Chapter 1
They thought I never fought back because I was afraid of them—until one of the rich girls ripped my perfect test in half and laughed in my face. What they didn’t know was that my father had trained me to defend myself since I was five.
I was sixteen when it happened at my private high school outside Boston.
I was there on a scholarship.
Most of the girls in my class came from families with money, connections, and last names people recognized.
I learned quickly to keep my head down.
Especially around Vanessa Carter and her friends.
Vanessa hated that I kept beating her grades.
That morning, our chemistry teacher handed back our final exams.
“Emily, ninety-nine.”
I smiled and put the paper inside my folder.
Vanessa got an eighty-four.
She stared at my score like I had stolen something from her.
At lunch, she and two girls blocked me near the lockers.
“Show me your test.”
“No.”
Vanessa laughed.
“You think you’re better than us now?”
“I just want to go to class.”
She grabbed my folder.
I reached for it, but one of her friends shoved my shoulder.
Vanessa pulled out my exam.
Then she slowly tore it down the middle.
Everyone around us went quiet.
“There,” she said. “Now your little scholarship doesn’t look so impressive.”
I felt something inside me snap.
“Give me the rest.”
She crumpled the pieces and threw them at my face.
“What are you going to do about it?”
For years, they had mistaken my silence for weakness.
I grabbed my backpack and tried to walk away.
Vanessa caught my hair from behind.
That was the moment everything changed.
I twisted out of her grip the way my father had taught me.
She swung at me.
I blocked her arm and stepped back.
“Don’t touch me again.”
She screamed and rushed at me anyway.
I moved aside, caught her wrist, and used her momentum to put her on the floor without striking her face.
Her friends froze.
Vanessa jumped up furious and came at me again.
This time, I defended myself until a teacher came running down the hallway shouting for everyone to stop.
Vanessa immediately started crying.
“She attacked me!”
I stared at her.
“You tore up my test and grabbed me first.”
The principal arrived minutes later.
He looked at Vanessa, then at me.
And somehow, I already knew whose side he was going to take.
“You’re suspended,” he told me.
Vanessa smiled behind him.
Then a man’s voice came from the end of the hallway.
“No, she isn’t.”
I turned around.
May you like
My father was standing there.
And beside him was the one person Vanessa’s family had spent years trying to keep away from our school.
