Revenge13 min read
The Orange Bottle, the Signed Paper, and the Exam Hall
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I remember the orange bottle first.
"Do you know whose bottle this is?" my mother asked in the living room, waving a half-empty orange drink like it was a trophy.
"It's Falcon's," my brother said without looking up from his toy. "My private one."
"Of course it's Falcon's." Valeria Neal smiled at him as if he were the only sun in the house. "Justine, don't drink his things. You know better."
"I was thirsty," I said.
"You know better," she repeated, and the words landed like a lid on my mouth.
From then on, anything small and bright in the house—clothes with labels, a new toy, a bottle with sticky orange syrup—became proof that the world was arranged for Falcon.
"He's the baby," my father Eaton Picard would say with a gentle, indulgent shrug. "He's our boy."
I never said the sentence out loud—"I was born because you wanted a son"—but I learned to hear it everywhere. My name, which I had always hated, became a private badge of sourness: Justine Xu, like a line in the family ledger that could be crossed out without consequence.
When I was small, the first time I burned my arm with boiling water, my mother didn't look at me. She ran to where Falcon was crying and, in the scramble, left the kettle to tip. I still feel the heat. I still feel the odd metallic panic of a tiny child who screamed and then was ignored.
"Why didn't you help her?" my grandmother asked when she found me bruised and wailing.
"Grown children worry about their own," Valeria said later. "We can't afford to waste attention on every little thing."
I stayed with my grandmother Gunilla for six years. Gunilla was soft and steady, and she called me "little recruit" because she knew I would have to be strong in a world that did not expect me to be. On every New Year I went back to the main house like a specter; my parents would pat my head or hand me clothes the wrong size, and then I would vanish again into a life of school, late-night study, and cheap, fierce independence.
"Don't look surprised," I told myself in those nights. "You learned the rules early."
When I was seven, Falcon blocked the door and threatened to scream until my parents took me away. "I don't want her," he wailed. "She'll steal my parents' love."
My mother said, "Baby, we would never share it."
"Go sit on the steps," she told me, and shut the door.
I sat on the steps and fell asleep. I still remember the small sunburn line on my forearm glinting through the sleeve, the smell of the house, and the cold when the door closed.
Years knitted themselves into a pattern. Falcon got the best tea, the best clothes, the best tutoring. I learned how to be small and dutiful, how to feed him spoonfuls of meat he would pick through and vomit dramatically, how to keep my mouth when he stuck thumbtacks in my shoes or smeared ink on my uniform. Once, in a moment of rage when my foot was shredded by the thumbtack, I stomped his favorite robot into uselessness. He ran to our mother and cried, and I got a whipping with a belt.
"You're a thief! You're wasteful!" Valeria said. "You don't deserve anything."
I learned to be invisible and then to be useful. I fed Falcon, washed his clothes, picked the dirt from between his teeth. I babysat him until he grew fat and mean. I learned how to buy him small pleasures with pocket money my grandmother sent. Each treat I bought him was a stitch in my camouflage—if Falcon was satisfied, my mother would not look at me.
"You're very good, Justine," Eaton would say sometimes, placing his slipper at his feet like a reward. "You help the family."
Yes—help. A verb that disguised erasure.
When I reached my high school's top of class, people's eyes changed. They saw me as something other than the spare child. They noticed my essays and my grades. That rearranged the small world inside our neighborhood. Girls in my class whispered about my name. "Doesn't it mean 'bringing a son'?" they'd giggle and point at the list with my name on it. "How odd."
"Don't care," a new transfer said one day, stepping in front of the cruelty like it was a wall. "Bullies like that are just noisy frogs."
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Kamryn Bertrand," she said. "And if anyone says anything again, I'll say something worse."
Kamryn was blunt and loud and blunt again in a way that steadied me. We became fast friends, and she would tease me about being dramatic and feed me late-night ramen when I studied. She called me "Just"—short and emphatic—and she meant it.
"One day," she told me while we walked home from the library, "you won't need them."
"I don't know," I said. "I don't trust family to repay fairness."
"Then make them."
"Make them how?"
"Make it so they need you. Make them owe you everything. Make them see their mistake."
I laughed then, but I kept her words.
Surgery was the first real breaking of the armor. With Kamryn's insistence and her money commitment, I finally had the scar on my arm treated. "When you can wear short sleeves again," Kamryn said, "I'll take you to the sea and make you scream at how free it feels."
"It wasn't free," I said. "You paid."
"I said I'd pay." She didn't argue.
After the operation I wore short sleeves for the first time. My skin was pale and unmarked, and when my mother saw it she gasped not for compassion but for calculation.
"You had that fixed?" she said. "How much did it cost?"
