Chapter 13: The Cost of Proof

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Chapter 12 Recap

Jamie, Riley, and Alex trace CJ’s pattern back to Hawthorne night itself, shifting the question from why CJ kept targeting Jamie to what CJ needed to protect. Alex reveals that the medication in the vial belonged to Evan Mercer, a former resident connected to CJ. Mara confirms that CJ knew about the vial before the panic started and provides a screenshot proving CJ instructed someone to push Alex’s name before campus security had even cleared the building. With proof in hand, Jamie declares that she is done letting CJ tell the story first.

Read Chapter 12 of the series.

Chapter 13

Jamie had meant it when she told Alex they were done letting CJ tell the story first. She had not expected the cost of that decision to arrive by morning. Proof did not make her feel safer. It made everything feel sharper. Mara’s screenshot sat at the centre of her mind like something she could touch. Do not let Evan answer anything. Push Alex’s name. He touched it. Jamie no longer needed the page in front of her to see it. She could picture the wording, the rhythm, the confidence in it. There was no panic in the message. There was no confusion. There was only direction. CJ had not stumbled into the Hawthorne fallout. CJ had steered it. Outside Victoria Hall, the sky looked thin and undecided, caught between late winter and the first hint of spring. Meltwater ran in narrow lines along the edges of the path. Students hurried past in half-zipped coats, still moving at midterm speed, still carrying coffees like they were structural support. Jamie stood at the window and watched them without really seeing them. Her phone buzzed on the desk behind her. It was Alex. She let it buzz once. Then twice. After a moment, she turned and picked it up. Alex: Are you awake? Alex: I keep thinking about what Mara gave you. Alex: I know I do not deserve quick forgiveness, but I do not want you handling this alone. Jamie stared at the screen. The problem was that he was doing better. A week earlier, Alex might have asked what Mara said and waited for Jamie to decide how much to reveal. A month earlier, he might have tried to soften the damage before admitting his part in it. Now he was naming the right thing. Not romance. Not apology. Not protection. He was naming aloneness. He was finally seeing the shape of the harm. Jamie typed back. Jamie: I am awake. Jamie: Riley is coming over. Jamie: We need to decide what happens next. His reply came quickly. Alex: Tell me when and where. Alex: I will follow your lead. Jamie put the phone down. She wanted to trust the sentence. She also wanted to throw it back at him for arriving so late. Both feelings stayed with her. A knock sounded at the door. Riley entered without waiting, coffee in one hand, folder in the other. Her hair was still damp from a rushed shower, and her face carried the expression Jamie had learned to associate with two things: exam season and strategic anger. “I brought caffeine and organization,” Riley said. Jamie stepped back from the window. “You say that like those are separate.” “They are, for now.” Riley set both items on the desk and unzipped the folder. Inside sat the full, growing record: screenshots from the group chats, notes from St. Patrick’s Day, the summary of the volunteer who remembered CJ hovering around the Valentine table without a badge, the photo of the envelope outside Jamie’s residence door, and Mara’s screenshot, now copied twice. Riley tapped the stack lightly. “We need to think about exposure.” Jamie folded her arms. “You mean reporting.” “I mean everything that comes before and after reporting,” Riley said. “Who gets told. In what order. What happens if CJ realizes the story is turning.” Jamie’s chest tightened. “He is going to realize.” “Yes,” Riley said. “That is why we plan before he does.” Jamie sat down slowly. The room felt smaller with the folder open. Not because the evidence was weak, but because it was real enough to matter now. Riley took the chair across from her. “Talk.” Jamie looked down at the top page. “I thought proof would feel cleaner than this.” Riley nodded once. “It never does.” Jamie let out a slow breath. “I thought getting the screenshot would make everything obvious. I thought there would be one straight line from CJ to the whole mess.” “And instead?”

