Chapter 6
Those words from Chris hit harder than I'd expected. I looked at him and asked seriously,
"Are you sure?
"Emily's fans could tear your whole life apart.
"Her team might even come after you with dirtier tricks than that."
Chris gave a bitter little smile.
"My life's already a mess. What do I even have left to be scared of?
"I've had nightmares all these years.
"That fire is always in them. So is your crying."
He paused, lowering his voice even more.
"Actually, the fire wasn't an accident."
My heart dropped hard. I'd had a bad feeling for a long time, but hearing him confirm it still sent cold through my whole body.
"It was Emma King."
Fear and hatred ran deep in Chris' eyes.
"She locked the warehouse door.
"She wanted to burn all of us alive.
"Because that day, the Director announced that a prospective parent planned to adopt one of the older kids.
"They had seen your drawings and were really interested in you."
So that was it. The fire that burned down my whole childhood had started for a reason that stupid.
All because I got in her way. She wanted me wiped off the face of the earth for it.
What a vicious thing to do. What a terrifying thing to be.
My nails dug deep into my palm.
At the next table, Harper had already gone pale listening to all this. She'd probably never imagined a person could be this evil.
Chris took a deep breath and kept going.
"I have something too.
"Maybe it can help."
He pulled an old notebook out of his bag, wrapped in layer after layer of plastic. It was a diary.
"It's my diary from back then.
"I wrote down some of the things... she did to us.
"Including what she said before the fire."
I took the diary from him and opened the yellowing pages. The handwriting was childish, crooked, and uneven.
[June 5, Sunny. Emma King stole my dinner roll again today. She said I didn't deserve to eat.]
[June 12, Rainy. She stomped on Sadie's drawing board and broke it. Sadie cried all day.]
[July 20, Cloudy. She said trash like us that nobody wanted should all be burned up, so the world could be clean.]
One entry after another. Those buried crimes were right there in black and white, impossible to look away from.
I closed the diary and said to Chris,
"Thank you, Chris.
"This is enough."
Chris nodded, but his expression stayed heavy.
"Be careful.
"She's even crazier now than she was before."
After saying goodbye to Chris, Harper and I went back to the apartment. She stayed silent the whole ride home.
"This is attempted murder!
"Sophie, we have to call the police!"
I shook my head.
"It won't do much.
"Too much time has passed. We don't have direct evidence, and a childhood diary alone won't be enough to convict her.
"And besides, she's Emily Rivers now, not Emma King.
"Legally speaking, they almost look like two different people."
Harper got anxious.
"Then what? We just let it go?
"Of course not."
I walked over to the dust-covered metal box and opened it again. I placed the old MP3 player beside Chris' diary.
Then I looked up at Harper.
"If the law can't judge her yet, then public opinion will.
"Doesn't she love standing on the moral high ground, soaking up everyone's worship?
"Then I'll drag her down from there with my own hands.
"I'll make her taste what it's like to be condemned by everyone and fall straight into hell."
My voice was cold, without a trace of emotion.
Harper looked at me, a flash of pity crossing her eyes, but there was even more resolve there.
"Okay!
"I'm with you!
"Let's post it right now. The audio, the diary, everything!"
I stopped her.
"No. Not yet.
"If we show all our cards at once, we'll only give her room to bite back.
"We release it piece by piece.
"Slowly. Like cutting away her mask one slice at a time."
I looked at my phone. Emily's trending topic was still sitting right at the top.
Her fans were still celebrating in my comment section. I picked up my phone and logged into Twitter.
Harper asked nervously, "What are you doing?"
I ignored the hundreds of thousands of curses and death wishes and opened the posting window instead.
Then I uploaded a file without hesitation: the MP3 audio file holding a crime from twenty years ago.
Harper's eyes widened. I looked at her and typed the caption for the post.
There was no long explanation. No frantic defense either. Just one short sentence: [The truth has a voice.]
I hit post. And in that instant, the whole world went silent.