The Second Time She Was Framed

Chapter 3 The Night Before

I needed to know what had actually happened on Monday night. That was the only way to build a timeline anyone would believe.

So I called Sophie's friend Nadia, who lived in Gerber Hall and who had seen Sophie at the library around nine. Nadia was a sophomore with a soft voice and a sharp memory, and she told me something useful.

"Luke came by the library at like eight thirty," she said. "He was looking for Sophie. I told him she was in the basement study room, and he said he'd wait. But then he left after like five minutes."

"Did he say where he was going?"

"No. He got a phone call and walked out." Nadia paused. "Actually, he was weird. He kept looking at his phone. And he had a bag from that noodle place by the fountain."

"The one Caroline likes?"

"Yeah. That one."

I wrote it all down. Luke had bought food from the same restaurant Caroline ordered from. Luke had been near the library, which was two hundred feet from Gerber Hall. Luke had left in a hurry.

I called the noodle place. The manager, a man named Hector who had owned the shop for fifteen years, remembered the order. He also, after I explained very carefully that a student was being accused of stealing, agreed to check his register log.

"Two orders to Gerber Hall that night," he said. "One at 8:41. One at 8:38. Different names."

"What names?"

"Caroline Reyes and L. Atwood."

I closed my eyes. There it was. The thing that would break him. Luke had ordered food to the same building at almost the same time. He had used his own name. He had probably planned to take Caroline's order and pretend someone else had taken it, and then discovered that his own order was also sitting in the locker, and had to decide which one to steal.

He had stolen Caroline's. And then he had blamed Sophie.

I did not have the delivery company's confirmation yet. But I had Hector, and I had the register log, and I had Nadia's memory of Luke near the library with a bag from the same restaurant just before nine.

I went home that night and found Sophie sitting on the floor of her room with her laptop open. She had been reading the forum thread. She looked up when I came in, and her face was pale, and she said something that made my chest hurt.

"Maybe I should just apologize."

"For what?"

"For whatever made him do this." She wiped her nose on her sleeve. "If I apologize, maybe it goes away. Maybe everyone forgets."

I sat down on the floor next to her. "Sophie. Listen to me. If you apologize for something you didn't do, you are telling every person on that forum that he was right. You are telling the dean that you are a thief who got caught. You are telling yourself that you deserve this."

"Maybe I do."

"No." I took her hand. "You do not. And I am not going to let you believe that."

She cried for a while. I held her. And then I told her what I had found, and I watched her face change from despair to confusion to something that looked, for the first time, like hope.

"Luke ordered food to Gerber Hall that night," I said. "He used his own name. He was there. He took Caroline's order, or he gave the code to someone who did. Either way, he is the one with the food. Not you."

"Why would he do that?"

"Because he wants Caroline to look at him the way she looks at Daniel. Because he wants to be the hero who catches the thief. Because he is small and stupid and cruel." I squeezed her hand. "And because he thought you would not fight back."

She was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, "What are we going to do?"

"We are going to give him until Thursday to take the post down. And if he doesn't, we are going to take him apart in public."