Mrs. Vance finally caught the subtle movement out of the corner of her eye. She spun around, the smug color instantly draining from her face as she spotted the glowing screen. "What are you doing?!" she shrieked, her untouchable facade immediately shattering into sheer panic.
But the message had already been delivered, and heavy footsteps were already echoing down the hallway.
The footsteps belonged to Principal Diane Harmon, and she did not knock.
She'd been sitting in her office, three doors down, reviewing a stack of end-of-year budget requests, when her phone buzzed with a video file and a single line of text from a number she recognized as belonging to Tobias Chen, a junior in the STEM Scholars Program who had never once, in two and a half years, sent her anything more dramatic than a request to reserve the robotics lab.
You need to see this right now. Room 214.
She'd watched eleven seconds of it before she was already standing. By the time she reached the door of Room 214, she'd watched the whole thing twice, and something cold and furious had settled behind her sternum, the particular fury of a woman who has spent four years quietly worrying about a colleague and finally has proof she wasn't imagining it.
She opened the door without breaking stride.
Twenty-six students turned to look at her at once. Malcolm Reyes was still standing, torn paper scattered around his shoes like confetti from a parade nobody had wanted. Mrs. Vance had gone very pale, one hand still half-raised from where she'd been jabbing it at Malcolm's chest, and when she saw Principal Harmon's face, whatever she'd been about to say died somewhere in her throat.