Entertainment Circle11 min read
I Threw the Card and Broke a Window — Then the Whole City Freaked Out
ButterPicks14 views
"I don't want your money."
I slammed the bank card into Carter Bennett's palm and walked out before he could finish his sentence.
"You're my daughter," he called after me. "Say it. Say you are my illegitimate child. Say it now and we'll fix everything."
I kept walking. Rain pricked my hair. The black hoodie I wore was stained where someone had just dumped a bucket of cold water from a balcony above. My hair stuck to my forehead. My lips were dry. I let the card fly.
"Hey!" Carter's glasses hit the tile with a sharp crack. He recoiled like someone had slapped him. I smiled without warmth.
"You paid my mother," I said. "You paid her like she was a lesson. Take your eight thousand—no, ten thousand—and keep it. From now on, we are done."
"Carter, don't be ridiculous—" Veronica Silva started, voice soft and sharp at once.
"You can say you were sorry all you want," I said. "You can't take back blood. You can't take back what you let happen to her."
They stared. I waited until they turned their backs and left. Then I walked past the gate and into daylight, and a thrill—cold and clear—ran up my spine.
"Who is she?" someone whispered.
I moved down the drive and into the street. Two boys on mountain bikes slowed, stared, then took pictures. A man in a black jacket tossed me his coat.
"Take it," he said. "It's cold."
"Thanks," I said, pulling it on. The coat hung large and smelled faintly of stage glue and perfume. The man slid back into his car with a small, stunned smile. He had a thin, pale face and narrow, tired eyes. Something about him made my chest tighten.
Leonardo Porter.
I had watched him on late-night live streams, fingers trembling when he played. His violin sounded like a blade. He needed no stunts. He needed no armor. He needed nothing but the bow and a narrow stage and a listener to fall into him.
"You like me?" I teased before I could stop myself.
He turned crimson and slammed the car window.
"Don't be absurd," his friend Foster Flynn crowed from the passenger seat. "He's a genius, not your toy."
I laughed and left them with their embarrassment. On the main road a pot of water splashed down in front of me. I twisted, faster than a blink, and saw Veronica Silva standing in the second-floor window clutching a flowerpot. Her face was smooth with cruelty.
"Nice try," I said out loud and felt a grin break loose. I took two bricks from my bag and threw one into the window. The glass shattered like it had been waiting.
"What's going on?" Leonardo breathed from the lane, eyes gone wide.
"Is that her?" Foster said. "She's crazy good."
I kept smashing. Each crack felt like an exhale. By the time the last pane fell in, the neighborhood had leaned out of doors and windows. Phones lifted like tiny sparklers.
"You're insane," someone hissed.
"No," I said. "I'm angry. I'm done being polite."
The boys in the car laughed. Leonardo's eyes stayed on me.
Later, I walked into HuaTech University with a recommendation form in my hand. The front desk volunteer looked at me like I had a secret. I did.
"My guardian signed this," I said. "I need a replacement form. My guardian passed away."
"Right." He pushed a stack across. "Take only what you need."
"Where do I get the signed recommendation?" I asked.
"Those are rare," he said. "Only certain people can hand them out."
"Then I'll get it another way."
Annika Cooke found me outside the admin building. She had a glossy smile and the kind of neat hair that didn't wrinkle in the rain. Annika's eyes prickled with something like fear when she saw me.
"You shouldn't be here," she said. "You know you can't get in. You didn't even take the exam."
"I'm a recommended student," I said. "You think being pretty gets you every card here?"
Her face fell. A crowd gathered. Voices rose, quick and small. Annika's lips quivered like she wanted to cry. I saw her hand tighten on a book where Leonardo's poster was tucked in the page edges.
"Don't stand in my way," I said softly. "You have a golden road. I have to fight for mine."
She ran, sobbing. People who had previously mocked me fell silent, watching her run.
The next day, Cooper Kraus, the deputy principal, brought my recommendation form to his office. He scowled at the signature.
"Who signed this? 'Octavio Blankenship'?" he said, loud enough so the hall could hear. "This is a joke."
He called the office. He called other people. He made jokes. He called me a liar when I tried to tell him the truth.
"You think you can bluff your way into my school?" he snapped.
"Call them," I said. "Call him. You'll see."
He picked up his cell and ranted into it like someone who could afford rage. When the line was answered, his face went from smug to white to small.
"Deputy Cooper?" a deep voice said. "This is Octavio."
Cooper dropped the phone. Someone in the doorway pushed the speaker to my face. Octavio Blankenship's voice was calm and old and had the weight of a man who moved entire committees with a word.
"Make sure her records are found," Octavio said. "She is under my care until further notice."
Cooper's tongue came loose with a string of apologies. The room turned. I sat very still.
Cooper tried to cover it with an act of dignity. He threatened to call security. I waited. When the guards surrounded me, one of them—more eager than the rest—grabbed my wrist and yanked.
"Hey!" I said.
The man lunged. I moved like a light box falling on him. His balance went. He hit the floor with a dull slap that silenced the smaller room entirely. The guards froze. Cooper's face was a map of things that used to be smooth.
