She laughed while he stumbled to stand on one leg…
Arthur’s knees shook, his hand gripping the barre for dear life. Behind the fake plant by the water cooler, Chloe’s phone recorded everything—every twitch, every misstep, every moment he wasn’t quite enough. Then she posted it. With sound effects. With commentary. With a laugh track. Over a million people watched and laughed at him, thanks to her.
I used to think I was lucky to have found Chloe’s class—safe, welcoming, warm. But now I know better. She played nice in person, and played god online.
She thought no one would ever find out.
She thought wrong.
By the end of this, she won’t be laughing. Not when the projector clicks on, the truth lights up the mirrored wall, and every quiet witness in that room finally sees her for who she really is.
Gentle Deception: More Than Just a Stretch
The air in the studio smelled of lavender oil and quiet effort. It was a scent I’d come to associate with relief. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I drove to this clean, sunlit room for “Joint Effort,” a class designed for people whose bodies had started keeping score. My scorecard was the persistent, grinding ache in my left hip, a souvenir from fifty-eight years of living.
Chloe, our instructor, floated around the room on a cloud of Lululemon and relentless positivity. “Beautiful, Sarah! Keep that core engaged. Remember your breath is your anchor.”
I breathed. My anchor felt like it was dragging along a rocky bottom, but I smiled back. Chloe had a way of making you want to try. She was barely twenty-five, with a cascade of blonde hair tied in a complicated knot and the kind of energy that suggested she’d never once woken up with a stiff back.
She moved over to Arthur, who was holding a light resistance band. At seventy-eight, Arthur was the patriarch of our little group of creaky joints. He was a widower, and I knew for a fact this class was the only thing that got him out of his apartment twice a week. He fumbled with the band, his papery skin creasing with frustration.
Chloe placed her hand gently on his. “Let’s try it this way, Arthur. Think of it like you’re pulling back a bow and arrow. Strong and steady.” Her voice was a perfect blend of encouragement and respect. We all watched, a silent chorus of approval. She was a good kid. She made this place feel safe.
After class, my daughter Lily was waiting for me in the lobby, her face illuminated by her phone. “Ready to go, Mom?”
“Just let me catch my breath,” I said, sinking onto the bench beside her. “Chloe kicked my butt today.”
“Uh-huh,” she murmured, her thumb swiping furiously. “You have to see this toxic influencer I found. She’s the worst.” Lily angled her phone toward me, and the assault began.
A Familiar Venom
On the screen, a young woman with Chloe’s exact shade of blonde hair was narrating a workout video in a snarky, mocking voiceover. The person in the video, filmed without their knowledge, was an older woman struggling to get onto a yoga ball. Each time the woman wobbled, the influencer, whose handle was @FlexyLexi, made a cartoon “boing” sound effect.
“It’s like watching a baby deer learn to walk,” FlexyLexi’s voiceover sneered, “if the deer was a hundred years old and drunk on cheap gin.”
A wave of hot, secondhand embarrassment washed over me. “Oh, that’s just awful,” I said, pushing the phone away. “Why would anyone make that? Why would anyone watch it?”
“Rage-bait,” Lily said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “She gets millions of views. People love to hate her.” She scrolled to another video. This one showed a man at a public gym, his form all wrong on a lat pulldown machine. FlexyLexi had superimposed text over the video: “He’s training to pull his own shoulder out of its socket.”
I felt sick. It was the violation of it—the assumption that a person’s private struggle was public entertainment. I was about to tell Lily to turn it off for good when I saw it. As FlexyLexi gesticulated wildly for the camera in her own intro, her wrist turned. There, on the delicate skin just below her thumb, was a small tattoo of a hummingbird, its wings outstretched in mid-flight, rendered in fine, black ink.
My breath hitched. It was the same tattoo Chloe had. I’d noticed it weeks ago when she was adjusting my form. I’d even complimented her on it. She’d beamed and said, “Thanks! It’s to remind me to always be light and seek out the sweetness.” The memory, once charming, now curdled in my gut.
An Anchor of Doubt
“What’s wrong?” Lily asked, noticing my expression.
I shook my head, trying to dislodge the image. “Nothing. Just tired.” It couldn’t be. It was a coincidence. Tattoos aren’t exactly unique, especially something as popular as a hummingbird.
The drive home was quiet. Lily chattered about her work, but my mind was stuck in the studio, replaying Chloe’s patient voice, her gentle hands, and then seeing that tattoo on the wrist of the cruel woman on the phone.