"You didn't ask to take me," I said.
She looked momentarily startled, like someone remembering they had a hollow in their hand. Then she muttered, "Well, what can we do? People pay for appearances."
When Falcon failed to get into college—really failed—my mother suddenly remembered me as a resource.
"Justine," she insisted, "come home this winter and tutor Falcon. He needs the last push."
"What changed?" I asked.
"You should help your brother. It's your family duty."
I looked at the list of our household's moves: her favorites were clear. She wanted Falcon to be the story of the family. She had never wanted me to be anything but an unpaid tutor, a buffer, someone who took heat. Now she wanted me to be cheap labor.
"Fine," I said. "I'll come home."
I had plans already.
"Where will you sleep?" Valeria asked, like she had never considered the question of where I, her child, might lay my head.
"The old living room couch is fine," I said.
"I can't believe you," she said. "You left and now you come back like this?"
"I didn't ask to be born into a house that forgot me," I told her. "But if Falcon needs help, I'll help. Under one condition."
"What?" she snapped.
"Everything will be recorded in writing."
Her face went pale. "What are you talking about?"
"A financial and social separation." I took a notepad from my bag. "You want me to help? I will, but I will not be part of this family unless you sign an agreement that acknowledges a buyout: I finance Falcon's foreign application costs, and in exchange our relationship is legally severed for inheritance, duty, and care. You and Father sign, and all future burdens of care will be Falcon's. I also want public proof—legal, notarized."
Valeria stared at me as if I had dropped a coin of ice into her tea.
"You can't be serious," Eaton said.
"I'm serious," I said.
"Why not just take the money?" she asked, voice small and furious. "Why humiliate us?"
"Humiliation would have already been on my side if I had chosen to ask for help," I said. "This is a small ledger of fairness. I will help once. Sign now."
They signed.
I borrowed money from Kamryn to pay the first tranche. Kamryn shook her head and hugged me. "You could have asked me to do other things," she said. "But if this is what you need, then let's burn them out."
"He cheats fate by being entitled," she said, smiling with an edge. "Let's let fate trip him."
The plan tasted like iron. It felt wrong and right at the same time. I knew Falcon. I knew the little violent boy who had once ripped open a newborn's quiet; the boy who threw tantrums and hissed that he was the center of gravity. He would find a way to get what he wanted. I also knew he wasn't subtle.
"What's your plan?" Kamryn asked as we divided work.
"Small lessons at first," I said. "Insist on discipline. Test papers. Don't coddle. Make him practice the way people who want to be competitive practice. But, if things go wrong, I will push the right buttons."
"Right buttons?"
"Push his panic."
"That's extreme."
"It is also truth," I said. "If I push the panic, maybe he'll do the only thing he knows how to do."
I told him about scholarships abroad, a glamorous life that could be his if he dared a different route. He wanted everything fast. He wanted to play, not to study. To him, risk and performance were show, not sweat.
I taught him properly for weeks. I made him sit still. I degraded my own time. I cooked his meals and frame-by-frame showed him how to solve problems. He responded with small grudges, with the old ways: ignoring me, slamming doors, leaking his own anger into childish sabotage. Then, right before the big test, I suggested a method he would understand—an easy way out.
"Listen," I told him quietly one night. "If you can't bear to lose what's comfortable, make sure you won't have to play the game."
Falcon looked at me and smirked. "What do you mean?"
"Make sure you can't be forced to take the test again," I said. "If you can't play, at least don't make them keep doing this to you and your mother. Do something that ensures they can send you away."
He didn't need instructions. Falcon found a way.
On the morning of the exam, the hall smelled like paper and fear. Rows of desks, creasing with nervous hands. Teachers sat at the front wearing stilted solemnity. I stood at the edge of the observation gallery—just watching. Kamryn's hand found mine and squeezed.
"Don't look," she said softly.
"But I have to," I whispered. "I want to see the end."
I remember the first whisper of movement: Falcon leaning over, eyes wide, hand darting like a clever animal. "Give me the answer," his neighbor murmured—someone shy and small with a fate balanced by a borrowed pen. Falcon leaned, and the world compressed.
A monitor teacher walked up.
"What's going on?" he called.
Falcon's face turned from triumph to a hot, panicked map. He ripped.
He ripped the other student's paper with a careless violence that startled a woman sitting in the gallery. The paper fell like a flaggedwhite bird on the floor. The room went very quiet, like someone had stolen the air.
"Stop!" the proctor shouted.
"How dare you!" another proctor hissed.
Falcon, still holding the torn paper, started to shout, "He cheated, he was giving me answers—take him!"
"No, no," the bound student protested, flustered and mortified.
