“If I call CPS right now, without hard evidence, it becomes a he-said-she-said,” Nurse Higgins explained slowly, treating me not like a child, but like a survivor in a tactical situation. “Your father is a high-powered attorney. He will wrap this up in legal red tape before the sun goes down. We need proof.”
Proof. My mind raced through the haze of the fever.
The broken plate was already swept away. The bruises on my knees could be explained by a fall. My father had already testified to the lie, agreeing that I had locked the door myself in a fit of teenage hysteria.
And then, a memory hit me with the force of a freight train.
Yesterday afternoon. Standing on the freezing porch, begging for help. Looking across the street.
Not at Mrs. Gable’s house next door.
Across the street. At the Miller residence.
A month ago, Mr. Miller had his car broken into. The next day, he hired a security company to install state-of-the-art, high-definition cameras all over their property. One of those cameras, a black, dome-shaped lens mounted on the eaves of their garage, pointed directly across the cul-de-sac.
Directly at my front porch.
“The camera,” I whispered, my eyes widening.
“What camera?” Nurse Higgins asked, stepping closer.
“My neighbor,” I said, the words tumbling out of my mouth in a rush. “Sarah Miller. Her dad installed security cameras last month. One of them points right at my house. It points at the front door. It would have recorded the whole thing.”
Nurse Higgins’ eyes lit up. This was it. The irrefutable, digital proof that could tear down Brenda’s meticulously crafted lie.
“Are you sure?” she asked urgently.
“I’m positive,” I said, a sudden surge of adrenaline temporarily masking the exhaustion of the fever. “But their system overwrites every forty-eight hours to save cloud storage. Sarah complained about it once because she couldn’t find a video of her dog doing a trick. If I don’t get that footage by tomorrow, it’s gone.”
Nurse Higgins looked at the clock on the wall. It was 9:15 AM.
“I have to go to Sarah’s house,” I said, grabbing my heavy sweater off the bed.
“Lily, you can’t,” Nurse Higgins warned, stepping in front of the door. “You have a 103-degree fever. You are in no condition to leave this building. I can call Sarah down here, or I can call her mother—”
“No!” I interrupted frantically. “Claire Miller hates Brenda. They had a huge fight at a PTA meeting last year. If you call Claire and tell her what’s happening, she might give us the footage, but she also might use it as leverage to publicly humiliate my family. I need to get it myself. I need to secure it before Brenda finds out and threatens them with a lawsuit.”
Nurse Higgins hesitated. She was a professional, bound by rules and liability protocols. Letting a severely ill, abused student walk out of the building to conduct a rogue investigation was grounds for immediate termination and the loss of her nursing license.
But she looked at my face. She looked at the raw desperation in my eyes, the sheer terror of a girl who knew that if she failed, she would be sent back to the monster.
“Listen to me very carefully, Lily,” Nurse Higgins said, her voice dropping to a deadly serious register. “I am going to log you into the system as resting in the back room with a migraine. That buys you exactly two hours before I am legally required to call your parents to come pick you up.”
She walked over to a small locked cabinet behind her desk, pulled out a blister pack of high-strength ibuprofen, and handed me two pills with a small paper cup of water.
“Take these. They will bring the fever down temporarily and give you enough clarity to function,” she instructed. “You have two hours. Get the footage. Email it to an account Brenda doesn’t know about. And then, you come straight back here, and we call the police.”
I swallowed the pills, the water stinging my raw throat.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Nurse Higgins unlocked the heavy wooden door of her office. “Don’t thank me yet. Just go. Use the side exit by the gymnasium so the security guard doesn’t see you leave.”
I slung my backpack over my shoulder, pulled the thick scarf over my head to hide my face, and slipped out the door.
The cold air hit me like a wall the moment I pushed through the heavy metal exit doors by the gym. The fever was raging, making the freezing November wind feel even more aggressive. My legs shook with every step, but the adrenaline pulsing through my veins kept me moving forward.
I walked the two miles from the high school back to my neighborhood. I stayed off the main roads, cutting through the dense, wooded parks and jumping backyard fences, terrified that my father or Brenda might be driving by and spot me.
By the time I reached the edge of my cul-de-sac, the ibuprofen had kicked in slightly, dulling the pounding in my skull, but my chest felt incredibly tight. I was gasping for air, leaning heavily against the trunk of a massive oak tree at the corner of the street.
I peeked around the rough bark.
My house sat at the end of the cul-de-sac, massive, silent, and imposing. The Range Rover was gone. Brenda was at Pilates. My father was downtown. The house was empty.
I looked across the street at the Miller residence. It was a beautiful, sprawling home with a wide, wrap-around porch. And there, mounted high above the garage, a small red LED light blinked steadily on the black dome of the security camera.
It had seen everything.
I took a deep breath, fighting the urge to cough, and stepped out from behind the oak tree. I walked straight up the Millers’ long, paved driveway.
I didn’t know if Claire Miller was home. I didn’t know what I was going to say to her. I only knew that the small, blinking red light was my only ticket out of hell.
I climbed the steps to their porch and raised my trembling hand to the heavy brass knocker. Before I could strike it against the wood, the front door suddenly swung open.
Standing in the doorway was Claire Miller.
She was a tall, athletic woman in her late forties, wearing a tailored blazer and holding a set of car keys. She froze, her eyes widening in absolute shock as she looked at me.
“Lily?” she gasped, taking a step back. “My god, Lily, what are you doing here? You look terrible. Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
I looked up at her, my vision blurring, the edges of the world starting to go dark again. The adrenaline was failing me. The fever was returning with a vengeance.
“Mrs. Miller,” I croaked, my voice barely audible over the wind. I pointed a shaking finger up at the black dome on her garage. “The camera. I need… I need yesterday. Three o’clock.”
Claire Miller frowned, utter confusion washing over her face. “The camera? Lily, honey, I don’t understand. What happened yesterday?”
I felt my knees buckle. The last of my strength evaporated into the freezing air.
“She locked me out,” I whispered as the world tilted violently to the side. “Brenda locked me out.”
I didn’t hear Claire Miller scream my name, and I didn’t feel the hard wood of the porch when I collapsed. Everything just went completely, mercifully black.
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