Mark was in the kitchen when I got home, wrestling with the lid of a pickle jar. He grunted, his face turning red. “This thing is hermetically sealed.”
I took the jar from him, tapped the edge of the lid firmly on the granite countertop, and handed it back. It opened with a satisfying pop. “It’s all about breaking the vacuum,” I said, the words feeling hollow.
“You’re a genius,” he said, kissing my forehead. “How was class?”
“It was fine,” I said, pouring a glass of water. I leaned against the counter, the cool stone a poor substitute for the certainty I craved. “Hey, Mark. A lot of young women have tattoos, right? Like, little birds or something?”
He crunched loudly on a pickle. “I guess. Lily’s got that weird moon thing on her ankle. Why?”
I tried to make my voice casual. “The instructor, Chloe, has a hummingbird on her wrist. And Lily just showed me this horrible video of some influencer who has the same one.”
Mark shrugged, already losing interest and reaching for another pickle. “So? It’s a big world, Sarah. Two people can have the same tattoo. It doesn’t mean they’re secretly the same person leading a double life as a fitness villain.”
He meant it to be reassuring, a simple application of logic. But his dismissal felt like a challenge. He was right, of course. It was an absurd leap. But the feeling—that cold dread that had seized me in the lobby—wasn’t logical. It was primal. It was the feeling of a mask slipping, just for a second, revealing something ugly underneath. I wanted him to be right. I needed him to be right. Because if he wasn’t, then the safest place I had found in years was actually the most dangerous.
The Search Begins
Sleep didn’t come. I tossed and turned, the image of the tattoo burned onto the back of my eyelids. Mark’s steady breathing beside me was a rhythm I usually found comforting, but tonight it just highlighted my own racing heart. This was stupid. I was a retired project manager, a woman who lived by spreadsheets and timelines, not wild, paranoid fantasies.
But I couldn’t let it go.
Slipping out of bed, I took my phone to the living room. The house was dark and silent. I sat on the couch, the glow of the screen painting my face in an unnatural blue light. My fingers trembled slightly as I opened my texts with Lily.
Me: Hey, honey. Sorry to bug you so late. What was the name of that influencer’s account again?
I stared at the screen, watching the three little dots appear and disappear.
Lily: @FlexyLexi. Why? You’re not actually going to follow her, are you? She’ll rot your brain.
Me: Just curious. Thanks. Go to sleep.
I typed “FlexyLexi” into the search bar of the app. The profile picture was a professionally shot headshot of a smiling, confident blonde. It looked a little like Chloe, but more polished, with more makeup. It could be anyone.
Then I clicked on the profile and began to scroll.
It was a nightmare library. Dozens and dozens of videos, each one a little square of casual cruelty. A man whose shorts were on backward at the squat rack. A woman who tripped on a treadmill. Each video was set to obnoxious music, plastered with captions designed for maximum humiliation. “Grandpa’s trying to get his groove back but he left it in 1978.” “Is this yoga or an exorcism?”
My stomach twisted. This wasn’t just “rage-bait.” It was a systematic campaign of mockery against the vulnerable, the unknowing, the people who were just trying. People like Arthur. People like me.
I kept scrolling, my thumb moving with a morbid, unstoppable momentum, pushing me deeper into the digital darkness. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to rest until I found it.
The Digital Rabbit Hole: Faces in the Footage
My eyes were burning from the screen’s glare, but I couldn’t stop. I scrolled back, weeks, then months. The videos blurred into a collage of other people’s worst moments. Then I saw a thumbnail that made my blood run cold. It was the water cooler from our studio. The angle was low, partially obscured by a faux-leafy plant the gym owners had put there to make the place feel “organic.”
The video was titled: “Some people fight their demons. This guy’s fighting gravity. (SPOILER: Gravity is undefeated).”
I pressed play.
The video was shaky, clearly filmed on a phone hidden behind the plant. It was focused on Arthur. It was from two, maybe three weeks ago. I remembered that day. He’d been having a bad day with his balance, frustrated but determined. The video showed him holding onto the barre for support, trying to do a simple standing leg lift. Each time his leg wavered, an idiotic “boing” sound effect played. When he finally stumbled and had to catch himself, the video zoomed in on his face, his expression of pure frustration, and a laugh track erupted.
But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was a fleeting, two-second clip at the very beginning. The person filming had fumbled with their phone, and for a split second, the camera had flipped, showing the filmer’s own face, wide-eyed with the thrill of her secret cruelty before she corrected it.
