Chapter 58 – A Radical Change of Heart – Holly Hayfield

Valentina and I continued our weekend trip in relative quiet. After finishing our conversation with Ms. Hoffman we returned to the hotel. To make the most out of the trip we tried to enjoy the amenities. There was a sizable fitness center, a built-in café, and even an indoor pool available for guests. I wanted to use the luxuries to distract myself from my frustrations with Ms. Hoffman. Va,l on the other hand, appeared to be drowning in her frustrations.

Val, from the moment we returned to the hotel, had become incredibly distant and avoidant. Whenever I tried to have a conversation with her about something other than Malorie she hardly gave me any response. This was beginning to feel uncomfortably similar to earlier experiences with Lilith. This weekend was the chance for her to open up to me more so that we could get to know each other better. That clearly wasn’t on her priority list anymore.

I felt nothing but aggravation at the fact that she was just going to spend the rest of our trip emotionally detached, isolated in her pity and anguish. I never enjoyed seeing a person in such a state and so naturally tried to toss her a rope. After an awkward session of kicking our feet around in the indoor pool in complete silence I had my fill of this version of Valentina. Seeing her so defeated, so hopeless was like seeing a shell of her former spirit.

“You should try to enjoy the rest of our time here.” I said as we walked back into our hotel room. “You’re the one that paid for this after all. I imagine it wasn’t cheap.”

“I saved up some of the money I got from working part time at my brother’s shop.” She said. “I wanted to surprise you with this whole trip.”

I smiled to try to get her to smile back, yet she remained expressionless.

“Well, it worked. I can say I definitely wasn’t expecting to leave town. I wasn’t expecting to meet Ms. Hoffman face-to-face either. Lilith is going to be foaming at the mouth when we tell her about it.”

Valentina finally showed a hint of a smile, only slightly curling the edge of her lips as I mentioned Lilith’s would-be jealousy.

“I wish it could’ve been her instead.” Valentina said.

“You regret bringing me with you?” I asked.

“No, I regret coming here myself. I shouldn’t have come to talk to her. I thought that maybe if I heard her out in person then I’d have some understanding or some revelation about why things happened the way they did. Instead I’ve got nothing but anger and frustration. I understand more about the situation with Malorie and yet that only makes things worse.”

“That sums up how I feel about Malorie’s story also. There’s nothing that makes any of it easier. The only thing we can really do at this point is to try honoring her memory until we find a way to bring her killers to justice.” I said.

“What does that mean, honoring her memory?” Val asked. “Can we really honor her memory while we sit on top of all the information about her death?”

“What do you mean?”

“We have her diary, we have the tapes, and we have valid explanations for everything that happened. It’s time we use them aggressively.”

“Do you think the police will believe us with what we have?”

“You think I’m talking about the police? No, I want to turn this on Ms. Sampson and her cronies. I don’t care about justice. I care about payback.”

Finally, as I was pressing her to speak, the emotion was returning to her voice. It was only now that I recognized I didn’t like the emotion she was showing. She was speaking with such passion that I felt like I couldn’t cut her off hear with any words of reason. The heart of this sounded like it was coming from Valentina empathizing with Malorie on a personal level. After being deceived by Iris, Val was overlapping Malorie’s story with her own.

“Payback…” I said. “Let me ask you something honestly, Val. You can hit me, you can kick me, or you can do whatever you want to me afterwards. All that I’m asking is that you give me an honest answer…”

“…What’s your question?” She asked cautiously.

“Are you so invested with Malorie because of what happened between you and Iris?”

Val blinked at the mention of the name Iris, but otherwise was unconcerned. That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting. I was expecting something generally more violent after revealing I knew about her past. I thought she might punish me for prying, or shout at me for talking to Erica. What I didn’t expect was that a smile would appear on her face.

“Ha! So Erica told you about that, did she?”

“She did… I thought you’d be furious that I knew…”

“No, I expected this… That was exactly why I wanted to keep you away from her for as long as I could, but I know she is a deceitful snake. It was only a matter of time before she slithered back into my life. She’s always wanted to get her claws back into me. It’s only natural she’d see you as an easy in. You’re too soft and caring.”

I couldn’t deny any of that.

“Well… Erica turned out to be critical in my plan with getting Megan disqualified from the student council vote. When Erica dropped out of the race to join the newspaper club that left our group practically unchallenged.”

