I watch Elliot shove off the front of his chair in one hard motion, his lawyers scrambling to rise with him. The short break I called never really lands; the gym buzzes like a swarm in a jar, and every phone screen pointed at the stage throws tiny reflections onto the warped floor.
His lead attorney gets to the center aisle first, navy suit cutting a sharp line through the crowd. He snatches the roaming mic from our volunteer and raises a palm toward me.
“This event is over,” he announces, voice pitched for the cameras, not the people in the back. “On behalf of my client, I demand that Ms. Lane cease this defamatory broadcast immediately. The school board did not authorize this circus, and Harrow Media will pursue every legal remedy available.”
The word “defamatory” hangs in the air like a gavel. I glance at the red REC light on my mixer, then at the second camera Sadie insisted on renting, the one locked on the audience. The gym smells like dust and hair spray and nerves, with a faint trace of salt air sneaking through the high windows that overlook the dark bay.
I lean into my mic. “We’re taking a break between segments,” I say. “We’re not done.” I lower my volume a notch, but I know the stream still catches every word. “We have witnesses, physical evidence, and expert analysis. That isn’t defamation. That’s reporting.”
The lawyer jabs a finger at me. “You are a self-appointed podcaster, not a journalist. You’ve whipped up an online mob, and now you’ve put my client in physical danger. Shut. It. Down.”
A murmur swells behind him, chairs creaking, the soft thud of tote bags hitting the floor. A woman in a knit cap—one of the local advocates who has been handing out hotline cards all night—stands.
“Your client is a billionaire with a security detail,” she calls. “The girls he invited to that island were teenagers. Tell me again who was in danger.”
A younger man in a faded Crescent Bay High hoodie cups his hands around his mouth. “We heard the tape,” he shouts. “We saw Juliet’s yearbook. You don’t get to un-hear that with a press release.”
Laughter sparks, sharp and wild, laced with anger. The lawyer’s face tightens. His gaze flicks toward the row of older donors along the wall, the ones whose surnames match the plaques outside and the police rosters Katie and I pored over. Several of them wear the stiff expressions I know from PTA nights, the look that says this is not what they paid for.
“This crowd is out of control,” the lawyer snaps. “For your own safety, I urge you to leave before this turns into a riot.”
I picture the cliffs outside, the treacherous rock shelf where kids sneak cigarettes and dare each other to look down. Crescent Bay loves to pretend danger lives out there in the dark, under the postcard skyline, not under fluorescent lights in a gym full of folding chairs.
Before I can respond, Hailey’s voice cuts through from the aisle, thin but steady. “You don’t get to decide when my confession ends,” she says. Her cheeks are streaked with makeup, her bare face still naked without the mask. “You sat next to me at those Prom Throwback fundraisers, remember? You coached me on how to say ‘tragic accident’ while I toasted the same donors who paid for the cover-up.”
The lawyer swivels toward her, but the damage is already done. The room knows him now as part of the long chain that runs from regatta trophies to courtroom strategies to threats at PTA meetings.
I take a breath, taste copper on my tongue, and turn my mic back up. “Here’s what I know,” I say. “Shutting down this event doesn’t erase Juliet’s voice from those tapes. It doesn’t un-break the girls who walked off Harrow Island and learned that silence was the admission price for survival. And it doesn’t un-hear what your client is about to say on record.”
The lawyer opens his mouth to object. Elliot beats him there.
“Give me that,” Elliot snarls, ripping the mic from his hand so hard the cord jerks. The sound screeches through the PA, a brief grind of feedback that sets teeth on edge.
My breath lodges high in my chest. I have waited all season for this exact split-second: the one where his PR mask slides and there is no editor standing between his voice and my tape.
He turns full toward the stage. His cheeks blaze red, sweat shining at his temples under the harsh gym lights. When he speaks, the words come out louder than anything we’ve broadcast tonight.
“I have spent my entire life giving to this town,” he shouts. “I kept the school afloat when the state cut funding. I created jobs. I wrote checks for those stupid charity balls you all love so much. And this is the thanks I get? A witch hunt run by a dropout with a laptop and a bunch of ungrateful girls who decided regret is a business model.”
The phrase detonates through the gym: ungrateful girls. Several people flinch. Phones tilt higher, shaking now.
