Silver Cross
A smile that only appeared when the teachers called upon her. A fake voice that mad you roll your eyes at her attempt to seem perfect but it worked. It always worked on the teachers. It made you wonder if it’s the money or the looks but I knew the answer. It’s that silver cross she let hang from her neck everyday when she walked in. Shining and tangling like it makes her far more perfect than everyone. The cross that blinded the teachers from seeing the horrid actions she committed. In the name of her religion, anything that isn’t, shouldn’t be in the school. She repeated it every time she walked past me as if I was diseased but that’s what kept her away. I only received her sneers and snarky comments but that’s as far as it ever truly went. She didn’t bother to touch me, no she practically ran away when we where in the same hallway. I don’t know when it happened, I just started looking forward to her bickering and pushing around. It made me doubt everything. She truly was a beauty.
Daughter of the 3rd richest man, good grades, blessed with unique features. She was the definition of perfect around Kensington Vale school, but she was far from it. In the dictionary, she was a narcissist that craved to make everything hers. The boys, the girls, the teachers, and even random strangers on the street. A smile so addictive, you wouldn’t even realize what she had done before it was too late. A fucking drug that I strangely wasn’t addicted to. I thought it was a blessing at first, not to fall for such a fake setup but that’s why she targeted me. I didn’t drool when she smiled and it set her off, so off she decided to pry into my life and make me the running joke of a prestigious school. All while she had that fucking silver cross around her neck. The irony in itself was hilarious. She was everything that cross told you not to be but because she wore it, no one bothered. No one. Not even the principle but I guess that’s what being rich and pretty gets you. The ultimate freedom.
A freedom I was clawing myself to get. What did my life have to do with hers? Why did Jenna’s family issues have to be thrown around? Why couldn’t she mind her business? Did it bug her that boys still wanted to get to know me even when she hissed at them that they could never have me? Was it girls still wanting to be my friends despite her rumor or the way the principal still praised me when I got the highest score of the district? Or was it the way I could get just about everything that she could but without all of daddy’s money? I was next to her, no I was over her. I didn’t need the money. I earned it. I made my name known but she was too petty to let it go. She needed me beneath, a stool to step on. She’d made sure, but the funny thing was how hard she had tried only to end up failing. She wasn’t me, she would never be me. I didn’t need a silver cross to please myself for my actions. I was better than her and she knew it.
I remember the day the shift happened. The day her glances turned into something darker. It was never sudden, it crept in slowly. Like rot. Like a bruise spreading just beneath the skin. At first, she just stared like I was something to figure out, or something to control. Then came the whispers, sharp and short, always shared with others. My name in other people’s mouths, but her fingerprints all over it.
Then came the “accidents.” The bumps in the hallway that never touched anyone else. The books knocked from my arms when no one else was looking. The silence when I turned around just her, watching, with that smug nothingness on her face.
It was only when I realized how good she was without that cross around her neck, when no one was staring at her, when she was simply herself that I lost it. Why? Why couldn’t you always be like that? Why couldn’t I get enough of you? Why couldn’t you be a sinner for me?
My hand reached out before I realized what I was doing. The chain snapped easier than I thought it would. The tiny silver cross she’d worn daily—her shield, her mask broke clean off in my hand. She gasped like I’d torn her open but it was never about the necklace. Not really. It was about what she used it to justify. The cruelty. The judgment. The fake morality she wrapped around her like it made her pure. As if wearing that cross made her better than the people she crushed underfoot.
I remember the way the hallway went quiet. Phones lowered. Whispers stopped. It wasn’t fear, I don’t think. Just surprise. She didn’t pick it up. She just stood there, frozen, like the idea of me touching her had broken some invisible rule she thought I’d never dare cross. There was fear in her eyes—undeniable but there was something else, too. Something I couldn’t place. Contempt, maybe. Or recognition. Like she’d just realized I didn’t care.
Maybe that was the real shock and then my name was called. It wasn’t a teacher. It wasn’t a friend. It was the office. The kind of call that travels through the air with weight. Finality. The voice over the intercom stiff and sharp, no room for questions. Like they’d been waiting.
Because touching a sponsor’s daughter? That was prohibited. Everyone knew it, even if no one ever said it outright. People like Miriam weren’t just students. They were investments. Their last names were stitched into banners in the gym, their parents’ names engraved on plaques in the library. Their reputations were curated like museum exhibits—untouchable, polished, immune to consequence and I had touched her.
A simple silver changed everything.
It was flashy. It wasn’t fake, I don’t think. Just a silver chain with a silver shine and a cross no bigger than a fingertip. The kind of thing you could buy for a hundred bucks at a jewelry store or find tangled in the bottom of a drawer.
And I touched her. That’s all it took. A simple silver. A snap. A ripple through a hallway full of spectators, all more afraid of stepping out of line than standing for what mattered.
I think that’s when they decided who I was. Not before, when the rumors about me started circling. Not when Jenna’s mother was dragged through digital dirt. Not even when I tried to stop it. But then. The second my hand reached forward, and I stopped playing quiet.
That’s when Miriam started to lose, even if no one said it out loud because power like hers only works if you believe in it. No, it only worked when she believed it. So when I yanked that cross, when she finally separated herself from it, she knew she had lost and it was the best thing she ever felt.
