Chapter 2
The hallway smelled like floor cleaner and warm dust.
Alex and I stood beside the classroom door while students passed us in loose groups. Some glanced at the phone in my hand. Others glanced at my face and looked away before I could catch them.
Mrs. Hackins stayed inside.
The door remained open, so I could see her at the front desk, gathering papers into a neat stack. She moved carefully, pressing each page flat before placing it beneath the next one. Her calmness made my stomach turn.
Alex leaned against the wall across from me.
“You don't have to watch it right now,” he said.
“I do.”
“You can decide when.”
I looked at him. “You said you’d show me everything.”
“I will.”
He didn't reach for the phone. He didn't ask me to hand it back. I understood then that he was waiting for me to choose the place and the time, even though he was the one who had made the recording.
A group of students turned the corner. Their voices faded as they saw us. One of them whispered something. I couldn't make out the words, but I knew the shape of them.
Alex pushed away from the wall.
“There’s an empty stairwell near the library.”
“Can we go there?”
He nodded.
We walked without speaking. My legs felt unsteady, and the phone seemed heavier every few steps. At the stairwell, Alex opened the door and checked both directions before letting it close behind us.
The space was narrow and gray. A small window admitted a rectangle of afternoon light. Somewhere below, a door slammed.
Alex held out his hand.
I gave him the phone.
He unlocked it and opened the recording. The first seconds showed a crooked view of desks and the bright rectangle of the whiteboard. Then Mrs. Hackins entered the frame. I appeared beside the desk, looking down.
I heard my own breathing.
The audio was rough, but the words were clear enough. Mrs. Hackins’s voice cut through the fluorescent hum. My answer followed. Then Alex spoke from somewhere behind the camera.
I had remembered the confrontation as a blur. On the phone, it became a sequence. Mrs. Hackins stood close to me. I didn't move toward her. I didn't reach for anything. I kept my hands inside my sleeves.
Alex paused the recording.
“You can stop,” he said.
“No.”
He let it play.
I watched myself shrink beside the desk. I hated the expression on my face. It made me want to apologize, though I didn't know what I was apologizing for.
When the recording reached the point where Alex raised the phone, his hand came into view. The camera aimed past him toward Mrs. Hackins and me. The image shook once, then steadied.
At the bottom of the screen, the contact label appeared again.
“Mason’s Mother,” I read.
Alex frowned. “That isn't part of the video. It’s on the phone screen.”
“Whose phone is it?”
“I don't know.”
“Then why did you keep it?”
He looked at me carefully. “Because it was recording. I thought it was yours.”
“It isn't.”
“I know that now.”
The answer was simple, and that made it worse. A phone that wasn't mine had been left beside my desk during the accusation. It had recorded the classroom. It had carried a label that used my name and my mother’s.
I held out my hand. “Send the video to me.”
Alex hesitated.
“If you don't, I can't keep it.”
“I can send a copy.”
“I want the original left where it is.”
He nodded. “I can make a copy without changing the original.”
He used the sharing menu, then stopped.
“This could be someone else’s phone,” he said. “Maybe we should give it to the office.”
The idea made my palms sweat. The office meant adults, forms, questions, and the possibility that the phone would become evidence nobody let me see.
“I want my mom to know first.”
Alex lowered the phone. “Okay.”
He sent the recording to my number. My phone vibrated in my pocket.
At that exact moment, the stairwell door opened.
Mrs. Hackins stood outside.
Her eyes moved from Alex to the phone, then to me.
“You were told to wait in the hall.”
“We were reviewing the recording,” I said.
“You were not authorized to copy school property.”
“I didn't know whose phone it was.”
“Then you should have given it to me.”
My hand closed around my own phone. “I’m calling my mother.”
Mrs. Hackins’s expression tightened. “Do not turn this into something it isn't.”
I looked at the black phone in Alex’s hand. The recording had already made it something. The evidence existed whether she approved of it or not.
“I’m telling her what happened,” I said.
Mrs. Hackins stepped aside, leaving the doorway open.
“Go to the office.”
Alex looked at me, waiting again.
I took out my phone. My thumb hovered over my mother’s name.
May you like
Then I pressed call.
The first ring echoed through the stairwell.
