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. A heavy, suffocating lump formed in my throat. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole. I wanted to disappear forever.
I dropped my tray. The loud clatter went completely ignored over the sound of the mocking laughter.
I turned to run away. I just wanted to hide in a bathroom stall and cry until my lungs gave out.
But as I spun around, I crashed directly into someone.
I stumbled back, looking up through my blurred vision.
It was Mrs. Alcott.
The choir director stood there, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. She was a stern, terrifying woman in her sixties, known for accepting absolutely zero nonsense from anyone, regardless of how much money their parents had.
The cafeteria instantly fell dead silent. You could hear a pin drop.
Mrs. Alcott looked at the puddle of red soup on the floor. She looked at Chloe, who suddenly seemed to shrink back into the crowd, her arrogant smile vanishing.
Then, Mrs. Alcott looked at me.
Her stern eyes took in the ruined, red-soaked dress. I braced myself for the lecture. I braced myself to be told I was out of the showcase, that I had ruined the school’s image.
But Mrs. Alcott didn’t say a word about the soup.
Her eyes traveled up my chest and stopped abruptly at my left collar.
She froze.
Her entire body went perfectly still. The annoyance on her face vanished, replaced by an expression I had never seen on the strict director before. It was a look of pure, unadulterated shock.
She stepped closer to me, ignoring the mess. She reached out a trembling hand and gently touched the heavy brass pin I had used to cover the stain.
“Where…” Mrs. Alcott’s voice was barely a whisper. It was shaking. “Where did you get this pin?”
“My… my grandfather,” I stammered, terrified by her sudden intensity. “He gave it to me.”
Mrs. Alcott stared at the dull brass crest for what felt like an eternity. The color completely drained from her face. She looked terrified.
She slowly looked up, her eyes locking onto mine with a terrifying urgency.
Without saying another word to me, without acknowledging Chloe or the hundreds of staring students, Mrs. Alcott turned around.
She practically sprinted to the heavy double doors of the cafeteria. She grabbed the metal handles, yanked them shut, and threw the heavy deadbolt, locking us all inside.
As the cafeteria erupted into confused murmurs, she pulled her cell phone from her pocket with shaking hands and began to dial a number, her eyes darting frantically around the room.
CHAPTER 2
The heavy metal deadbolt clicked with a sound like a gunshot.
It echoed across the silent, cavernous cafeteria. For exactly three seconds, nobody moved. Not a single person breathed.
We were all trapped. Over five hundred wealthy students, the bewildered lunch staff, Chloe Harrington, and me.
I stood there shivering in the center of the room. The thick tomato soup was cooling against my skin, turning into a sticky, uncomfortable paste beneath the ruined fabric of my only white dress.
But I couldn’t focus on the humiliation anymore. The burning sting of the embarrassment was entirely gone, replaced by a cold, creeping sense of absolute dread.
All I could look at was Mrs. Alcott.
Our strict, unflappable choir director was shaking violently. She held her smartphone pressed hard against her ear, pacing back and forth in front of the locked double doors.
She wasn’t looking at the restless crowd. Her wide, terrified eyes were completely fixed on me.
More specifically, they were fixed on the dull brass pin attached to my ruined collar.
“Pick up. Please, please pick up,” she muttered.
Her voice was raspy. It was completely stripped of its usual commanding authority. She sounded like a frightened child.
Behind me, the silence of the cafeteria finally broke. It started as a low murmur and quickly escalated into a wave of panicked whispers.
Students in varsity jackets and designer dresses began standing up from their tables. Some were pulling out their own phones. Others were looking toward the emergency exits.
“Mrs. Alcott?” a tall senior boy called out from the front row of tables. “What’s going on? Why did you lock the doors?”
She ignored him. She kept her phone pressed to her ear, her knuckles turning white from gripping the device so hard.
“Yes, it’s me,” Mrs. Alcott suddenly gasped into the phone. “I need to speak to Reverend Thomas right now. It is an absolute emergency. Interrupt him.”
Reverend Thomas.