Chapter 17 The Forged Note
Mia couldn’t sleep. She lay in her narrow dorm bed watching the ceiling, her mind replaying Silas’s warning on an endless loop. You’ll find out what really happened to Ethan, and that knowledge will destroy you.
What did that even mean?
By the time pale morning light crept through her window, she’d come to a reluctant, unsettling conclusion: if Silas really was the murderer, she’d be dead already. He’d had chances—by the lake, in the dark closet, in a dozen moments when no one else was watching. A shove, a staged accident, one more “tragic drowning.”
Instead he’d warned her. Pulled her from danger. Left her a flashlight.
Which meant either he was playing the longest, most elaborate game she’d ever seen, or the killer was someone else. Someone he wouldn’t—or couldn’t name.
But if he wouldn’t talk, she’d have to make the truth show itself.
The idea came during her morning shower, crystallizing under the hot water. The drama club was her only real access point to the social network around Ethan’s death. She needed to force a reaction, to throw something into the group that would make the guilty party reveal themselves.
She needed bait. And she knew exactly what kind.
During her assigned prop closet shift that afternoon, Mia found what she needed—old parchment-style paper left over from a Romeo and Juliet production. She took three sheets and tucked them into her bag, her heart already racing with the audacity of what she was planning.
Back in her room, she pulled up Ethan’s student housing application on her laptop. She’d kept a digital copy of everything, including the forms with his handwriting. His signature was looping and open, optimistic somehow. She practiced it on scratch paper until her version looked close enough.
The note itself took two hours to perfect. It had to be vague enough to be believable, specific enough to provoke:
I can’t do this anymore. The pressure won’t stop. They keep asking, pushing me about the promise by the lake, about what I know. I never should have agreed. I see it when I close my eyes. Maybe drowning is the only way to make it quiet.
She didn’t sign it. Left it vague, like a draft, like something Ethan might have written and abandoned. The “promise by the lake” was her invention—a hook with no fish attached, waiting to see who would bite.
Her hands shook as she folded it. This was dangerous. She was manufacturing evidence, lying, manipulating people who’d been nothing but welcoming. But Ethan deserved justice, and she was running out of options.
The next afternoon at rehearsal, the Black Box hummed with its usual pre-practice energy. Marcus was arguing with the lighting board. Sarah and Ben were running lines in a corner. Elara stood near the stage adjusting someone’s blocking with her usual patient enthusiasm.
Silas leaned against the wall by the wings, script in hand but clearly not reading it. His eyes found Mia the moment she walked in, tracking her movement with an intensity that made her skin prickle.
He knew something was coming. She could see it in the way he watched her.
Mia tucked the forged note carefully into her script, between pages forty-two and forty-three…Act Two, Scene Three. Her heart was hammering so hard she was sure everyone could hear it.
During the break, Elara called Silas over to discuss a lighting cue. They stood together near stage left, with their heads close, Elara gesturing at her notes while Silas nodded. This was the moment.
Mia walked past them toward the water cooler, making sure her script was loose in her hands, pages fanned just slightly open.
As she drew level with them, she let it slip.
The script tumbled from her fingers with an embarrassingly loud rustle, pages scattering across the polished black floor.
“Oh my god, I’m so clumsy!” she exclaimed, dropping to her knees.
Elara sighed, the sound fond but exasperated.
Mia scrambled to gather the pages, making a show of her mortification. She made sure the parchment note—so obviously different from the modern script pages—landed face-up, separate from everything else, directly in both Silas and everyone’s view.
Then she watched.
Elara’s and Silas's eyes dropped to the note first.
“What…” Her voice came out thin and strange. “What is that?”
But Mia’s attention was on Silas.
He’d gone completely still. His eyes locked onto the parchment, and something passed across his face—not panic, not fear. Recognition or calculation. His gaze snapped from the note to Mia’s face so fast it felt like being hit. He knew. Knew it was a setup, knew exactly what she was trying to do.
Before either could speak, Jessica swooped in like a vulture spotting carcass. She’d been hovering nearby…she always was—and now she snatched up the note before Mia could grab it.
“What’s this? Drop your homework, new girl?” Jessica’s eyes scanned the words, and her expression shifted from smug amusement to dark interest. “Oh. Oh wow.” Her voice carried across the theater. “This is intense. ‘Promise by the lake’? Sounds like the dead boy had more secrets than anyone thought.”
“Give that back.” Mia stood, reaching for it, but Jessica held it away, that cruel smile spreading.
“Why? It was just lying here on the floor. Public property now.” She waved it like a flag. “Maybe the campus paper would love this. ‘Final message from tragic drowning victim.’ That’s a headline right there.”
“Jessica, that’s grotesque.” Elara’s voice was strained, lacking its usual authority. “Don’t be… just don’t.”
Silas moved then, smooth and fast. He plucked the note from Jessica’s fingers with a precision that made it look effortless. Didn’t even look at the words again. Just kept his eyes on Mia, burning with anger and what might have been disappointment.
“It’s private property,” he said flatly, his voice cutting through Jessica’s protest before she could start. He held Mia’s gaze as he slowly, deliberately crumpled the note in his fist and shoved it deep into his pocket. “Just a prop. From a scene we cut. Isn’t that right, Mia?”
The question was a threat and a lifeline at once. Back his story or face consequences.
Her mouth was dry. “Yes. A prop. For… character backstory.”
Elara looked between them, confusion and suspicion warring on her face. “It didn’t look like a prop,” she said softly. “It looked…”
“That’s the point,” Silas interrupted, not breaking eye contact with Mia. “Props are supposed to feel real. Otherwise they’re useless.” He took a step closer to her, his voice dropping to a whisper that only she could hear. “You’re playing with fire. And you’re going to burn down everything, including yourself.”
The trap had sprung. But it hadn’t caught what she’d expected. Sarah and Elara’s reaction had genuine shock, the way the color had drained from their face—that was real fear. And Silas’s reaction… that was fury.
Mia stood among her scattered script pages, watching Silas and behind her, she could hear Jessica whispering to someone, spreading the story already. Elara had moved away, talking quietly to Marcus.
One of them knew something. Maybe all of them did.
But Silas’s actions puzzled her most. Why'd he cover for it? Was he trying to help her out of a difficult situation she’d created? Trying to save her from the consequences of her own desperate gambit?
Or was he covering his own tracks, making sure the forged note didn’t draw attention to the real secrets surrounding Ethan’s death?