“I’m definitely not going to thank her for that, if that’s what you’re getting to.” Val said. “Besides, Megan’s disqualification was mostly your wits at work.”

“About my question…”

“I’m not avoiding it. I’m just thinking about it. Maybe some part of me feels that way about Malorie and Ms. Hoffman because of what happened between me and Iris. I don’t know how much of that story that Erica told you, but know this. I exacted my payback on Iris. Malorie will never get to feel that sensation. She did everything right and was killed for it. That’s something I find unforgivable.”

“If you’re not interested in getting the police involved then what else is there we can really do?”

“That’s where Lilith and Jay come in.”

“Huh…?”

“This little trip wasn’t the only feature of my plans for this weekend. I’m having Lilith and Jay work on a little operation for me.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“What sort of operation…?”

“A plan to create a list of individuals involved in Malorie’s murder. We’re going to learn who they were, and who they are now.”

“Val…”

“Lilith came up with the original idea, but she said we couldn’t tell you. She said you’d tried to stop us.”

“Of course she’d say that, because that’s over the line! Is that how you want to handle things? Even if you’re able to get your hands on such private information what do you plan to do with it? Are you going to go to their houses for tea too?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, the list will suffice.”

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel before heading home. Val dropped me off somewhat unceremoniously, without wasting time with a long goodbye. She gave me a nod, a wave, and went about her way. She seemed like she was in a hurry to get back home. My mom happily welcomed me back home without ever knowing I was out of town. It wasn’t something I was going to tell her either. If I did then she’d know something was up with my ankle monitor.

I decided to dedicate the rest of my Sunday to study for the upcoming fall exams. While I was reading on my bed I noticed the commotion going on in our ChatCat group as notifications began spamming my lock screen. I opened up ChatCat on my nearby laptop to get a look at what was happening. The constant messages, to no surprise, were from Lilith trying to get my attention. She sent me literally dozens of messages on the topic of Ms. Hoffman.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to visit her?” One message read.

“Are you still mad at me over something that happened before?” Another message read.

“Why’d you go with Valentina and not me?” The next message read.

“Hey! Tell me what happened! Are you there?” The following message read.

The next few messages were basically variations of her begging me for information. Next, I noticed a direct message from Sam asking about Ms. Hoffman. It looked like the word was out about where Val and I went over the weekend. Instead of replying to them one-by-one I decided to talk about this within our main ChatCat group. I told them that I wanted to have a meeting about Ms. Hoffman and what we learned during lunch the next day. Lilith wasn’t having it.

“What…? Why? That’s not fair! Tell us now! There’s no point keeping the information to yourself if you’re just going to tell us tomorrow.” Lilith’s message said.

The nature of her message struck a nerve with me.

“Oh? When were you going to tell me about this little list project you had planned with Val?” I asked her.

“That’s different…” She said.

“Tomorrow,” I said.

Lilith, Sam, and Jay continued to ask me for information all through the night and I continued to refuse their request. Valentina appeared to be missing in action that entire Sunday. She didn’t make a single message in our ChatCat group. I knew she had a part time job helping her brother, but I wasn’t sure if she worked on Sundays. The fear in the back of my mind was that she was absent because of this ‘list’ project of hers.

The next day the ankle monitor was back where it belonged on my leg. The entire weekend with it off went without a single hiccup. That meant I could confidently keep this up without being caught. There was no point in taking it off during school hours so I strapped it back on to wear to school. However, after school I planned on returning it to the spoofing device. It felt nice to feel like I was in control of it, instead of it being in control of me.

Lilith was unusually eager to talk to me, hoping I might spill the beans before lunch. The unfortunate thing for her was that Val was echoing my plans to discuss the situation at lunch. As the official student council president her plans to have a lunch meeting were now official business. It was weird to think about, but we actually had come upon a unique status as the official student council. Our use of the student council room was undeniably legitimate now.

In a similar light, I found people treating me with respect throughout the day. People went out of their way to avoid showing me any sort of disrespect, even in the narrow hallways. People I didn’t even know were greeting me as I walked by to get to my locker. Just before we won the election my mornings were quiet with the exception of my ChatCat messages. Now, I had random strangers coming to speak to me. A few freshmen girls even came to ask for my ChatCat ID.