It was Chloe. No doubt. No filter, no professional lighting. Just her, in our studio, a smirk playing on her lips.
The phone slipped from my hand and clattered onto the hardwood floor. The sound was sharp and violent in the quiet house. I sat there in the dark, the silence pressing in on me, my own breath coming in ragged, angry gasps.
A Thousand Paper Cuts
I picked up the phone and forced myself to look at the rest of it. The video of Arthur had 1.2 million views. I scrolled down to the comments, a masochistic impulse driving me on. There were thousands of them.
“LOL he moves like a broken action figure.”
“My grandpa can fall better than that.”
“This is why we need to keep old people off the roads AND out of the gym.”
“FlexyLexi you are a SAVAGE for this one love your work!”
Each comment was a tiny, digital paper cut. Apathetic. Cruel. Dismissive. They weren’t just laughing at a video; they were laughing at Arthur. At his age, his vulnerability, his effort. They were laughing at the very thing our class was supposed to be a refuge from. They had taken his private moment of struggle and turned it into a global punchline.
And Chloe had served it to them on a silver platter. Chloe, who had put her hand on his and told him he was strong. The hypocrisy was so profound it was dizzying. I thought about her salary, probably not much, and the siren song of influencer cash. Was that what this was about? Selling out this kindhearted old man’s dignity for a sponsorship deal with some protein powder company?
I felt a rage so pure and white-hot it almost choked me. It was a fury I hadn’t felt since a boy in Lily’s third-grade class had broken her science project on purpose. This felt the same—the deliberate, malicious destruction of something carefully and hopefully built.
I saved the video to my phone, a piece of evidence I didn’t yet know how to use. I felt like a detective at a crime scene where the body was still breathing, completely unaware of its own murder. I had to tell him. But how? How do you tell a man like Arthur that his sanctuary has been violated and the video of his deepest physical insecurity is a source of amusement for a million strangers?
The Weight of Knowing
The next morning, I couldn’t face the class. I sent a text to Chloe—“Hip is acting up, won’t be able to make it today!”—and the cheerful, immediate reply felt like a slap in the face.
“Oh no, feel better Sarah! We’ll miss you! Rest up! ❤️”
The heart emoji was a special kind of insult.
I spent the day in a fog of indecision. I paced the house, re-watching the video of Arthur until I had every wobble, every grimace, memorized. I showed it to Mark when he got home from work. He watched it once, his face grim.
“Jesus, Sarah,” he breathed. “That’s… that’s monstrous.”
“What do I do?” I asked, my voice cracking. “I have to tell him, right? He has a right to know.”
Mark sank onto the couch, running a hand over his face. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t. Think about it. What does telling him accomplish? It will devastate him. It will humiliate him. Maybe it’s better if he just… doesn’t know. What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.”
I stared at him, my frustration mounting. “How can you say that? It’s already hurting him! A million people are laughing at him! His privacy, his trust—it’s all been stolen and sold. Keeping it from him isn’t protecting him, it’s making us complicit in the lie. It’s treating him like a child.”
“And telling him is treating him like what? A target? Sarah, he’s a proud man. This could break him.”
We were at an impasse, standing on opposite sides of a deep ethical chasm. His argument came from a place of kindness, a desire to shield an old man from pain. Mine came from a place of anger, a belief that the only way to heal a wound is to expose it to the air. But what if the exposure was too much? What if Mark was right, and the truth would do more damage than the lie? The knowledge sat inside me like a lead weight, and I had to decide whether to share its burden or carry it alone.
The Phone Call
I waited until evening. I knew Arthur usually watched the nightly news at 7:00, followed by a game show. I dialed his number at 8:15, giving him time to settle in. My heart hammered against my ribs with each ring.
“Hello?” His voice was reedy but cheerful.
“Arthur, it’s Sarah from class.”
“Sarah! How nice to hear from you! We missed you today. Is the hip alright?”
The genuine concern in his voice made what I was about to do feel ten times worse. “It’s fine, thanks for asking. Listen, Arthur, I have something… I have to talk to you about something important. It’s about the class. It’s difficult to explain over the phone. Would it be alright if I came over?”
There was a pause. The cheerfulness evaporated from his voice, replaced by a cautious curiosity. “Is everything okay?”
“I just think it’s something you need to see for yourself,” I said, my own voice strained. “I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Alright,” he said slowly. “I’ll see you then.”
