Four Childhood Friends Played a Dare Game With Me. They Lied To Me—All For Her Chapter 07
The next day, word spread across school. I’d gotten into a NASA program.
The principal announced it himself.
I was the youngest genius in the program.
A genius.
The only one in all of New York.
The girls who’d mocked me yesterday went pale.
One of them found Damon.
“We were just joking. Who knew she’d take it so seriously and actually leave?”
Damon looked at her.
“Who knocked over the water bucket?”
Her smile froze. “It slipped.”
“The camera?”
“Also an accident.”
Damon reached out. Took her phone. Threw it into the fountain.
She screamed. “Are you insane?!”
“It slipped.”
He gave her back exactly what she’d given me.
But it didn’t make him feel better.
Because when I was standing there yesterday-he hadn’t walked over.
Now, defending me was like putting a band-aid on a healed wound.
Too late.
Roman tore through the gym. Looked everywhere.
The basketball medal he’d tossed into a junk box-buried under Nina’s clothes rack.
Edges dented.
He picked it up. Wiped it for a long time.
Then remembered. Twelve years old.
He’d won his first game. Ran to me, excited.
“Elara. Keep this for me. When I win nationals, I’ll give you the gold too.”
I’d asked, “Why me?”
He’d said, “Because you’re the most important person to me.”
Now, he’d made the college basketball team. Posted on Instagram.
But he wasn’t happy. Because he couldn’t share it with me.
Caleb tried to recover the hard drive.
Three tech teams.
They salvaged a dozen damaged clips.
One was from when we buried the time capsule at ten.
On screen, my face was covered in dirt. I said, serious,
“I hope when we’re eighteen, the five of us are still together.”
Young Damon laughed off-camera, “Obviously. We’ll still be together at eighty.”
The video cut out. Corrupted.
Caleb stared at the black screen.
For the first time, he understood.
Some things, once deleted, can’t come back.
Julian found my backup cloud drive.
Password protected.
He tried all four of their birthdays.
The day we met.
All wrong.
One attempt left. He typed my birthday.
It worked.
No group photos inside.
One folder. [Elara]
My awards. Research notes. Videos from my parents.
And photos I’d taken alone. California night skies.
They realized.
All these years, besides orbiting them-I had my own dreams.
Every time I talked about deserts, energy, research bases-they called it boring.
Nina would say, “A girl going that far alone. Must be so hard.”
And the four of them would tell me to stay in New York.
They never asked.
If I wanted to.
Nina started to unravel.
She had all the attention. But it wasn’t what she’d imagined.
Roman stopped building her furniture.
Caleb took the camera back.
Julian cancelled the video.
Damon never came to see her.
She cornered him.
“Are you blaming me?”
Damon looked at her.
“It was your idea.”
Her tears fell. “But you all agreed.”
Damon went silent.
Yes.
So they had no right to blame only her.