"You can't treat a child like this," I said coldly. "Do better."
Word spread fast. "Where did she get that courage?" people asked. "Who was she?" News vans came and cameras said her name—Khalani Davis—like it was a new constellation.
Octavio's office called, then put a man from his staff into my life. A polite assistant arrived at my hotel with paperwork and a thin smile. "Governor Blankenship says you are under his protection," he said. "We had trouble with your file. Please rest."
I went to the rooftop of the Lisscott Hotel and opened my laptop. The screen filled with a grey-blue icon: a spiral galaxy and the number 11. It was a message from an old friend from far away—someone who still used a language that smelled like metal and oil and deserts.
"Be careful," the message read. "They will try to buy you. We will watch. —Jade"
I wrote back: "I don't want to be bought."
The music crowd found me. Leonardo's production team was casting extras for his next MV, a film about loss and space and running. Someone suggested Annika for the lead; she positioned herself, prim and sure, and expected the world to bow.
Instead, a handful of us were called in to train—announced as a group of girls for the MV. The director laughed and said, "We'll put everyone in—why favor one when we can have many?"
Annika's smile tightened. Her family, Carter and Veronica, sat in the back like a pair of small emperors. They watched me as if I might break.
The day the action team arrived, the Vohu Guild showed up. They were a legend—the Vohu, the old escort house that protected art and freight and secrets. Guillermo Hansen, the elderly leader, walked in and the training hall seemed to flatten under his steady steps.
"I'm with her," Guillermo said when he came to me. "She'll be our instructor."
"You're the action director?" Leonardo asked, surprised.
Guillermo looked at me and then at Leonardo. "You asked for wild honesty," he said. "You called the Vohu. We came."
That night I sat with Leo while he tried to explain music. He was unsure and awkward and more alive in my presence than he ever was on stage. We rode the subway together so he could see how I walked the city. I told him nothing of where I'd come from. He told me he had seen me before—on a stage where sound swallowed the world.
"Do you always crush glass when you're mad?" he asked, hands fumbling in his pockets.
"Not always," I said. "Sometimes I just break systems."
"That's scary," he said, but his eyes stayed on me. "That's beautiful."
The problem was my files. The province began an all-out search. The Minister of Education called. Cooper's face swallowed several colors as the investigation poured over the university like rain. It turned out ten elite kids—the Golden Ten—had been given special scholarship status. One of them was me. My file had gone missing. Everyone had been scrambled.
I should have celebrated. Instead, I watched Annika's smile fray as whispers circled her: "She only became a candidate because of her grandmother." "She only got a chance because of ties." People pointed fingers like they were throwing stones.
"Why would my file be with a private trade school?" I asked Cooper, blunt and composed.
"Politics," he said. "Connections. We... we misplaced it. I will explain."
"Hiding records is a crime," I told him. "So is turning a child into leverage."
They flinched. The province opened an audit. People who'd slipped my paper into a folder were called in. Veronica Silva's name showed up on several lists. She lied and smiled and called it "helping." Carter Bennett's voice was on recordings where he pressured staff. The governor's men moved like tides.
Cooper tried to beg. I let him beg on the floor of an office that smelled of cheap coffee and fear.
"Do you want me to take this to the press?" I asked.
He groaned. "Please. Don't."
I pressed my thumb to record anyway.
"She is a liar," Cooper wailed into the phone. "She is a troublemaker."
"Why do you protect people who lie for power?" I said into his face. "Why use your job to step on others?"
That sentence was a needle. Cooper's throat worked. The university fired him that week. The investigation reached into the private school. Annika's family arranged meetings like people flushing a panic. Veronica called me a "lost girl" in interviews, then cried on camera about "how unfair the world is."
The cameras found me again, finally not to mock but to watch. Leonardo stood behind a microphone at a small press meet, watching me like I was a mirror he didn't know how to hold.
"You broke a window," Annika said one day, coming too close in the practice hall. "You humiliated my family."
"You humiliated your family first," I said. "They did what they did to my mother."
"That's history. It's not now."
"You think affairs end like that?" I asked. "You think blood closes with time?"
Annika's mouth shaped something that might have been apology but wasn't. She left. Her face was small.
The province kept looking. It turned out a man at a private trade school had been paid to file my official application away. Officials panicked. Names leaked. Veronica found herself in a meeting where men in grey suits did not smile.
"How could you?" she begged a man who had once smiled at her parties. "I am tied in with them. We are connected."
He did not answer. He signed papers. He looked at the images on his phone and thought of his future.
After the scandal, people came to me with apologies that tasted like metals.
"Miss Davis," said a journalist with too-bright eyes. "How does it feel to be the lightning rod?"
"Annoying," I answered. "And useful."
They offered me scholarships, paid internships, a film contract. Leonardo and I stood on the roof of Lisscott, and he handed me a violin case I had never seen before. It was small and light, wrapped in a paper that had a faded star-swirled design.
"You said you heard music once," he said. "I want you to have a sound line to go with your steps."