I hung up the phone, my hand shaking. Mark was watching me from the doorway of the kitchen, his expression a mixture of worry and disapproval. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. We both knew I had just lit a fuse. The only question was how big the explosion would be. I grabbed my car keys and my phone—my evidence, my weapon—and walked out the door, into the cool night air.
The Unlikely Arsenal & Promise
Arthur’s apartment smelled of old books and cinnamon. He led me to his small, tidy living room, gesturing for me to sit in a floral armchair. He sat opposite me on the sofa, his hands clasped over his knee, his eyes full of gentle confusion.
“So,” he began, “what’s this all about, Sarah? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I couldn’t find the words, so I just handed him my phone, the video already cued up. “You need to see this, Arthur.”
He put on his reading glasses and took the phone. I watched his face as he watched the screen. I saw the initial flicker of recognition, the dawning horror as he realized what he was watching, and then, as the laugh track played, I saw something in him just… collapse. The light in his eyes went out. All the pride and quiet dignity he carried with him vanished, replaced by a profound, hollowed-out shame.
He watched it a second time, his knuckles white where he gripped the phone. He didn’t get angry. He didn’t yell. He just deflated, like a balloon pricked by a pin.
When it was over, he carefully set the phone down on the coffee table as if it were contaminated. He stared at the blank screen for a long moment before looking up at me. His voice was a raw, broken whisper.
“Who… who would do this?”
“Chloe,” I said, the name tasting like poison. “She has an account online. She posts these videos. There are others, of other people from the class.”
He just shook his head slowly, a deep, shuddering sigh escaping his chest. He looked smaller than I had ever seen him. We sat in silence for what felt like an hour. The ticking of a grandfather clock in the hall was the only sound.
Finally, he looked at me, his eyes pleading. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone else, Sarah. Carol, or Frank, or any of the others. I couldn’t bear the thought of them looking at me… knowing this is out there. Promise me.”
I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him that we should fight this, that we should expose her. But looking at his shattered expression, I couldn’t. “I promise,” I whispered. It felt like a lie, even as I said it.
The Project Manager’s Pivot
Arthur wasn’t at class on Tuesday. Or on Thursday. I called his apartment, but he didn’t answer. I knew he was there. He was hiding. And with every day that passed, my promise to him felt more like a cage, while my rage at Chloe festered. Hiding wasn’t justice. It was surrender.
My promise was to not tell the others, to protect Arthur’s dignity. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the most dignified thing I could do for him was to hold his tormentor accountable. Not by whispering in the shadows, but by dragging her into the light.
The old instincts started to kick in. For thirty years, my job as a project manager was to identify a problem, define the objective, and execute a plan. The problem was Chloe. The objective was justice. The plan was still forming, but I knew what the wrong plan was.
I could go to the gym’s management. I could show them the video. They would be horrified. They would fire her immediately, quietly, to avoid a lawsuit and a PR nightmare. Chloe would lose her job, but no one would know why. She’d just disappear. The class would be left with a void, filled with rumors and unanswered questions. Our humiliation would remain a secret. It was a clean, corporate solution, and it was completely unsatisfying. It didn’t honor Arthur’s pain. It just swept it under the rug.
No. This wasn’t a problem for HR. This was a problem that required a different kind of deliverable. The stakeholders—the class—needed to be informed. The perpetrator needed to face them directly. The narrative had to be reclaimed.
That evening, I went into the spare room that had been Mark’s office before he retired. In the back of the closet, behind a stack of old board games, was his portable projector. He’d used it for presentations. It was a bit old, but it was powerful. I pulled it out, along with a tangled mess of cables. I felt a strange sense of purpose settle over me. I was done feeling helpless. I was moving into the planning phase.
A Weapon and a Warning
It took me the better part of two days to figure out the damn projector. I sat at my dining room table, surrounded by cables and user manuals I’d downloaded, feeling like I was trying to crack the Enigma code. There were moments of sheer, hair-pulling frustration.
“This is insane,” Mark said, watching me try to connect my phone through a series of adapters. “What are you even doing?”
“I’m putting together a presentation,” I said, not looking up.
“A presentation? For who? You’re retired, remember?”
“For Chloe.”
He stopped, leaning against the doorframe. “Sarah, we talked about this. Just let it go. Or report her. Don’t… do whatever this is. This is crazy. You’re going to get yourself in trouble.”
