29

29
Mirella’s POV

Losing Eli hit us hard. The room where we met felt empty in a way I hadn’t noticed before—like a missing piece that made everything else unsteady. Yuki stared at her hands. Dante stared at the table. Iris tried to make a joke and failed. I sat very still, listening to the small noises in the cafe and feeling my own pulse in my ears.

“Maybe we should lie low for a while,” Yuki said finally, voice small. “Let things cool down. The less we push, the less they can hurt us.” She sounded like she meant it. She sounded scared.

I couldn’t breathe at the idea. Back down? Let them think they’d won? No. Not after Eli, not after Sophie, not after everything. “If we back down now,” I said, “they’ll take it as a sign. They’ll go faster. They’ll crush anyone else who tries to stand up. We can’t show fear.”

Dante slammed his fist on the table, just once. “She’s right. We don’t run. We fight smarter.” His voice was low and steady. He looked at us like he wanted us to understand that he meant it.

Iris rubbed her forehead. “We need evidence. Real proof. Not just videos on phones that can be faked.” She looked at me. “We need documents. A paper trail. Something the school board can’t ignore.”

That idea sank into me and didn’t leave. Documents. Payments. Phone records. Emails. Bribes. The whole ugly thing that made the female legion untouchable. If we could find proof the principal was bought, then her comeback wasn’t real—it was paid for. If we could prove that, nothing she or her friends said would matter. The board would have to act.

We started recording again. Quiet, hidden videos, short clips, nothing dramatic. We kept our phones low and our hands steady. We caught whispers in hallways, a shove by a locker, a girl pushed into the stairs. It helped a little to capture them, to hold the moments in my hands like evidence. But it wasn’t enough. She cleaned her tracks. She avoided cameras. She whispered in places no one recorded. She used people she’d paid or forced. The more we tried, the smarter she got.

Then, a small thing happened that changed everything.

I was in the bathroom between classes, heart beating a little too fast because I’d been thinking about Eli all morning, and I heard voices. Two girls—Lila and Maren—were talking just outside the stall. I pretended to be washing my hands, but I digitized the whole conversation in my head. They laughed too loudly at first, then grew quieter.

“You know how we got her back?” Lila said. “It was easy. We just called him. A check moved. Principal signed. It was over in a week.”

Maren laughed like it was a joke. “He’s dumb. He’d do anything.”

“Not a joke,” Lila said. “We paid, and the principal took it. He didn’t ask. He took the money and stamped it off. Easy.”

My hands were shaking so badly I nearly dropped my phone. I opened the voice recorder app with my elbow, left the phone between my shoe and the stall wall, and pretended to dry my hands. The girls moved away, thinking they had nothing to fear. They didn’t know their voices had traveled into my pocket as proof.

I replayed the clip the minute I was out of the bathroom. Their words were clear. It wasn’t just one girl saying something mean. It was someone admitting the principal had taken a bribe. That was the kind of proof we needed. Not edited videos or rumors. This was a confession. If we had more proof, more witnesses, it would be impossible to ignore.

I ran the recording to the group that night. We met in the old gym like we always did, the one place no adult went except to lock the doors at night. My voice sounded small when I told them what I’d heard, but the recording did the talking. We sat in a circle and listened together, the sound bouncing off the gym walls.

“This is huge,” Dante said, his face lit by the glow of his phone. “If we can link payments to the principal, this whole system collapses.”

“But one recording isn’t enough,” Iris said. She was calm, but I could see worry in her hands. “We need emails, bank statements, a witness who will say it on record. One voice will be dismissed as gossip.”

Yuki rubbed her arm. “We can’t hack. We can’t break into bank records. We need something legal. Something that holds up.”

I thought of the one place Eli had shown me by accident—the old passages beneath the school that he’d promised were just for “fun” when he’d wanted me to see the library from a different angle. He’d laughed like it was a secret playground. One of those passages led near the principal’s office, he’d told me once, pulling his sleeve over his arm like it was a game. I had filed that away like a toy, but now it was a map.

