My voice was raised enough that it pierced through their celebration, and several of them turned their attention toward me.
“What’s she talking about?” one of the guys asked another, who shrugged.
“I’m talking about how I would have won,” I hobbled toward the Sigs, ignoring that I was half barefoot, “if your guy Riley hadn’t intentionally slowed me down.”
Colin materialized from behind his brothers, wearing a skeptical expression and muddy handprints across his shirt from where people had grabbed him in celebration. He stepped up and looked down his long nose at me. “What, now?”
“Riley took my baton and threw it away. I had to go chasing after it.”
He glanced over my head toward the end of the obstacle course where Riley, Zoe, and the referee were slowly making their way to join everyone else at the finish line. Colin considered my statement for a single moment, and then shook his head.
“I didn’t hear a whistle.”
My hands hung at my sides, and I balled them into fists. “No, and I would love to know why the ref didn’t use it. All this happened right in front of him.”
Riley marched through the mud, and as he approached, he had the balls to look confused. “Did we win? What’s going on?”
Colin jerked his head my direction. “This one says you cheated.”
Riley slapped a hand to his chest in a gesture that screamed, who, me? His gaze found mine and zeroed in. “How exactly did I cheat?”
“You took my baton and threw it across the—”
He waved a hand like he didn’t want to listen to any nonsense. “No, sweetheart. You dropped your baton. Don’t go blaming me for your mistake.”
Sweetheart?
Anger swelled like a tornado of bees in my head, and it was so intense, my vision blurred for a moment. I had to draw in a slow, measured breath to collect myself before speaking, because I worried my outrage might make me spiral out of control.
Thankfully, this gave time for Zoe to make her way over to us. She’d stopped at one point during her walk and pulled something from the muck, and as she came closer, I realized she’d retrieved my shoe for me.
“Tell them,” I pleaded, “how you saw Riley steal our baton.”
She pulled up short when every pair of eyes on the field turned to her, and her mouth opened, readying to speak. But nothing came, and when her gaze landed on mine, I saw the truth. She wasn’t sure what to say.
Her voice was hesitant. “My foot slipped right after I let go of the baton, and I nearly fell. By the time I got back over the wall, all I saw was it on the ground and you running after it.”
“See?” Riley put his hands on his hips and sounded vindicated. “She dropped it.”
It was a fucking miracle flames didn’t come out of the sides of my face. “I didn’t.”
“Yeah?” His tone was calm and matter-of-fact, like a lawyer arguing a case they already knew they were going to win. “Let’s see what Elijah has to say.” His focus swung toward the referee. “You saw her drop the baton, didn’t you?”
Elijah’s expression went blank, concealing whatever thoughts he had about going along with the lie, or if he should do the right thing and strip the win away from the Sigs. His eyeline fell subtly, just enough so he couldn’t see me as he nodded. His voice was small. “That’s right.”
It sounded terribly unconvincing to me, but that didn’t matter to the Sigs. This was more than enough proof for them, and some went immediately back to celebrating.
“No,” I said. “No.” I flung a finger toward the Fidelity Cup. “Lambda Theta Chi is the legitimate winner. That cup is ours.”
The guy who had the bullhorn clasped at his side was on the Greek council, which oversaw the tournament. It meant he was essentially the head judge, the final say. He gave a long sigh. “Look, the referee didn’t blow the whistle.”
My frustration was reaching critical mass. “Because he’s in on it with the Sigs!”
A few of the Sigs scoffed and had the nerve to look offended, but none more so than Colin. He rolled his eyes. “Jesus, you’re a sore loser.”
“No, I’m not,” I hissed. “Because I didn’t lose.”
Maybe she wanted to distract and diffuse the situation, or perhaps it was meant as a peace offering since she wasn’t able to back me up, because Zoe came over, bent, and set my mud-filled shoe on the ground beside my bare foot.
It was a nice gesture, but it didn’t help with the isolating feeling that crawled up my spine. No one believed me, maybe not even my own sisters. Some of them were looking at me with skepticism, and a few with outright side-eye. Definitely Tiffany, whose gaze was critical.
It felt like a hole opened in my chest, but it wasn’t in my nature to give up. As I bent down to shake the mud out of my shoe, I tried to think of a way I could prove I was telling the truth.