The secret in my heart

Chapter #15

Me, Steven and Mike immediately leave the hall and run to the student council room. According to Mike, Jim is waiting for us there along with Henry and Simon who happen to know the whole truth. Arriving there we immediately enter and they welcome us, inviting us all to sit down and join them.

"So? What is it that you know?" Steven asks, gritting his teeth.

Henry and Simon look at eachother and gulp, nervously.

From what they tell us, Mrs. Brown was furious when she heard of my arrival here. She had immediately decided how to cover up the truth, using the help of her right hand man, namely Jacob. Mrs. Brown had promised that she would present him in front of the most prestigious universities here, if he agrees to help her. That's where the envelope he was hiding came from, it contained recommendations personally written on her behalf. To make sure he doesn't fail, Jacob had asked Henry and Simon to become his accomplices without telling them the whole truth. So he drags them down with him in this whole tangled affair, but now they have regrets and want to help us.

"If the teachers find out about her lies, they'll all collectively fire her." says
Simon.

"Apparently, she's also faked her college degrees, as well as her birth certificate."
adds Henry.

"We have to gather the teacher's council!" Steven runs, out the door.

"Steven wait! They're already there, waiting for us! We were supposed to be there too, remember?" I tell him.

"True! Then let's all go there, right now!" he says.

We all go there carrying the important documents with us. They will serve as evidence against Mrs. Brown. *She thought that by cheating she could achieve success, but she hadn't thought well enough.* Entering the hall we see all the teachers gathered in one place, as well as the headmistress and Jacob.
They all stare at us and I start to get goosebumps, feeling uncomfortable.

"There they are! They tried to steal from me, look at them!" Mrs. Brown yells, at us.

"Wait! We have evidence against you, with all due respect!" Steven cuts her off.

He gives the documents to the senior teacher and tells her the whole story in short. She passes the sheets to the other teachers and they are all left in shock. As they read all the papers, I just watch the smug smile slip from Jacob's face. It turns out that for nearly twenty years, Mrs. Brown had been lying about being the rightful heir to the school. Turns out, she knew my grandfather when they were classmates and had enough information about him to falsify her documents without his knowledge. Leaving my grandfather disinherited, by lying that she was his first cousin. So years later, he leaves this world thinking that someone else was really asked to inherit the school.

"Do you really think, that you can fake a bunch of documents and put all the blame on me?" she asks, laughing.

"How are they fake, when they have your signature on all of them? They can't have done that in one day." Mr. Davidson interrupts her.

"There's no proof, against what Steven is saying." says Miss Thomas.

"That's right! Also, it's all written down on these papers, anyways." agrees Mr. Clark.

All the teachers agree to send Mrs. Brown to an advisory board and finally fire her, assigning the inheritance accordingly to my mother, who by the way doesn't even know about any of this. My whole family has been lied to for years, but the truth has finally come out. Mrs. Brown tries to justify herself but fails as all the evidence points against her. As for Jacob, being her accomplice will get him expelled from the school, respectively. As I see the headmistress being escorted out of the hall, I hurry over to Jacob.

"By the way, I'm taking back my necklace!" I say, snatching it from the pocket of his blazer.

-Time skip-

It's already the next day and I wake up in my dorm. I notice that I've overslept quite a bit, but I was really tired so I needed a little more rest. I called my parents last night and told them everything. They should arrive here sometime around noon. I get up and go to change into my uniform. Later, I arrive to my first class and sit next to Brianna. She asks me how I'm feeling and I say that I'm definitely better, than the past few days.

During lunch break my parents finally arrive and I see them park their car, in front of the school. I run outside to meet them. I don't want to lie and say that I didn't miss them. I tell them to follow me inside the school and the first thing my mother notices is the famous portrait with the dog. It turns out that the man who is depicted on it next to the dog is anyone else, but my own grandfather in his youth. This just confirms, that the locket there is indeed mine. My parents go to the secretary's lounge to start with all the paperwork and I go out in the campus, wanting some fresh air.

As I walk I think how much has happened here in such a short time. I still can't believe that one day I too will inherit this school. While I'm lost in my thoughts, I notice a silhouette in the distance and see that it's Steven. Standing right in front of me, at the other end of the yard, I decide to run towards him. He awaits me with open arms and a smile as I hug him. Now I really do, feel like home.