CHAPTER SEVEN
The classroom was empty, the late afternoon sun casting long shadows across the desks. Amara’s heart thumped so loudly she was sure anyone could hear it. She clutched her backpack tightly, pretending she was looking for a notebook she’d “forgotten,” though her stomach knew the truth.
The three girls had cornered her earlier, their faces soft and persuasive.
“Amara, this is your chance,” Teni had said. “Just a peek. Nobody will know. Iris has it coming.”
Amara nodded, though every fiber of her being screamed no. She wasn’t a thief. She wasn’t a spy. And yet… she wanted their approval. She wanted to belong.
She peeked over the desk where Iris usually kept her bag. There it was, half-hidden under a pile of textbooks the small, leather-bound diary lying innocently on top. Amara’s hands trembled as she reached for it.
What am I doing? she thought, but the girls’ words echoed in her head. Remember what she did to you in class… just a little revenge… no one will ever know.
Carefully, she opened the diary and flipped to a page that made her stomach twist:
“I can’t stop thinking about him… it’s so annoying! I act all confident in class, but every time he looks at me, I just… freeze.”
Her fingers shook as she took out her phone and snapped a quick picture of the page. The words stared back at her, vulnerable and intimate, and a pang of guilt hit her.
Amara zipped the diary closed and carefully slipped it back under the textbooks, leaving no trace that anyone had touched it. She exhaled shakily and clutched her phone, the image stored safely. She had done it she had the evidence but the weight of what she’d done pressed heavily on her chest.
The next morning, the classroom started to fill again. That’s when Daniel walked in.
Tall, confident, and effortlessly charming, Daniel had a way of commanding attention without trying. His laugh was loud and infectious, and his smile… well, it could make anyone’s heart skip a beat.
Iris noticed him, of course. Everyone did. But there was something different in the way she looked at him a quiet longing, a vulnerability no one else seemed to see. Amara had glimpsed it once or twice, fleeting and subtle, and now she knew the truth that no one else could the part of Iris she had just captured in a single photograph.
Amara’s stomach twisted. What she had in her phone could humiliate Iris beyond anything she had ever imagined. And with Daniel here, she understood just how much it mattered.
That night, when the campus was quiet and the students had gone to their hostels, the three girls cornered Amara near her dorm room.
“Now,” Danielle whispered, “this is when it counts. Nobody will see, nobody will stop you. Just… post it.”
Amara’s fingers tightened around her phone. Her heart was pounding, her stomach twisting in knots. She had never felt so terrified and so exposed.
“I… I don’t know if I can,” she murmured.
The girls exchanged a glance, patient and coaxing. “Remember what she did to you in class. Remember how everyone laughed. This is just a little payback. Anonymously. Nobody will ever know it’s you.”
Her hand hovered over the phone, trembling. The small voice inside her whispered, If I do this… maybe they’ll finally like me. Maybe I’ll belong.
Her thumb pressed “send,” and in an instant, the image of Iris’s private words her secret crush on Daniel was out in the class chat.
Amara’s chest tightened as she imagined the messages lighting up, the laughter, the whispers… and worst of all, Iris discovering it while everyone was gone.
A few hours later, Iris checked her phone in her empty dorm room.
Her face turned crimson, hands trembling, as she scrolled through the messages. No one was there to comfort her, no one to shield her from the humiliation except for Amara, who could only stand frozen in guilt a short distance away.
Somewhere deep down, a small voice whispered that this was only the beginning.
And as Iris sat there, flustered and humiliated, Amara realized she had stepped too far.
She was trapped in a web she had helped weave and there was no easy way out.