But Falcon didn't stop. He grabbed the corner and tore again, pulling at the paper hard, muttering curses like he was shredding his own fate.
The invigilators called security. The students nearby gasped. Phones were discreetly waved; the sick thrill of scandal starts in a hiss and then blooms.
"Falcon Yang," the chief invigilator said, voice flat with authority. "Step outside now."
Falcon turned to me, and his eyes were two small flames of accusation. He shouted, "Justine! You—"
"You always wanted him to be center, didn't you?" I quiet-said back, louder than needed. "You taught him he could get everything by breaking rules."
He lunged; a teacher caught his arm, and he snarled like a caged animal.
"Security, now," they said.
They escorted him out into the hallway. A small crowd followed—students pressing their faces against the windows, teachers exchanging looks of astonishment and vindication. Someone had video already; someone always had video.
Outside, the chief invigilator read the charges: "Cheating, intimidation, destruction of another student's paper." The press of bodies had the smell of a market: citrus and heat and human breath. News of the incident spread like spilled sugar. The student whose paper had been torn—Ernest Alvarado—stood pale and trembling. He kept stammering, "I-I didn't—"
Falcon's posture changed. He went from furious to bewildered in the span of a heartbeat. "They can't do this to me," he said. "You promised—"
"Promised what?" the invigilator asked. "You promised not to destroy someone else's work?"
"No, no—" Falcon's voice faltered. Denial spilled out like small children trying to wish away rules. He began to shout regrets that sounded like excuses. "It wasn't like that. He lied—he lied to me—"
The crowd around us leaned in. A teenage girl clicked her phone. Someone else whispered the name of his father. A teacher who had once babysat him muttered, "Look at you now."
Falcon's denials turned to anger and then to a small, brittle pleading. "Please. I can explain. Please. She told me—"
"Who told you?" someone demanded.
Falcon looked in every direction, and his eyes landed on me. For a second he looked like a man who had been betrayed by an ally. "Justine," he said, war ping between outrage and shame. "You set me up!"
"Set you up?" I repeated, loud enough for everyone to hear. "You ripped a person's test in front of the invigilator. You were caught for theft and forgery and assault on academic materials. You are the one making the bed."
"You helped him cheat," he screamed, teeth bared. "You bribed me to—"
The crowd murmured. Who would believe a spoiled boy who had always been coddled? Who would believe the quiet sister?
Ernest, the boy whose paper had been ruined, finally spoke, voice thin but steady. "I didn't help him cheat. He grabbed my paper and tore it. I didn't give him anything."
A teacher produced the CCTV footage—clear images from the bloodless camera in the corner. It showed Falcon leaning, reaching, ripping. The footage looped and the room swallowed its breath. The principal's face was a mask of procedural horror.
"Public misconduct," the principal read aloud. "This will be reported to the academic board. Cheating on examinations and destruction of another candidate's work will result in severe penalties."
Falcon's earlier bravado bled into something else: shame and panic. He paced like someone with a fever. "You can't do this," he told us. "You can't ruin me."
Some students started to clap—not out of joy but out of the human appetite for justice. Others looked horrified. Phones came out in a rush. Comments flew: "He tore a paper!" "Did you see his face?" "Their mom must be mortified."
"Mom," someone called. "Is your son okay?"
Valeria was on the phone in a breath, then later arriving like a condemned queen. Her face was grey and small. "He wouldn't—he wouldn't do such a thing," she said to the teachers, voice handmade. "My boy is good."
"Your boy just shredded another student's examination paper," the principal said. "We have the footage and witnesses."
The world became a ritual of unpicking. Falcon went through the stages: heroic self-righteousness, snide denial, violent bluffing, then collapse. He began to cry, not with sorrow but with failed calculation. "I never meant to—" he pleaded. "Please, this has to be fixed—think of our reputation."
"Reputation?" The invigilator's voice had the thin taste of bile. "You destroyed another person's work to avoid risking your own. Reputation is built on behavior, not anger."
The press of bodies in the hallway thinned into a ring of faces watching a spectacle. An older student from Falcon's class filmed him as he slumped. Students murmured about his father and what the family might do. Whispered questions: Will they pay? Will they use influence? A girl stepped forward and spat, "You always used people. Now everyone can see."
Falcon's face crumpled when the principal announced the verdict on-site: "Falcon Yang is banned from sitting for the national examination for three years. This is an academic and civic sanction."
For a moment Falcon's breath left him like a body leaving a chair. He looked around as if expecting someone to reverse the order. His mother's face went white and then blank.
"I'll sue," he managed. "I'll tell them you set me up. You'll see."
"Do it," I said.
He started to sob. "I'm ruined," he gasped. "What will happen to me?"
