Chapter 5
སཾ༢35%–
Before I could speak, the reporters and bystanders closed in on me like a mob.
“Why are you quiet, Miss Green? Trying to come up with a lie?”
“Seriously? Pulling off a scam this bold? No wonder she’s the top scorer. She’s got the brains to fool the whole world.”
“Too bad she didn’t use that brain to study the right way.”
Nurses, patients, everyone in the hospital was now surrounding me, whispering, pointing, judging.
“She looks so sweet and innocent. Who knew she had it in her?”
“Wasn’t her mom’s surgery paid for with that scholarship money? Guess the school’s gonna want that back now.”
“Yeah. If she cheated her way to the top, the award should go to whoever actually earned it.”
Online, the media livestreams exploded. The viewer count skyrocketed, and the comment threads lit up.
[She probably created a fake account to do that. This Nadia girl sounds like a genius scammer. Who else could pull off a hundreds–of–thousands–dollar loan scheme using her entire class’s IDs?]
[No way she faked it. She’s the top scorer. Why would she risk it all like that?]
[Still, something about this doesn’t add up.]
My head was spinning.
No matter how hard I tried to piece things together, one question kept haunting me.
If I had already taken back my ID, how did Ivy still manage to use it to take out a loan?
It made no sense. It was like dealing with a ghost.
But one thing I was sure of. My exam results were real. I earned those marks fair and square. No one could take that away from me, no matter how hard they tried to slander
- me.
Despite all of that, I steadied myself, ready to speak up and clear my name.
But that was when Ivy and Bentley burst through the crowd, followed by nearly the entire class.
They shoved the reporters aside and charged at me, fists and feet flying.
Some even dumped leftover food and soup over my head.
“You’ve gone too far, Nadia! Just because we disagreed with you, you went and stole our IDs to take out loans? How could you be so twisted?!”
“Yeah! What did we ever do to you? Hand over the money right now, or we won’t let you off!”
Chapter 5
07:55 Fri, 27 Jun
35%2
Bentley stepped forward and let out a dramatic sigh. He reached out, pretending to help me up from the floor.
“Nadia, I get it. You were jealous that I got close to Ivy. But what you did was wrong. There’s still time to fix this. Just hand over the money, pay back the loans for everyone, and maybe I can help you out of this.”
