Chapter 4
Zoe sneered, "Iris, I heard that you went to tell Toby?"
I did go. Toby said he'd figured out a way to transfer me to another class.
But somehow, word had gotten out.
Zoe grabbed my collar and pushed me to the top of the stairs.
She asked, "Want to run away? Have you asked me?"
She smiled as if she was saying something that didn't matter.
Then she raised his foot, aimed it at my chest, and kicked it over.
My back slammed into the railing, and I lost my balance.
At that time, I was on the third floor.
As I fell, I heard the sound of my bones breaking.
Then everything went black.
When I woke up again, I was in the ICU.
In seven days, I sent three messages begging for help, but not a single useful reply.
One mother, eight minutes.
One settlement agreement, 150 thousand dollars.
Lying in my hospital bed, I took screenshots of those three messages and sent them to Nathan.
After he finished reading them, he didn't speak for a long time.
He said, "Iris, your classmate, that girl Mia Foster.
"Today, she came to me.
"She said she has an important video."
Mia was my deskmate.
She was very quiet, her grades were nothing special, and she barely made a ripple in class.
Usually, when I was bullied, she never once spoke up for me.
I didn't blame her. After all, nobody dared cross Zoe.
But what I didn't know was that Mia had been filming everything all along.
Nathan handed me his phone. On the screen was a video, three minutes and twenty seconds long.
The footage was a bit shaky.
It was shot from the corner of the third floor, just enough to see the hallway and staircase.
Zoe was grabbing my collar and saying something, but her words were muffled in the video.
She let go, took a half-step back, lifting her right foot.
Then she kicked me hard.
I hit the railing and went right over it.
The video stopped here.
The last frame looked like Mia got scared and covered the lens with her finger.
Nathan said in a low voice, "She never dared to share this video.
"She was afraid Zoe would take revenge on her.
"But when she heard you were in the ICU, she couldn't stay silent anymore.
"She reached out to Toby last night, and he gave her my contact info."
Three minutes and twenty seconds.
This video captured the entire process.
Zoe's face, her actions, that smile right before kicking me.
Every detail was all in there.
I asked, "Dad, have you saved the video?"
He replied, "Yeah, I saved it. I've got a copy on my phone, another on a USB drive, and I uploaded it to the cloud."
I glanced at him.
It didn't seem that he thought of it at the last minute.
I asked, "You used to be a journalist, right?"
Nathan was stunned for a moment, then gave a wry smile.
He asked, "Did Elaine tell you?"
I replied, "She didn't say it. I was going through the old shelves at your bookstore and saw your press pass."
He said, "I used to work at the big city paper for eight years.
"Mostly covered community stories and did investigative reporting.
"After I divorced Elaine, I just lost the drive for it, so I started running that bookstore."
When he said he "lost the drive for it," there was a flicker in his eyes.
I didn't press him.
I asked, "Dad, with this video, can we sue her?"
He replied, "Yes. But video alone is not enough."
He pulled up a chair to my bedside, and his tone changed.
Unlike a dad comforting me anymore, he sounded like a journalist piecing together the facts.
He continued, "Iris, tell me the truth.
"Are you the only one Zoe hit at school?"
I thought about it for a moment.
I replied, "No. She hit a boy from the class next door last semester, and that boy later transferred.
"And there is another girl named Lila Reed. Zoe slapped her across the face in the bathroom.
"But they didn't call the police.
"Zoe's dad is too rich, so everyone is afraid."
Nathan nodded and took out a palm-sized notebook from his pocket.
It was already crammed with notes, two or three pages covered in messy handwriting.
He said, "Elaine didn't reply to your messages, but she read them.
"The first one was marked as read, the second she told you to handle it yourself, and the third she didn't even open.
"That meant she knew you were being bullied.
"She knew. But she chose to ignore it."
He wrote as he spoke.
His handwriting was a little messy, but everything made sense.
I suddenly had a very strange feeling at that moment.
My dad, Nathan.
He only made a little money a month, was divorced, spent seven days calling with no one answering, and wouldn't even buy himself an umbrella.
Sitting across from me, he looked like a soldier strategizing for battle.