The judges flagged it immediately.
As an author who'd already won multiple awards, I had a real shot at first place.
But the moment the duplicate surfaced, I was dragged into a firestorm.
I went to Clementine, the editor who'd given me the story inspiration, and to Clara, the childhood sweetheart I spent every day with, begging them to speak up for me.
They refused. Worse—they went public, told everyone they were ashamed to even know me.
Clara took it further. She posted online announcing she was cutting all ties with me, and the post exploded—dragging me and my parents into a harassment campaign that never stopped.
The reason I'd entered the contest in the first place was the three-hundred-thousand-dollar first-place prize.
An illness had taken Clementine's voice. She would never speak again.
I wanted that money to pay for surgery to bring it back.
When the results dropped, I didn't just lose the prize—I got buried under a crippling penalty instead. And Geoffrey Harrington, who had never written a single thing in his life, walked away with first place. His entry was praised as the best short novel in years. A film studio snapped up the rights. An adaptation was already greenlit. Overnight, he was the name on everyone's lips—the brilliant new voice in fiction. And I was the plagiarist everyone loved to spit on.
The scandal was severe enough that the school expelled me and demanded full payment of the penalty.
Without a degree, all I could do was deliver food.
Customers dumped their orders over my head and left one-star reviews for fun.
My mother ran from office to office trying to get someone to listen, to clear my name.
The mobs found her instead. By morning she couldn't stand, and they rushed her to the ICU.
To cover those bills, I hauled cement at a construction site—bag after bag, until my hands bled and the debt barely moved.
I barely lasted a few days before the foreman kicked me off the site and kept every cent of my pay.
Then the hospital called.
My mother was dying. They told me to prepare myself.
That last thread inside me snapped, and I had nothing left.
Late one night, I climbed to the hospital rooftop and stepped off the edge.
I never expected to open my eyes again—days before the writing contest, back in a life I'd already lost.
Even now, there were things I still couldn't make sense of.
Clementine was my own sister. How could she have set me up?