“This is the only way,” I said, finally getting the right cable to click into place. A blue screen from my phone suddenly appeared on the dining room wall. I let out a little cry of triumph. “She humiliated him publicly. She needs to be held accountable publicly. It’s the only thing that fits the crime.”
“This isn’t a courtroom, it’s a gym! You’re talking about vigilantism!”
“I’m talking about justice,” I shot back, my voice sharper than I intended.
He sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t like it, Sarah. I really don’t.” He left the room, and I was alone with my plan.
I spent the next hour practicing. I projected the screenshots onto the wall. Arthur’s face, five feet high. The cruel captions. The comment sections. The picture of Chloe’s smirking face from the video. Blown up to this size, the ugliness of it was magnified, undeniable. I felt a grim satisfaction. This was my weapon.
I called Carol, the most pragmatic woman in our class, thinking maybe I could find one ally. I tried to explain, stumbling over my words. She was horrified, just as I knew she would be. But then came the fear.
“Oh, my God, Sarah, that’s terrible! But you can’t… you can’t do a presentation! You have to go to management. There are channels for this sort of thing.”
“The channels are designed to protect the company, not us,” I said, my patience wearing thin.
“You’re going to make a scene! It’ll be awful for everyone!”
I hung up, feeling that familiar sting of isolation. I was on my own. It was what Mark had said, what Carol had said. I was going rogue. For a moment, I faltered. Maybe they were right. Maybe this was a terrible, crazy idea.
The Green Light
On Thursday morning, the day of the next class, I stood in front of the full-length mirror in my hallway. I was dressed in my usual workout clothes, but the oversized tote bag at my feet felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. Inside, nestled between my water bottle and a towel, was the projector and its cables, wrapped in a sweatshirt.
I looked at my reflection. A 58-year-old woman with a sensible haircut and arthritis in her hip. I looked like I was about to go to a gentle fitness class, not commit an act of social demolition. The absurdity of it almost made me laugh.
My phone buzzed on the hall table. I glanced at the screen. It was a text from a number I didn’t recognize at first, but then I realized it was Arthur’s. My heart leaped into my throat. Had he heard from Carol? Was he going to tell me to stop?
I opened the message. It was short, just a few words.
“She called me. Chloe. Asked why I wasn’t in class. Said she was worried.”
I stared at the text, the audacity of it taking my breath away. The crocodile tears. The feigned concern. It was a performance, just like everything else. It solidified every ounce of my resolve.
I was about to text back when a second message came through from him.
“I told her I wasn’t feeling well. Be careful today, Sarah.”
That was it. Be careful today. He didn’t say “don’t do it.” He didn’t say I was crazy. He knew I was going to do something. He was worried about me. But he wasn’t stopping me.
It was the closest thing to a green light I was going to get. It was permission. It was trust. He was trusting me to handle this, to do what he couldn’t. I took a deep breath, picked up the impossibly heavy bag, and walked out the door.
The Mirrored Wall
The studio was exactly as it always was. The same calming lavender scent, the same bright sunlight streaming through the tall windows, the same upbeat butinoffensive pop music playing at a reasonable volume. It felt disturbingly normal.
Chloe greeted me at the door, her face a perfect mask of radiant concern. “Sarah! You’re back! I was so worried about you. Is your hip feeling any better?”
“A little,” I lied, my voice tight. “Thanks for asking.” The ease of her deception was breathtaking. Looking at her now, knowing what I knew, was like looking at one of those 3D optical illusions. Once you see the hidden image, you can never not see it. All I could see was the smirk from the video, lurking just beneath her serene smile.
I gave her a thin smile of my own and walked to my usual spot. My heart was a frantic drum against my ribs. I deliberately chose a spot near the back wall, close to an electrical outlet. “Just need to do some extra stretching near the barre today,” I announced to no one in particular.
I set my heavy tote bag down. Chloe started the class, leading us through the warm-ups. “Let’s start with some deep, cleansing breaths. Inhale positivity, exhale negativity.”
I inhaled the lavender-scented air and felt nothing but a cold, hard knot of rage in my chest. I went through the motions, my body on autopilot. My mind was a whirlwind of logistics and fear. Plug in the projector first. Then the phone adapter. Aim for the middle of the mirror. Don’t let your hands shake. It felt less like a fitness class and more like a pre-mission briefing. Every friendly word from Chloe was like a fresh log on the fire of my anger. The calm before the storm was the hardest part.
The Switch
We were twenty minutes in, moving through a sequence of standing poses. My muscles were warm, but my hands were freezing cold. I kept glancing at my bag, then at Chloe. She was in her element, correcting form, offering praise, the benevolent queen of her little kingdom.