His lawyer reaches for his arm. “Elliot,” he hisses, “hand me the mic—”
Elliot shakes him off. “Quiet,” he barks, eyes blazing. “You work for me.”
He jabs a finger toward Hailey. “You begged to be on that island,” he says. “You and your friends. You snuck liquor. You flirted with every guy who looked at you. You loved the access until you decided to rewrite history and turn yourselves into victims because that plays better on podcasts.”
Hailey sways. One of the advocates steps close, hand hovering at her elbow without touching.
Elliot sweeps his arm toward the cluster of young women near the front—the survivor in the back row with her hoodie up, the college kids who made handmade GLASS ROSES signs, Katie standing rigid and pale beside them. “Look at this,” he rants. “A whole new generation of hysterical girls who would rather burn a town to the ground than take responsibility for their choices.”
Heat rises up my neck, prickling under my collar. My fingers clamp around my mic stand hard enough that my knuckles ache. Not because his words hit new ground; they are the same lines I heard whispered in salons and locker rooms in 1997. They are the chorus this town sings whenever a girl’s story threatens its brand.
“Elliot,” I say into my mic, voice lower, steadier. “Right now, in front of cameras, you are calling the women who came forward hysterical, ungrateful, and responsible for the harm done to them. That’s not the language of a man who wants truth. That is the language of a man who wants control.”
He swings toward me, head snapping like I pulled a string. His stare pins me to the spot.
“Control?” He laughs, a harsh bark. “You want to talk about control, Mara? You built a fan cult around a dead girl. You turned Juliet into content. You sicced your followers on anyone who dared question your narrative. You made a business out of grinding up people’s reputations and feeding them to the algorithm.”
His words hit too close in a different way. Theo’s scared recordings, Mr. Cooke’s hospital monitor, the teacher doxxed in the subreddit—every mistake I admitted into a microphone comes back in his mouth, weaponized.
“I aired my mistakes,” I say, throat tight. “You buried yours at the bottom of the bay.”
A collective “ohh” rolls through the gym, part outrage, part guilty delight. Live audiences love a sharp line. I hate how much that knowledge lives in my bones.
Elliot’s expression warps. For a second the prom king flashes through—white teeth, easy dimples—but it curdles almost immediately. His lips peel back.
“You think you’re a crusader,” he spits. “You’re just a bitter little girl from the wrong side of town who finally found a microphone big enough to make people pretend to care.”
My lungs feel tight. I remind myself to breathe, to keep my shoulders low, to own my space even when every instinct shrinks.
“And you,” he roars, swinging the mic back toward Hailey, “you owe everything you have to the fact that nobody reported what you got up to in those upstairs rooms. You should be thanking me for the story I let the world believe.”
Hailey flinches like he slapped her. A wave of boos surges from the rows behind her. One of the older men in a blazer—someone whose name has its own wing in the library—rises halfway from his seat, then sits again when he clocks the cell phones trained on his face.
I feel the tipping point arrive, a shift in the air like the moment you step too close to the cliff fence and realize loose gravel slides under your shoes. The town that let Elliot write its narrative for two decades watches him shred it live.
I lift my mic, speaking not to him but to the crowd, to the listeners, to myself. “This,” I say, “is what power sounds like when it feels entitled to women’s silence. Record it. Remember it.”
His eyes narrow into slits. “Turn that thing off,” he snarls.
He drops his own mic. It hits the gym floor with a crack that echoes off the high ceiling. In the same motion, he strides down the aisle toward the stage, shoes pounding the old parquet, every step knocking a little puff of dust into the air.
My heartbeat slams against my ribs. I step back on the low riser, heel brushing the leg of the folding table behind me. The mixer buzzes softly; the glass rose beside it gleams under the stage light, delicate and fixed in place with a thin ring of glue.
“Elliot,” his lawyer calls, sounding suddenly smaller. “Sit down. Do not approach her. Elliot.”
He ignores him. His gaze locks on me, pupils blown wide, jaw set. In that moment I see the boy from the dock, the one Juliet argued with on the tape, the one who believed he owned the script of her life.
Off to the side, the two off-duty officers Luz helped recruit move. One steps down from the bleachers, the other comes in from near the doors, both angling to intersect his path without brandishing badges or weapons, just broad shoulders and outstretched hands.
“Sir,” the taller one says, firm but calm. “You need to stop right there.”