“Instead it feels like standing on the edge of something,” Jamie said. “Now that we know more, the next move actually matters.” Riley’s voice softened slightly. “That is because it does.” Jamie looked up. “What if reporting makes it worse?” Riley did not rush to fill the silence. When Riley spoke, her tone stayed measured. “It might make him push back harder. That is true. It might also be the first time the story stops belonging entirely to him.” Jamie hated how accurate that sounded. Her phone buzzed again. This time it was not Alex. An unknown number. Jamie froze. Riley saw the change in her face immediately. “What?” Jamie turned the screen toward her. A single message sat there. Some people only get brave when they have a folder and a timeline. Be careful what you hand over. Jamie’s stomach dropped so hard it almost hurt. Riley’s expression went flat. “Do not reply.” “I was not going to.” But her fingers had already gone cold. The message did not mention Mara by name. It did not mention Hawthorne. It did not mention the screenshot. It did not need to. It knew enough. Riley held out a hand. “Take a screenshot first.” Jamie did. Time. Number. Exact wording. Then Riley said, “Block it.” Jamie did that too, though the action felt almost symbolic. Blocking a number did not block access. It did not block the knowledge that CJ—or someone close enough to speak for him—already understood the threat. Riley leaned back slowly. “Well.” Jamie stared at the phone. “He knows.” “Yes.” “We did not post anything. We did not tell anyone outside the four of us.” Riley’s eyes sharpened. “Four. You, me, Alex, Mara. That is the full list.” Jamie swallowed. The room got quieter. Finally Jamie said, “You think Mara told him.” Riley answered carefully. “I think we cannot treat anyone as impossible.” Jamie looked down at the folder again. Mara’s warning from the café returned with unpleasant force. Once this moves beyond rumour, CJ stops playing harmless. That had sounded like insight yesterday. This morning it sounded more like knowledge. In Chapter 12, Mara had handed over the screenshot willingly enough—but willingness and loyalty were not the same thing, and Jamie was only now beginning to feel the distance between them. Jamie rubbed her forehead. “I do not know who to trust.” Riley’s voice stayed steady. “Then trust the pattern before you trust the person.” Jamie closed her eyes briefly. That was the lesson, over and over again. Not charm. Not certainty. Not guilt. The pattern was what held. When Jamie opened her eyes, Riley was already writing the new text message into the running timeline. Jamie watched the pen move. “Who do we tell first?” Jamie asked. Riley did not stop writing. “That depends.” “On what?” “On whether you want help, consequence, or both.” Jamie sat with that. “I want this to stop,” she said quietly. Riley looked up. “That usually takes both.”

There was another knock at the door, lighter this time. Jamie and Riley exchanged a look. Riley stood first and opened it. Alex stood in the hallway, not stepping across the threshold until Jamie nodded. That mattered too. Jamie noticed all the small things now—the pauses, the permission, the absence of assumption. Alex came in with no coffee, no speech prepared, and no attempt to make himself useful too quickly. He looked tired. He also looked honest, which was not the same thing, but it was finally starting to matter. Riley handed him the phone without ceremony. Alex read the message. His jaw tightened. “When did this come in?” “Two minutes ago,” Jamie said. Alex looked up. “Did anyone else know about the screenshot?” Jamie watched his face carefully. “Why are you asking it like that?” “Because if Mara did not say anything, then it means he is watching closer than we thought.” Riley crossed her arms. “And if Mara did say something?” Alex did not flinch. “Then it means CJ is getting updates from more than one direction.” Jamie studied him. There was no immediate defence of Mara. No convenient refusal to think strategically. That was new. Alex set the phone down. “Either way, you should not wait now.” Jamie’s voice sharpened. “Wait for what?” “To decide whether to take this somewhere formal,” Alex said. No one spoke for a long moment. Riley sat back down. “I agree.” Jamie looked from one to the other. “That fast?” Alex’s expression stayed serious. “He is reacting to the existence of proof before you have even acted on it. That is not someone who is going to de-escalate because you give him time.” Riley nodded. “He does not need much information to start pushing. We already know that.” Something tense and tired pulled across Jamie’s shoulders. Formal meant telling someone in a position to record this beyond her own notes and Riley’s legal pad. It meant the story might leave the private language of survival and enter the public language of process. She hated how much that frightened her. Jamie looked at Alex. “If I report it, your name comes back into this.” Alex answered immediately. “My name was never really out of it.” She held his gaze. For once, he did not try to spare her with a softer version. Jamie nodded slowly. Riley opened the folder again. “Then we prepare properly.” The next hour turned practical in a way that almost felt cruel. Not because practicality was bad, but because it required Jamie to translate her own dread into categories. Riley sorted everything into sections: dates, screenshots, locations, witnesses, contact attempts, posts, gifts, and every connection back to Hawthorne. Riley built the list on the legal pad while Jamie organized digital copies into a single folder on her laptop. Alex sat beside her and added context where needed, but only when asked. That was another new thing. He no longer filled silence because it made him nervous. He waited. At one point Jamie opened her notes app and saw how many entries now carried CJ’s name, directly or indirectly. The Valentine table incident, the pinned photo, the envelope outside her residence door, the St. Patrick’s Day clip, the Hawthorne screenshot, the unknown warning message from this morning, and now Mara’s evidence. Laid out together, it looked less like drama and more like architecture—a structure, a system, a person learning where pressure worked best and returning there again and again. Jamie sat back. “This is bigger than I thought.” Riley did not look surprised. “Yes.” Alex’s voice came quietly from beside her. “I should have said that sooner.” Jamie did not answer right away. When she did, her voice stayed even. “You should have said a lot of things sooner.” Alex nodded once. “I know.” He reached into his coat pocket and took out his phone. “There is one more thing,” Alex said. Jamie looked at him sharply. “Do not do this to me in instalments.” “I am not,” Alex said. “I brought it because I knew it mattered.”

