Chapter 37 #2
I start running constitutional arguments in my head, a trick I learned years ago to distract from the panic.
Fourteenth Amendment. Equal protection clause.
Precedent cases—Brown v. Board, Loving v.
Virginia, Obergefell v. Hodges. Clean, ordered citations.
Things that make sense. Things that follow logic instead of chaos.
Things I can control.
My pulse starts to slow. Marginally.
“Yo, Caleb! Ready to destroy Hamilton Prep today?”
Kevin appears beside me, all easy confidence and unearned swagger. He’s good at debate—third-best on the team after Sarah and me—but he treats it like a game instead of a battle for survival.
Must be nice.
“Yeah,” I manage. My voice sounds almost normal. “Bus leaves right after lunch. You ready?”
“Born ready, my man.” Kevin grins, slapping me on the shoulder with enough force to make me stumble slightly. “This is our year. State championship, here we come.”
State championship. Harvard acceptance. Perfect GPA. Debate team captain.
All the achievements lined up like dominoes, each one depending on the one before it. One wrong move and they all fall.
No pressure.
We’re still talking—Kevin rambling about his opening argument strategy, me nodding at appropriate intervals—when it happens.
Every phone in the hallway buzzes. Simultaneously. Like someone detonated a notification bomb.
The conversation dies instantly. Heads turn. Phones rise like a synchronized swarm.
And the hallway, which was normal teenage chaos thirty seconds ago, goes silent.
That particular kind of silence that means something terrible just happened.
I’m still reading a text from Harper—Mom finished treatment, everything went fine, sixty-two percent is going to be one hundred percent, I can feel it—when Kevin’s hand clamps around my forearm as the hall erupts again in a white noise of whispers.
“Oh shit, man.”
His voice has gone strange. Tight. Almost… apologetic?
“What—”
He shoves his phone in my face before I can finish the question.
Video. Five seconds long. Playing on loop.
Basement stairs. My basement stairs, the ones with the loose third step Mom keeps meaning to fix.
Harper’s arms are around my neck. She’s giving me one of those quick kisses she steals sometimes—the kind that taste like defiance and hunger and all the things we’re not supposed to want.
My hand is on her ass. Squeezing.
The video quality is grainy, shot from below, probably from the bottom of the stairs. But it’s unmistakably us. Unmistakably wrong in every way that matters to the people watching.
Text flashes across the screen: Caleb Graham, Brother of the Year
Then it loops. Again. Again. Again.
My brain goes blank. Completely, utterly blank.
I can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t think past the roaring in my ears.
My hand goes to my tie. I yank it loose without thinking, destroying the perfect knot.
The wrongness of it hits me like a physical blow.
Uneven. Unbalanced. Ruined. I blink rapidly, trying to find the pattern—four, seven, eight—but I lose count.
Start over. Lose count again. The numbers won’t stay in my head.
All around me, voices break through in snippets here and there.
“Holy shit—”
“Did you see—”
“That’s Harper, right? His stepsister?”
“Sick.”
“I always knew something was off about him—”
My head yanks up. Finds Kevin’s wide eyes staring back at me.
“Dude,” he whispers.
I don’t say anything. Because what the fuck is there to say? Yes, I fell in love with my step-sister. But it’s nothing like the tawdry video is making it look.
When I scan the crowd—and it is a crowd now, everyone’s stopped moving, everyone’s staring—I don’t have to look far for the source.
McKenzie Davis leans against the trophy case like she’s posing for a photoshoot. Perfectly pressed uniform. Hair that probably cost hundreds of dollars to highlight. A smile that could cut glass.
When our eyes meet across twenty feet of stunned, gawking teenagers, she raises one hand. Wiggles her fingers in a slow, deliberate wave.
It’s a wave that communicates more than words ever could. A wave that says: Remember when you humiliated me in front of the entire school? This is payback, and it’s just getting started.
And then—because the knife wasn’t buried deep enough—McKenzie slides her arm around someone else’s shoulders.
Marie.
Harper’s best friend. The quiet girl who Harper defended. Who Harper trusted.
Marie looks miserable. Her face is pale. She won’t meet my eyes.
I don’t know what McKenzie’s holding over her. Don’t know what blackmail or manipulation got us here. But it doesn’t matter.
Because Harper trusted her. And Marie was there. She’s the only one who could have taken that video.
Rage floods through me, hot and unfamiliar. I’m not someone who gets angry—anger is messy, uncontrolled, dangerous. Anger is what got me in trouble when I was twelve and stealing things.
But I’m angry now.
I stalk across the hallway. Students part like I’m radioactive—and maybe I am, maybe that video just made me toxic to touch—but I don’t care.
I need to understand. Need to know what McKenzie did. What she threatened. How she convinced someone Harper trusted to destroy us both.
“What have you done?”
My voice doesn’t sound like mine. It sounds cold. Calm. Lethal.
McKenzie examines her nails like I’m a mild inconvenience.
“Unlike some people, I respect the morality clause of the student handbook.” Her eyes flick up, sharp and satisfied.
“You should take a refresher course. Page forty-seven in particular. The section about conduct unbecoming of a Westfield student.”
She leans in. Close enough that I can smell her expensive perfume. Close enough that no one else can hear.
“They’ll drop you from the debate team before the bus leaves,” she whispers. “Harvard’s student body handbook has a similar morality clause. I don’t imagine they’ll want a sister-fucker as part of their prestigious freshman class. Not after this video gets forwarded to their admissions department.”
My blood turns to ice.
“Who’s boring now?” she adds, voice sweet as arsenic.
Then she pivots on her designer heels and walks away. Marie stumbles after her, still unable to look at me.
Leaving me standing in the wreckage.
My phone buzzes. Once. Twice. A dozen times in rapid succession.
Text alerts. Screenshots multiplying across group chats and social media like a virus. By lunch, this will have hit every phone in the school. By tonight, it’ll be on every parent’s radar.
And Harvard… Jesus Christ, Harvard…
I should move. Should walk to the principal’s office and get ahead of this. Call Silas. Call a lawyer. Control the narrative before it controls me.
That’s what smart people do. Strategic people. People who have their shit together.
But my body won’t move.
I just stand there, locked in place, and watch everything I’ve built collapse.
Every late-night study session. Every debate trophy. Every perfect grade and carefully curated achievement. All of it evaporates in the five seconds it takes for that video to loop.
Because I thought perfection could protect us. Thought if I was good enough, controlled enough, perfect enough, nothing bad could touch us.
Turns out perfection is just another kind of lie.
The bell rings. Students flood past me, whispering without bothering to be subtle anymore.
“—saw the video already—”
“—his own sister, that’s sick—”
“—always knew he was too perfect—”
“—bet Harvard rescinds his acceptance—”
My phone keeps buzzing. Won’t stop buzzing. Each notification is another nail in the coffin.
My chest constricts. Air won’t move right. The hallway tilts slightly, edges going fuzzy.
I can’t breathe.
And for the first time in six years—since I made the rules, since I decided control equals safety—I can’t think my way out.
Can’t logic my way through this.
Can’t fix it.
I turn and sprint down the hallway. Shove through the double doors into the cold November air. Skip class for the first time in my entire academic career.
Because I can’t fucking breathe and the walls are closing in and everything I’ve worked for is gone.
Just… gone.
And somewhere in that empty, hollowed-out space where my future used to be, all I can think is:
Harper. I have to find Harper.