“Get out of my way,” Elliot growls, not slowing. “This woman has harassed my family. She’s put my child at risk. I have every right to defend myself.”
The taller officer plants his feet. “Defending yourself does not involve charging the stage.”
The second officer reaches for Elliot’s arm. Elliot jerks away, momentum carrying him forward. His hip slams into the corner of my table. The glass rose wobbles, tips, and cracks against the floor, breaking into sharp petals that skitter under his shoe.
The sound slices through me. Twenty-eight years of this town polishing that symbol and here it is, shattered at his feet.
The crowd erupts. People shout, some pulling back, others surging forward. “Don’t touch him!” the lawyer yells, waving his hands. “You lay a hand on my client and—”
“Then control your client,” someone fires back from the bleachers.
For a second, the bodies between us rearrange. Elliot leans over the ruined centerpiece, arm reaching past the officers for my mic, face close enough that I can see the tiny white scar on his chin from some prep-school sailing mishap.
My throat goes dry. I taste that metallic tang again, smell cologne and dust and stale gym air all mixing into something electric and wrong. My fingers tighten on the mic stand. My mind flips through risk calculations at machine speed: custody hearings, defamation suits, bruises photographed under fluorescent light.
“Don’t,” I say quietly into the mic. The word carries farther than I intend.
“She loves this,” he snarls, voice cracking. “You love this, don’t you, Mara? You wanted your big finale. You wanted your live takedown. You don’t care who burns as long as you get your download spike.”
A hand lands on my shoulder from behind, firm and warm. “That’s enough,” a familiar voice says, not into the mic, but with a command that cuts through the noise.
I don’t need to turn to know it’s Luz. For a heartbeat I see her the way Internal Affairs would: off-duty, technically benched, in worn jeans and a leather jacket instead of a uniform, hair pulled back, badge chain tucked under her shirt. For the first time tonight, my spine inches away from the edge of panic.
She steps forward, placing herself between me and Elliot so smoothly it feels choreographed. Her eyes lock on his.
“Mr. Harrow,” she says, loud now, letting the gym hear the authority in her tone. “Step back. Right now. You are on multiple recordings, approaching a woman who has a protective history of threats. You take one more step toward her, and I will treat this as an assault in progress.”
“You’re suspended,” he spits. “You have no authority here.”
“Watch me,” she replies.
The off-duty officers close ranks with her, a line of bodies between his anger and my microphone. One of the advocates who has been working with Luz all week slips around to Hailey, guiding her toward the side of the gym, away from the heat.
Elliot breathes hard, chest heaving, eyes flicking from Luz’s face to the phones, to the banners on the walls, to the teachers pressed against the back doors. He has always known where the cameras are. Right now they trap him in a way money can’t fix.
“Every one of you will regret this,” he shouts over Luz’s shoulder, voice ragged. “You want a show? Fine. When this town collapses under lawsuits and the board pulls your funding and your kids lose their school, remember this night. Remember that you chose a dead girl and a washed-up podcaster over the people who kept this place alive.”
“We keep this place alive,” someone yells back. “Not you.”
The crowd takes it up, not as a chant, not yet, but as individual voices stepping out of the chorus. “We do.” “We’re the town.” “You’re not Crescent Bay.” It rips his last line of defense away—the idea that he alone stands between them and ruin.
Luz nods once to the taller officer. Together they angle him toward the side door near the old equipment hallway, the one that leads down toward the loading dock that overlooks the water. His lawyers scramble to flank him, throwing frantic glances at the cameras.
Elliot resists, not full force, just enough to show the world he isn’t going willingly. “Get your hands off me,” he snarls. “I am not finished.”
Luz’s gaze flickers briefly back to me. “Bring your recorder,” she says under her breath.
My hand goes to the small digital recorder clipped to my belt, the one I used when I walked the gym earlier, mapping exits and ghost stories. My thumb slides over the familiar button. The red light blinks on.
Behind me, the gym roars with overlapping voices, the echo bouncing off the rafters like distant bass from a waterfront party. The old banners sway in the stirred air. Shards of glass rose glitter at my feet.
I step off the stage, heart pounding, and follow the knot of bodies escorting Elliot toward the side exit—the man whose story has ruled this town for nearly three decades—wondering what words he will spill once the door closes behind us and how much more of myself I can afford to put on that tape.