“If we can get into the principal’s office,” I said slowly, “we might find papers. Maybe receipts, email printouts, something that ties the money to him. Or a contract, or a note.”

Dante’s eyes sharpened. “You’re thinking break-in.”

I nodded. “I know it’s dangerous. I know I could get expelled. But what else do we do? Sit here while she breaks everyone else?”

Yuki swallowed. “If anyone’s going to do this, it should be with a plan. With backup. With someone watching the doors. We can't afford mistakes.”

Iris crossed her arms. “And what about cameras inside the office?” she asked. “Security cams, alarms. How do we avoid those?”

“We don’t,” Dante said bluntly. “We plan for them. We find the blind spots. We get the keys. We get someone who knows the passages. We don’t go in blind.”

I thought of Eli again. He had shown me hidden routes. He had shown me a way once. He was gone now, but the routes were still there. I felt a small, bitter pulse—he had helped in the beginning, even if he couldn't stay. We owed it to him to try.

“If I go in,” I said, “I go with someone. Dante, you said you’d back me. I need you there. Yuki, you can watch the halls. Iris, you get the timing right. We do this after school when most people are gone. We go down the passage, slip into the office, search for anything that proves money changed hands, get out. Quick. Clean.”

They all stared at me for a long second, and I saw the weight of what I was asking. Breaking into an office, the risk of being caught, the reality of being expelled—it hung in the air like a heavy storm cloud.

“What about the janitor?” Yuki asked. “What if he sees us?”

“It’s the old gym,” Dante said. “We’ll time it. We’ll go after the last bell when everyone’s gone. The janitor is always in the boiler room that time. The passage leads close to the office but not through the main hallways. I can watch the door from the back corridor.”

I pulled up the map in my head, that small triangle of old bricks Eli had shown me. It wasn’t perfect, but it existed.

Iris shook her head slowly. “It’s risky. You could get expelled. Or worse—if the principal sees you, he could press charges.”

“Then we make this count,” I said. “We don’t do this for me. We do this for everyone who got hurt. For Eli. For Sophie. For the kids who still hide.”

Dante looked at me like he always did—like he believed. “Alright,” he said at last. “I’m in. I’ll go with you. We’ll do it clean. No heroics. Just in and out.”

Yuki nodded. “I’ll be the lookout. I’ll watch the hall and call if anyone comes.”

Iris sighed but gave a small smile. “I’ll cover our exit. If anything goes wrong, I’ll get help.”

We went over the plan again and again. Routes. Timings. Who carries a backpack, who uses a phone as recorder, who brings a fake janitor’s hat if needed. We made contingency plans: if the principal was in his office, we abort. If the alarm trips, Dante pulls a fire alarm two corridors over to scatter attention. It was messy and dangerous and exactly what we needed.

That night, I barely slept. My mind ran through the steps like a looped film. Down the back stairwell. Through the passage. Turn left at the old boiler. Crawl under the loose tile. Keep the phone on airplane mode. Open the top drawer of the principal’s desk. Take anything with the principal’s name on a payment. Photocopy if possible. Don’t touch the computer unless absolutely necessary. Get out the same way.

It felt like plotting a heist in an old movie. It felt terrifying. It felt right.

“This has to work,” I whispered into the dark. It had to. If we failed, the female legion would keep winning. If we succeeded, we might have the one thing that would end her power—proof.

Dante texted me at midnight: Meet me at the back gate 4:30 tomorrow. Don’t be seen. Don’t tell anyone.

I sat up and stared at the glowing screen. The words were small but heavy. We had chosen the hardest path. We had chosen to break the rules in the only way that mattered: to expose the people who had already broken everything.

When I closed my eyes, I saw the faces of the kids who had been hurt. I saw Eli in the closet, shaking. I saw Sophie fleeing the library. I saw the stutterer’s empty place at our table.

Tomorrow after school, we would move. When most people had left. When the guards were less sharp. When the principal thought the day was over.

I felt sick and steady at the same time. This had to work. It had to be our last hope.

I set my alarm and lay back do
wn, the plan playing in my head until sleep finally caught me—short, tight, dangerous sleep.