That changed the room. Alex unlocked the phone and turned it toward Jamie. It was an old screenshot—a direct message from last year, with CJ’s name at the top again. This one was shorter than Mara’s, but it landed just as hard. You are lucky he likes taking the hit for people. Most would not. Jamie stared at it. The date was three days after Hawthorne. “He sent that to you?” she asked. Alex nodded. “I kept telling myself it was just him gloating. I brought it today because I know better now.” Riley’s face hardened. “He was confirming that he knew exactly what happened.” Jamie looked from the message to Alex. “Why did you keep this?” Alex gave a short, tired laugh with no humour in it. “Because part of me knew I might need to remember what he sounded like.” Jamie felt the echo of Mara’s words from the café. Maybe that was one of the ugliest things about CJ. He made people become archivists of their own harm. Riley held out her hand. “Send that to me.” Alex did. The room went quiet again after that. Not empty, but charged. Jamie could feel the version of the story where CJ moved first and everyone else scrambled to catch up starting to close. Not because she felt brave, but because she felt cornered in a different direction now—by the truth. Riley broke the stillness. “We go to residence, the non-academic misconduct office, or campus security and emergency services first.” Jamie looked up. “That is not a small decision.” “No,” Riley said. “It is not.” Alex spoke carefully. “Residence might be the clearest place to start because of the envelope outside your door.” Jamie considered that. Riley nodded. “And the non-academic misconduct office because of the patterned harassment.” “And campus security and emergency services because Hawthorne keeps surfacing,” Jamie said. The three of them sat with it. For a moment, the possibilities felt too large, too procedural, too likely to reduce everything down to whether an email sounded credible enough. Then Jamie remembered the unknown message from this morning. Some people only get brave when they have a folder and a timeline. That line had been meant to shrink her. Instead, it clarified something. CJ was not only worried about the proof itself. He was worried about where the proof could go. Jamie looked at Riley first, then Alex. “We start with residence,” she said. Riley nodded immediately. “Good.” Alex did too. “Okay.” Jamie inhaled slowly. “Then the non-academic misconduct office,” she added. “But I want the residence report logged first. I want a record that he was reaching me where I live.” Riley wrote it down. Alex looked at Jamie like he wanted to say he was proud of her, but knew better than to shape the moment around his feelings. That, too, was progress. Jamie zipped the folder shut. The sound felt decisive. Her phone buzzed again. This time it was Mara. Only one line. Did he message you yet? Jamie stared at the screen. Riley saw it over her shoulder. “Well.”

Alex’s expression changed. Not surprise, but recognition. Jamie looked up sharply. “You think she knew.” Alex answered carefully. “I think Mara knows how he behaves. That is different.” Riley’s voice stayed cool. “Or she warned him and wants to know how fast he moved.” Jamie’s stomach tightened again. This was the cost of proof. Not only fear, and not only escalation. Corrosion. Every person near the truth became harder to place. Every warning carried two meanings. Every ally came with a shadow. Mara was helping, but helping was not the same as safety. Jamie typed back. Yes. This morning. Unknown number. The reply came almost immediately. Then do not wait. He is scared. Jamie stared at the message long enough to feel the fear in it—not hers, his. Riley read the reply and exhaled. “I hate that she may be right.” Alex said quietly, “So do I.” Jamie put the phone down. Then she stood. Riley looked up. “Now?” Jamie nodded. “If I sit with this any longer, I will start rehearsing all the reasons not to do it,” she said. Riley stood too. “Then we go now.” Alex rose a second later, but stopped when Jamie looked at him. “You do not come in unless I ask,” Jamie said. His face tightened for only a second. Then he nodded. “Okay.” Jamie picked up the folder. The weight of it felt different now. Not lighter, but usable. They walked out of Victoria Hall together and crossed campus under a sky that could not decide whether to clear or close. Students passed them in clumps, heading to class, to lunch, to whatever version of a normal day they still believed in. No one looking at Jamie could have guessed she was carrying a year’s worth of redirected blame under her arm. At the entrance to the residence office, Jamie stopped. Riley stood beside her. Alex stayed back, exactly where he had been told. Jamie looked through the glass door at the desk inside, at the ordinary fluorescent lights, at the person typing behind the counter. Nothing about the space looked dramatic. That helped. This was not a showdown. It was a record. Jamie tightened her grip on the folder. Riley’s voice came quietly. “You ready?” Jamie thought of Hawthorne. Of Valentine’s Day. Of the envelope outside her door. Of St. Patrick’s Day and the clip that went live before the crowd understood what it was seeing. Of Mara’s screenshot. Of Alex’s silence. Of CJ’s message this morning, trying to make proof feel embarrassing. Then Jamie nodded. “Yes,” she said. She reached for the door. Before her hand closed around the handle, Alex’s phone buzzed sharply behind them. The sound cut through the moment. Alex pulled it out and looked down. All colour left his face. Jamie turned. “What?” Alex lifted the screen. It was a new post. CJ had not used a burner account this time. It was his own name. The caption sat above a blurry photo of Jamie and Riley outside Victoria Hall from less than ten minutes earlier. Funny how some people build timelines when they realize they were never told the whole truth. Some folders are just delayed panic. Jamie stared at the screen. Her pulse slammed once against her throat. He knew where she was. He knew what she was about to do. This was the first time CJ was not hiding behind suggestion. He wanted Jamie to know he was watching.

Cliffhanger

CJ has gone public under his own name just as Jamie is about to report him. If he is no longer pretending to stay harmless, what will he do next to stop the record from becoming official?