I let out a tired sigh. “I know you know what it means, sir.”
He straightened his shoulders. “No, I don’t. You’ll have to elaborate.”
“The whole school is bullying me on the Princes’ orders,” I said, even though I knew he was lying about not knowing what the blacklist was. “They stalk me. Say horrible things to me. Send nasty messages. They even got someone to put a hole in my boat today, just before the race.”
Sanders raised a brow. “Okay. I’m not saying I’m aware of this ‘blacklist’, or whatever you call it, but if I was, I’d assume it only applied to students who…” He trailed off for a second, rubbing his chin. “Students who earned their place on the list, so to speak.”
“I don’t deserve to be on it, sir. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Then what makes you think you’re on it?”
I gaped at him. “I just told you! The bullying. The guys breaking into my dorm. All of that!”
“Can you prove any of it?”
“I have some screenshots,” I said. “I showed them to Ms. Flores the other day, and she suspended the students. But that was just a few of them, and they aren’t the ringleaders.”
He muttered under his breath to Fox, something about ‘that silly woman not giving up on her bleeding-heart crusade’, which was obviously a dig at Flores. Then he looked back at me. “Aside from those screenshots—which, as you’ve said, only incriminate a handful of students—do you have any evidence that the whole school is bullying you?”
My shoulders slumped. “Not really. But I’m working on it.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Laney, I understand that you’ve had some… issues in the past. Issues which may have affected your emotional state. Perhaps that’s why you’ve managed to convince yourself that you’re being targeted by all these bullies.” He sighed and shook his head. “Perhaps you don’t even realize you’re doing it.”
Professor Fox looked on sympathetically as he spoke, and my eyes widened.
They didn’t believe me. They thought I was just crazy or attention-seeking. As if I broke in here earlier, dumped my stuff, wrote myself the note telling me to break back in here to get it all back, and then made the call to Sanders to tip him off. All so I could ‘prove’ I was being blacklisted by the Princes.
If that wasn’t the case, and they actually did believe me, then they were clearly trying to invalidate my story in order to sweep everything under the rug, which would keep the other students out of trouble. Students whose money they depended on for their livelihoods.
Either way, I lost.
“So what happens now?” I asked in a low mutter.
“We’ll let you off with a warning over tonight’s incident,” Sanders said. “I don’t see why it has to go any further than that.”
There it is. They know I’m innocent.
If they genuinely thought I was losing my mind and hallucinating all of my bullying, they’d force me to seek psychiatric help.
I gritted my teeth. “Thank you,” I murmured, figuring there was no point arguing. I’d only get myself into more trouble.
“The security guards will escort you back to your dorm,” Sanders said before striding out of the room.
Before I could go, Professor Fox lay a hand on my shoulder. “Be careful, Laney,” he muttered.
“Careful?” My eyes widened again. “With what?”
“Just try to…” He trailed off abruptly, eyes darting to the security guards and then back to me. He lowered his voice to a whisper so the guards wouldn’t hear. “Stay out of trouble, or you’ll regret it.”
Before I could ask him to elaborate, he scurried out of the room, leaving me standing there with my mouth hanging open like a fish out of water. His words echoed in my mind, sounding increasingly sinister every time they repeated.
Stay out of trouble, or you’ll regret it…