"You'll learn to live without being the center," someone said. A chorus of small triumphs and pity rose. Some students walked away, shaking their heads. Some teachers looked at me and then at Valeria, who was making a show of dignity and then of pleading.
"Please," Valeria whispered to the principal, "don't make this worse. He is the child. He is our son. He has a future."
"He has his actions," the principal said. "We act by what we see."
The cameras kept rolling. A journalist asked for comment. "What do you want to say about your son?" the reporter demanded.
Valeria straightened, tears drying on her cheeks. "He made a mistake," she said. "He is a child who needs guidance."
Guidance didn't come. The board convened, and the penalty stood. The news cycle moved in small ruthless circles. "Local privileged candidate banned," read the headline the next morning. "Boy tears peer's paper; three-year exclusion."
For the first time in a long time, people looked at my mother without the mollifying smile she had always worn. They muttered about heavy hands and choices. Some remembered me—the quiet sister who left—and some connected dots. The mother who had once bristled at paying for my scar surgery now stood in open sorrow as her son had his future clipped.
Falcon's collapse was not cinematic. It was small and painful—a man in the wrong time who had always been taught the world owed him a path. He begged, he blamed, he looked like someone who had been shown his limits in public. He lost more than an exam; he lost a shield, for the cameras had stripped it off with grainy, merciless truth.
Afterwards, my mother came home in a torn, small anger. "You did this to my son!" she said.
"I showed the world what he had always been," I said quietly. "You were warned."
"You helped him cheat!" she accused, the old script appearing like a spring. "You set him up to be punished!"
"Look at what he did," I said. "Do you defend destruction of a peer's work?"
She had no answer. She had no strategy but to beg and to rage. In the public record the family name tilted and cracked. People called the house to ask questions. Her friends dropped casual messages. My grandmother, who had always loved us both in her own frail way, sat in the kitchen with shaking hands.
"He did this himself, Val," Gunilla said.
"He is my son!" my mother charged.
"Then teach him what being a son means."
The punishment had its narcotic effect on me. I had not expected it to feel so complete. I had not expected to be hungry for it and then to feel empty. The city turned its eyes toward Falcon's exodus. He left for a foreign route a year later, not with pride but with a debt and a public stain and a possibility that promised nothing.
I signed the buyout paper in the public registry and walked away. I moved into a small apartment with Kamryn, who refused any argument about debt. "Just pay me back later," she said. "You would have done the same for me."
I built a quiet life of paid work and steady exams. I saw my grandmother often, and I let the old wounds mend. Once, on a bright morning, my mother called me, voice cracked and smaller than before.
"Justine," she said, "we... we need help. Falcon is asking for money again."
"I remember the signed paper," I said. "You bought out our relationship."
"I know," she said. "But I'm tired."
"Then be tired," I said. "I have nothing more to give."
We became a story we both told in halves. She told the story of a lost child. I told the story of a girl who refused to be collateral. The orange bottle remained in my memory, a small symbol of how trivial things could be loaded with meaning.
"Did you ever forgive us?" she asked once, voice small and old.
"No," I said, honest and blunt, and then softer, "I forgave the idea of myself. Not the actions."
Years later, when I stand in my kitchen and pour orange juice into a glass, I think of the thin cap of that bottle, the buyout paper in the drawer, and the way the public hallway hummed when Falcon tore a paper. I think of the scar that once mapped my childhood and the hands that mended it. I think of Kamryn's laugh, Gunilla's gentle hands, and of the moment I signed my life free.
"Do you regret it?" Kamryn asks sometimes, passing me an apple.
"No," I say, and I mean it, though the taste of revenge is not only sweetness.
"I don't know if I could do what you did," she says.
"You would," I tell her. "You already did—when you drove me to the clinic and paid. Only the stage was different."
We drink the juice and call it breakfast. The buyout file sits in a drawer engraved with a legal stamp and a date, the imprint of a world I severed. When my grandmother asks me if I will ever go back, I tell her the truth.
"I already did," I say. "I went back to sign my terms."
She squeezes my hand and says, "Good. Good girl."
The orange bottle is empty now, but sometimes in my pocket I keep the cap. It is a small, ridiculous talisman—like any story that keeps you company. It smells like the past. It smells like the day I decided that family could not take without consequence.
And when Falcon later appeared on the news in a different town—quiet, unpuffed, a man with a public scar of his own—I felt nothing like triumph. I felt the clean clarity of a life I had chosen.
"Do you hate him?" Kamryn once asked as we watched the little story run.
"No," I said. "I pity him. I pity the man who never learned to be held without breaking another."
That, in the end, was lesson enough.
The End
— Thank you for reading —