It was all very new to me, and yet somehow nostalgic. At my old school I was fairly popular, but that felt like a lifetime ago. Even then, people from other grades didn’t usually approach me out of the blue. The thing that I was noticing was just how taken they were by my speech. Some girls were still raving about it and had no problems coming to talk to me between classes. Between my first period class and lunch I had received dozens of folded notes from girls that wanted to talk to me.

In class, the difference in treatment continued to shine through. Girls that used to ignore me, girls that used to talk about me behind my back, girls that used to be outright rude to me were now treating me as if I were royalty. I was beginning to feel like I was royalty myself. For some of them it was purely because of the status that came with the title of student council vice president. For others, the most devoted, they couldn’t get over just how much my speech resonated with them.

That speech kept coming back to me. When I gave it I wasn’t expecting to be as positively received as I was. The reception I got from it seemed to be proving Val’s point that this school desperately needed change. I always agreed with her, but this sort of reaction to my speech gave me more experiences with the issue. I read the notes I received from some of these girls during class. Most of them were just happy to learn that they weren’t alone.

When lunch finally came, Lilith and the others beat me to the student council room. They wouldn’t even let me take a bite out of my food without explaining what happened. Luckily Val saved me when she came into the room. It was Val that gave the lengthy, heavily biased report of Ms. Hoffman. As expected, she wasn’t going to take Ms. Hoffman’s personal struggles into consideration whatsoever. For Val, this was just more fuel for her holy war.

“That’s why I’ve come to a new conclusion.” Val said after explaining her frustration with Ms. Hoffman, “We need a much more aggressive method for getting information about Malorie out there. I’m tired of waiting on the sidelines. I want to do something.”

“I don’t think anyone noticed the graffiti from Megan’s video yet.” Sam said. “We need to get that out there. Megan’s video was supposed to disqualify her and get the Immortal Diary into the public know. Is there any way we can still do that?”

“There is!” Lilith said. “I made sure to download Megan’s video once we found out about it. I uploaded it anonymously to a few video hosting sites under throw-away email addresses. There are more copies of Megan’s videos out there. It’s just that no one is seeing them.”

“No surprise,” Jay said. “Megan took down her original video only after a few days. Her site was popular so it had no problem landing in her in trouble. Getting more people to watch a secondary source for the video will be difficult.”

“Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way.” Sam said. “Maybe we shouldn’t focus on the video. Maybe we need to put the graffiti up somewhere that it’ll be seen plain as day.”

“Can I interject on all this?” I asked. “What you guys are saying is all pretty out there. We don’t know how people will even react to Malorie’s diary alone. The whole point of having the Immortal Diary discovered from a video of the basement was to ensure people linked the suspiciousness of the basement with the suspiciousness of Malorie’s diary and disappearance.”

“You’re right.” Val said. “We can’t just put the graffiti of the Immortal Diary up on the wall somewhere. We still need them to see Megan’s video and draw that conclusion themselves, but how?”

“That’s not where I was going with my interjection… I’m saying that if we cross this line it could create a serious schism within the school.” I said.

“A schism is exactly what we need.” Lilith said. “It’s like we’ve all been saying right here in this very room. We won’t be able to make serious change within the school without radical changes. You agree with that, don’t you?”

“I do.” I said. “I believe that with all my heart. I’m just not sure which way is the most meaningful.”

“People have been emailing me about the speech you gave.” Val said. “I think you know just how much we need to do this. It isn’t just about getting payback for Malorie and shedding light on her murder. It’s about fundamentally changing this school. Think about it… Ms. Sampson, Ms. Logan, and their ilk were willing to go as far as killing their vice principal to institute their changes. I’m not asking anyone to go that far.”

“That’s true.” I said. “I just want to make sure that no matter what we do we aren’t left with regrets.”

“I think if we don’t do something before we go off to college things will be more regrettable.” Jay said. “The other students voted us into power, we should use it.”

“They’re right.” Sam said. “I know you’re just being cautious and looking out for us, but this is where we have to put our foot down. If we don’t do anything then the cycle of troubled girls goes on and on. A literal murderer runs this school. If we don’t do something to try to oust her, who will? We could leave this school as it is and go off to college without ever looking back. Or we can work to make it better and more hospitable to girls like Malorie. Which would you choose?”