"May, you're smiling so wide already. Go on, put the bracelet on."

May pouted at once.

"I don't want to—"

"Cornelia, don't come crying about it later!"

Godfrey snatched the bracelet from May's hand and fastened it on her wrist himself.

Then he turned his head and looked at me, almost taunting.

"Nobody owes you a thing!"

With that, he took May by the hand and walked out without looking back.

That night, May sent me a message.

"Haven't you noticed how much happier Godfrey is when he's with me? He and I never run out of things to say."

"If I'd met him first, I'd be the one with him now."

"Nelly, you might never walk again. You shouldn't drag Godfrey down with you."

"So hand him over to me, okay?"

Then came a long video.

The background was a hotel room.

Godfrey and May sat on the bed drinking, a dozen empty bottles scattered on the floor.

Halfway through the drinking, May suddenly leaned in, cupped Godfrey's face, and pressed her lips to his.

His body went rigid for a moment.

Then he lifted a hand to the back of her head and deepened the kiss.

They kissed like they couldn't bear to part, and fell onto the bed together, wrapped around each other.

The video cut off abruptly.

The black phone screen reflected my ashen face.

The next day, Godfrey came to apologize with flowers and a newly bought bracelet.

"Nelly, can we stop fighting?"

"I already took the bracelet back to the shop and had it swapped. The name's right this time."

I laughed coldly and pulled up the video May had sent the night before.

"So this is your guilty little apology after cheating on me?"

The smile froze on Godfrey's face, and something I'd never seen before flickered in his eyes—panic.

"Nelly, let me explain."

"May and I were both drunk last night. It was impulsive. I'm sorry."

"We only kissed. Nothing else happened."

I had just opened my mouth when the door of the ward suddenly swung open and May stepped in.

She was trembling, weeping like a broken flower, and shot me one timid glance before turning to Godfrey, seeming to want to speak and then holding back.

"I…"

Godfrey quickly grabbed the tissues off the table and handed them to her.

"What happened?"

May bit her lip, her eyes full of a hurt and fear that wouldn't lift.

"Someone posted on the campus forum calling me a homewrecker, saying I got between you two. The post has that video from the hospital yesterday. Now everyone at school is shutting me out."

"Godfrey, do I have to drop out? Mom and Dad won't pay for me to retake the year. What am I supposed to do with my life…"

Godfrey took the phone May held out to him.

As he read the post and watched the video, something ice-cold surged in those dark eyes.

"Cornelia, you've gone too far!"

"What?"

He turned the screen toward me.

Let me see exactly what was in the post and the video.

The video came from the camera on my wheelchair.

Back then, worried that something might happen to me when I was alone, Godfrey had installed the camera on my wheelchair himself.

The footage uploaded automatically to the cloud on both our phones.

But the thing he'd done to protect me had become the blade driven into me now.

He was certain I had made that post.

I shook my head.

"Godfrey, I didn't post that."

He didn't believe me. His eyes on me were full of anger and disappointment.

"Cornelia, I never imagined you could be this vicious."

"May waited on you hand and foot, humbled herself like a servant to take care of you. Fine if you're not grateful, but to smear her on the campus forum like this?"

"Do you have any idea what a girl's reputation means to her? Are you trying to destroy her?"

Tears welled up in May Cox's eyes.

"Nelly, if this is what it takes for you to feel better, then I won't say a word. You're my best friend, after all."

Her yielding, her sweet reasonableness, only poured fuel on the fire.

Godfrey knocked the flowers off the table with one punch, stepped on them, and ground them under his heel again and again.

"Cornelia, your cruelty terrifies me."

"Everyone has to answer for what they do. I hope you don't come to regret yours."

I lowered my eyes, my fingertips trembling faintly.

The unfairness of it sat lodged in my chest, neither rising nor settling, until I couldn't breathe.

Soon enough I understood what Godfrey had meant by those parting words.

Godfrey posted on the campus forum under his real name, saying May was his actual girlfriend, that there was no such thing as a mistress or a homewrecker.

He said all his care for me had only ever been the care a boyfriend shows his girlfriend's best friend.

When a classmate posted a photo of us together and pressed him about it, he replied that I'd used my paraplegia to play the victim and hounded him without letting go.

Someone screenshotted the whole thing off the campus forum and spread it across the internet.

Every big creator on the video apps rode the story for views.

My information was dug up in no time.

They flooded my social media accounts with insults and bombarded my phone number without stopping.

"You crippled bitch, seducing your best friend's boyfriend—doesn't it make your skin crawl?"

"No wonder you broke your legs. Even heaven knows you're rotten and wanted to punish you!"

"How does a school even admit someone so morally bankrupt? Just wait to get expelled!"

Then some worked-up stranger tracked down which hospital I was in.

He slipped into my room under cover of night and climbed onto my bed, meaning to do something to me.

A nurse doing her rounds stopped him.

It only spiraled bigger.

Then came the message from my academic advisor, urging me to drop out.

The unfairness and the collapse surged up all at once, and a sharp pain stabbed through my head.

The machine beside me broke into rapid beeping.

Breathing turned hard, the figures in front of me spinning into a blur.

The doctor rushed in.

"Someone, in here!"

"Get the sedative, now!"

Just as the sedative was wearing off, a memory I'd forgotten came flooding back.

My fall from the cliff had never been an accident.

Those hands, that face, came into focus in this very moment.

With a shaking hand, I dialed the police.

"Hello, someone's trying to kill me…"