“Okay, team!” she chirped, clapping her hands together. “Let’s take a quick water break. Hydration is key!”
This was it. My window.
A few people broke from their positions, heading for the water cooler. Chloe turned her back to the class, walking toward the small speaker system in the corner to fiddle with the playlist. “I’m thinking a little Whitney Houston to get us through the next set!” she called out cheerily.
My body moved before my mind could object. I knelt down, my back to the room, pretending to rummage in my bag for my water bottle. My fingers, clumsy with adrenaline, fumbled with the projector. I pulled it out, along with the pre-connected nest of cables.
I plugged the power cord into the wall outlet. The small green power light on the projector blinked on. So far, so good. Then came the harder part—connecting the adapter to my phone without anyone noticing. I hunched over the bag, shielding my actions with my body. The adapter clicked into place.
I took a deep, shaky breath, the one Chloe was always telling us to take. I aimed the lens at the huge, mirrored wall that ran the length of the studio. It was the wall we all faced, the wall where we confronted our own reflections, our own limitations, every single class. It felt right.
With my thumb, I hit the power button on the projector.
The Reckoning Wall
The projector fan whirred to life, a low hum that was immediately swallowed by the sound of Whitney Houston belting out “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” For a second, nothing happened. Then, a bright, empty rectangle of light appeared on the mirrored wall.
A few people noticed, pointing with curiosity. “What’s that?” someone whispered.
Chloe turned from the speaker, a questioning smile on her face. Her smile faltered as she saw the light.
And then the image loaded.
It wasn’t just an image. It was the video of Arthur, frozen on the most humiliating frame—his body off-balance, his face a mask of strain. It was six feet high, broadcast across the mirrors, with Chloe’s own smiling reflection trapped right in the middle of it.
A collective gasp sucked the air out of the room. The music, so joyful a moment before, suddenly felt grotesque and out of place. Someone let out a small, horrified scream.
Chloe stared, her face draining of all color. The blood left her cheeks so fast she looked like a porcelain doll. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. She looked from the monstrous image on the wall to me, kneeling on the floor with the projector. In that moment, she knew.
The music cut out. I must have hit the button on my phone by accident. The resulting silence was absolute, deafening. It was broken only by my voice, steady and clear, though my insides were liquid.
“This is from an account called FlexyLexi,” I said, my words dropping like stones into the silent pool of the room. I clicked the button on my phone. The image changed to a screenshot of another post—one mocking Carol’s struggle to get up from a floor mat. Carol made a choked, sobbing sound.
“She posts videos of us,” I continued, clicking again. A collage of cruel comments filled the screen. “So people all over the world can laugh.”
The Verdict
People were crying now. Others were shouting, a confused, angry babble. “What is this?” “Is that me?” Frank, a stoic ex-Marine, was staring at the wall, his face a thundercloud.
The gym manager, a harried-looking woman named Brenda, burst in from her office, drawn by the commotion. “What in God’s name is going on in here?”
Chloe was still frozen in the center of the room, a statue of exposed guilt. She looked like a cornered animal, her eyes darting between the angry faces of the class, the manager, and me.
I ignored them all and kept my focus on her. I clicked to the next image—the screenshot of Chloe’s own face, smirking as she filmed Arthur in secret. And then, I clicked one last time.
The final image I projected was her FlexyLexi profile bio, the words glowing on the mirrored wall like a final verdict: “Just here for the laughs & likes. Don’t take life so seriously ;)”
That broke her. A terrible, guttural sob ripped from Chloe’s throat, and she sank to the floor, covering her face with her hands, her body shaking with violent, racking sobs.
The rage in the room was a physical presence. It was hot and sharp. Brenda was on her phone, yelling at someone. But I wasn’t looking at Chloe anymore. I was looking at my classmates.
Slowly, deliberately, they began to move. Carol walked over and placed a hand on my shoulder. Frank gave me a single, sharp nod. One by one, the people Chloe had betrayed, the people whose trust she had shattered, turned their backs on the weeping girl on the floor. They walked away from the wreckage, leaving her to her public shame. They didn’t walk out of the room. They walked toward me, forming a small, silent circle, a quiet fortress of shared experience right there in the middle of the studio. The rage was already dissipating, replaced by something heavier, and stronger: a grim, unbreakable solidarity. My own personal project was complete. The fallout was just beginning
About the Author
