Chapter 52 What the Files Said
Prom night arrived wrapped in fairy lights and hairspray and the particular nervous energy of students who’d been waiting all semester for one glamorous night to mean something.
Mia wore a dark red dress she’d found at the same thrift store as her navy one. It fit well enough. She wasn’t dressing to impress; she was dressing to blend into a crowd of people doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing, which was the most useful kind of camouflage.
Elara had outdone herself, naturally. She arrived in champagne silk that looked like it had been made specifically for her, her hair swept up in a way that had obviously required professional help. She greeted Mia warmly at the entrance, both hands clasping hers, eyes bright with something Mia couldn’t quite read.
“You look lovely,” Elara said, and she almost sounded like she meant it.
“So do you,” Mia said, which was simply true and therefore easy to say.
Silas stood just behind Elara, hands in his pockets, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else on earth. He was wearing a dark suit that fit him extremely well and he clearly resented this fact. When his eyes met Mia’s, they communicated several things at once, the primary one being: let’s get this over with.
The public apology happened forty minutes in, during a lull in the music. Elara had arranged it beautifully, drawing Silas toward where Mia stood near the refreshment table, then stepping back with a small, encouraging smile. The move had an audience immediately, because this was St. Augustine’s and nobody missed anything.
Silas looked at Mia. Mia looked at Silas.
“I owe you an apology,” he said. His voice was flat and even, but it carried. “What I said in the student union was out of line. I was frustrated and I took it out on you publicly, and that wasn’t fair.”
Mia kept her expression carefully neutral. “Thank you for saying that.”
A beat. Then Silas added, with the particular energy of a man reading from a script he actively despises: “I hope the rest of your time here, however long that is, is better.”
Elara made a soft, satisfied sound from behind him.
Several people nearby were watching with the barely concealed delight of people witnessing something unexpected. Jessica looked like she’d just received an early birthday present.
“Apology accepted,” Mia said, and turned to get herself a glass of punch, because she was going to need something to do with her hands to get through the next thirty seconds without any visible reaction.
She counted minutes after that before moving. She walked around the room. Laughed at something Marcus said. Talked briefly to the director about her character arc. Let herself be completely, boringly present.
Then, when Elara was deep in conversation on the far side of the room and Silas had positioned himself squarely in her eyeline, Mia picked up her small bag and slipped out the side door.
The arts building at night was a different place. The hallways that buzzed with students all day were dark and still, lit only by the emergency strip lights along the floor. Her heels were quiet on the linoleum, but she slipped them off anyway after the first corridor, carrying them, walking in her stockings.
The registrar’s office was on the second floor. She’d memorized the route from the floor plan Silas had pulled, left turn at the stairwell, past the faculty mailboxes, third door on the right. The door was locked with a key card reader, which she’d expected. What she hadn’t expected was the maintenance wedge someone had left jammed in the door frame, propping it a centimeter open, just enough to get a finger in and pull.
She stood there for a second. Then she pulled the door open and went in.
The office was small and bureaucratic. Filing cabinets along one wall, a desk with a darkened computer, shelves of binders organized by year. She turned on her phone flashlight and kept it angled low, away from the windows.
She knew Elara’s student ID number. She’d gotten it weeks ago from the drama club’s administrative sheet, tucked it away on the off chance it was ever useful. Now she went to the filing cabinet for the current year, flipped to V, and found the folder.
It was thick. Academic records, housing assignments, financial aid documentation. Mia photographed everything methodically, page by page. Most of it was what she’d expected: high grades, glowing faculty references, a leadership award from the previous semester.
Then she got to the financial section.
Tuition at St. Augustine’s was substantial. The kind of number that required either family money or a significant scholarship. Elara had neither on record, no scholarship listed, but also no family payment plan, no direct billing to the Vance Group the way you’d expect for a wealthy family’s dependent.
Instead, the tuition payments came from a private account. A personal account, processed through a third-party payment service, registered under the name Jane Smith.
Mia read it twice. Then she photographed every page of the financial section and stood in the dark office for a moment, thinking.
Jane Smith. Not Elara Vance. Not anyone from EdVance Group. A private name that nobody would look at twice because it was the most forgettable name imaginable, which was probably the entire point.
She filed everything back exactly as she’d found it, slipped out the door, pulled it back to its propped-open position, and walked back down the darkened hallway in her stockings with her heels in one hand and her phone in the other.
She was back in the gymnasium in under twenty minutes, her glass of punch in hand, watching Elara hold court across the room, laughing at something, radiant and untouchable. Silas was standing around the corner, nursing his drink. Mia’s eyes met his and she signaled him to follow her. They slipped out through the side door.