I opened it. The violin looked old. Its wood was safe and worn.
"This is for you," he said. "Will you come to the studio? Will you let me make something with you?"
We went slow. The cameras called us a "new pair," and writer blogs made up stories. Annika's influence faded as the Chen family found themselves stripped of favors and the trade school head was publicly denounced. Veronica's parties felt empty. Carter's whispers could not fix what had been exposed.
"Why did you help me?" I asked Leonardo one night in the empty studio after we recorded the first rough take of the MV.
He shrugged. "Because you don't let the world press you flat. Because you don't ask for pity and you don't fake anything."
"You think I didn't fake anything?" I asked.
He looked at me like I was a secret he already loved. "I think you hide worse things than your past," he said. "But I think you protect yourself in a way that isn't cruel. That's rare."
He leaned closer. "I like you," he said, simple and raw. "Not the idea of you. You."
I swallowed. The first time I had held a human hand with intent it had been to keep someone alive among smoke and rust and alarms. Saying "I like you" when you have killed to survive felt like tearing fresh skin.
"I like you too," I said. "But not for your fame."
"Good," he said. "Because I can't buy you."
The investigation ended with Cooper's dismissal, the private trade school administrator publicly reprimanded, and the Chen family forced to step away from public sponsorships. Octavio's name did what it always did—opened doors and shut mouths. He gave me a guarded nod the day I walked into a provincial building and signed paperwork placing my guardianship in his care.
"You are not a pawn," he said. "You are a talent. Keep it."
I had a choice: go abroad to Oxford or Cambridge offers that had arrived like birds in a storm, or stay and see this place change. I stayed.
At the MV premiere Leonardo walked on stage like a knight who was also a boy. The film we made was sharp and dark and honest—more of my teeth than Hollywood liked. People praised it, wrote essays; the comments turned from "scandal" to "performance." Annika watched from the side, small and pale, not loved as she had expected.
After the premiere I stood on the balcony of Lisscott and looked at the city's lights. Leonardo came up beside me and touched my shoulder.
"Did you get what you wanted?" he asked.
"I didn't know what I wanted," I said. "I wanted to make something happen. I wanted my mother's name to stop being dragged into polite conversation. I wanted them to stop pretending power protects them."
He was quiet. He rested his forehead against mine.
"You did," he said. "You made them show themselves."
I closed my eyes. The wind smelled like cold glass and cheap perfume and the faint wood of a new violin.
I thought of the junk-star I had once called home and the boy who had taught me sound. Those memories were not soft. They were tools. I used them to sharpen my steps.
"Stay," Leonardo said.
I laughed once, light and surprised. "I thought you'd say 'go.'"
"Not this time," he said. "This time I say 'stay with me and make some noise.'"
"I can do that," I said. "I can make noise."
That night I did not tell him everything. I never told him the full shape of the wars I'd walked through. I let my past be mine—the prices I'd paid, the names I could not say aloud.
We stood on the ledge and watched the city breathe. The cameras made us small, then giant. The Vohu Guild stayed in the shadows. Octavio kept his calls brief. The university ran cleaner. Annika found peace in other things. Veronica left town for a little while.
The thing that settled in my chest was not revenge. It was not sweetness. It was a steady hand on my shoulder that I trusted.
"Do you remember the star icon?" Leonardo asked later, when the song we'd made began to climb the charts.
"The number 11?" I asked. "The galaxy?"
"Yeah," he said. "It fits you. It's not a heart. It's not a hero. It's a place."
"Good," I said. "Because home isn't always a planet."
He smiled. "Then let's make this place worth staying."
I leaned into him and felt a small, real thing: a promise of two people who had both been broken and chose to be useful to each other.
The next morning, the university handed me my admission paperwork. The province closed its case files. The trade school lost several donors. Annika sent me a message that said simply, "I'm sorry." I sent back, "Keep your promise to yourself." She replied with a small heart that looked like someone trying to learn to mean it.
Months later, in a quiet rehearsal room, Leonardo handed me the violin he had given me on the alley, now fixed and warm.
"Play me something that isn't a song about stars," he said.
I drew my bow and a single note filled the room. It was honest and wrong and beautiful. He closed his eyes. The note held for a time, then folded into the next.
Afterward, he ventured, "I like you when you are dangerous."
"I like you when you are tired," I answered.
He laughed, the sound warm, and then kissed my forehead—the smallest proof two people can make in a world that insists on loud endings.
We both had scars. We both had names people used to move money and houses and favors. We both had choices left to make. We decided to make noise that would not be sold.
On a rooftop two years later, I tucked my old phone into a chest where I kept my passports, my tiny proofs, the black card Carter had once given me. I left the card on top, then closed the chest and locked it.
"Why keep it?" Leonardo asked.
"Because some things must be shown, once," I said. "Not for power. Not for pity. For proof."
He kissed my temple and watched the city glow. I pressed my palm to the steel and felt its cold steady beneath my skin.
"I will keep fighting," I said.
"Then I'll keep listening," he said.
And that is how I stayed.
The End
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