"The truth speaks for itself. There's no need to argue with him."
I cried half the night in that hotel room over her message.
She brought me medicine. I thought she still cared, at least a little.
Turns out that scrap of caring didn't even outweigh a single line of dismissal.
My voice cracked upward, loud and raw:
"Ellie! You're shielding him—even now? He made up a sex rumor about me and you tell me the truth speaks for itself? He took my early admission spot and you tell me not to fight it?!"
Ellie cut me off, her voice louder than mine.
"Then what do you want?! You didn't show up for the exam! Neal did! He won! He got the early admission recommendation! You can throw all the fits you want—none of it changes what happened!"
I stood there, frozen. Tears fell without a sound.
The hallway was so quiet I could hear the wind.
I turned to leave. Neal's hand shot out and grabbed the red cord around my neck.
"Wait, what's this around your neck—"
The cord snapped.
The jade pendant slipped out from my collar, arced through the air, and dropped from the fifth floor.
I watched it trace a long curve and land in the flower bed below.
That was the only thing my mother ever left me.
She told me this pendant would protect me for the rest of my life.
It had cracked once before. I cried for three days and three nights over it. Ellie ran to every jade shop in the city until she found someone who could piece it back together.
When she fastened it around my neck with her own hands, she said:
"If it ever breaks again, I'll get you an even better one."
I was shaking all over when I shoved Neal back.
He lost his balance and stumbled.
Ellie caught him without hesitating.
She was holding Neal, looking up at me, her eyes cold as ice.
"Bertram, enough!"
"Can you stop snapping at everyone like some mad dog?"
I looked at Neal, safe and untouched in her arms. At the smirk curling the corner of his mouth.
I said nothing. Turned and ran downstairs.
It was pouring outside.
I dropped to my knees in the flower bed, clawing through the mud. A fingernail tore off. I kept digging, pain shooting straight up my arm.
Laughter drifted down from above.
"Look at him. Doesn't he look like a dog?"
"More like a pig, I'd say. A wild boar playing in the water, hahaha."
The words came through the rain like needles driven into my spine.
The jade pendant had broken into three pieces, lying in the muddy water.
I picked them up and closed my fist around them.
The edges cut into my palm. Blood seeped out and washed away in the rain.
I knelt there in the downpour and finally let myself cry out loud.
After that, I never went back to school.
My application was changed. My records file was picked up. There was nothing left to go back for.
Ellie sent message after message.
Bertram, stop being dramatic. Neal wasn't trying to hurt you.
The jade pendant broke, I'll find someone to fix it for you.
My parents want to have dinner with you. Will you come over?
I got your jade luck pendant back for you.
Bertram!
One after another. I didn't reply to a single one.
The day the admission results came out, she showed up downstairs at my building.
She rang the doorbell for a long time. Nobody answered.
She called me. Nobody picked up.
She sent a message:
Bert, let's go walk around the university. Check out the campus before term starts. Didn't you say you wanted to see Founders Lake?
Bert, didn't we have a deal?
Founders Lake.
We'd promised to go there together.
She said that when we got there, she'd accept my flowers and my love, and be with me.
A neighbor spotted her and sighed.
"Ellie, sweetie, Bertram's out traveling."
"He did so well on his exams. Got into South Coast University."
The hand holding her phone began to tremble.
It was the phone case I'd given her, printed with two little figures holding hands, walking through the snow.
She'd worn the red cord until the color bled out of it, and still never took it off.
*He went to South Coast?!*
