By the time Leah Benson collapsed, half the chemistry class already had their phones out.

Suspension was an eerie kind of isolation. While the rest of Oakridge High moved through standard schedules, Sadie sat in her bedroom, surrounded by textbooks, legal documents, and printed screenshots.

Her court date was set in three weeks. Her court-appointed lawyer, a harried man named Mr. Henderson, had already urged her to consider a plea bargain. "If Leah Benson doesn't testify in your defense, it's your word against a veteran teacher and a room full of eye-witnesses," he had told her over the phone. "Take the juvenile probation, Sadie. Don't fight a battle you can't win."

But Sadie had no intention of taking a deal for a crime she didn't commit.

At 2:00 PM on Thursday, while the rest of the school was in fifth period, Sadie walked down the residential street three blocks away from Oakridge High. She wore a dark hoodie and pulled her cap down low. She knew Leah's house. They had spent countless weekends there studying for biology exams before Leah became obsessed with getting into the Ivy League.

Leah had been discharged from the hospital two days ago. Her parents had placed her on strict house arrest, shielding her from the media storm.

Sadie slipped around the side of the Benson house, avoiding the ring doorbell at the front. She threw a small handful of pebbles against the second-floor window.

A moment later, the blinds twitched. Leah’s pale, drawn face appeared behind the glass. Her eyes widened in panic when she recognized Sadie. She violently shook her head and gestured for Sadie to leave.

Sadie pulled a notebook from her jacket and held up a page written in thick black marker: HE DESTROYED YOUR PHONE. TALK TO ME.

Leah froze. Through the glass, Sadie saw her glance back toward her bedroom door. Slowly, Leah opened the window a crack.

"You shouldn't be here," Leah whispered, her voice trembling. "My parents will call the police if they see you."

"Leah, listen to me," Sadie pleaded, standing on her tiptoes on the garden border. "Crowe planted those pills on me. He took your phone from your bag right after the paramedics took you out, and he destroyed the memory card in the prep room. What was on that card?"

Leah’s eyes filled with tears. She gripped the window sill until her knuckles turned white. "He told me he would ruin me, Sadie. He said if I told anyone where I got the pills, he’d revoke my AP credits and report me for academic fraud to Yale."

"He sold them to you?" Sadie gasped.

"He didn't just sell them to me—he made them!" Leah sobbed quietly. "The Academic Excellence Program... it’s a cover. Crowe uses the school’s advanced organic chemistry lab after hours to synthesize cognitive enhancers. He sells them to students who are desperate for high SAT scores. He charges hundreds of dollars a bottle."

Sadie felt a cold chill run down her spine. The missing lab inventory records she had noticed last month—the unrecorded usage of solvent extraction agents and precursor reagents—suddenly made horrifying sense.

"I tried to stop taking them last week," Leah continued, wiping her nose with her sleeve. "The side effects were getting terrible—heart palpitations, insomnia. I threatened to go to the principal. That morning, he gave me a stronger batch and said it was a new formula to 'ease me off.' But it was poison, Sadie. He knew I’d collapse. He used me to frame you because he knew you were asking questions about the lab supplies!"

"Where is the proof, Leah? My life is ruined unless we prove this!"

"The memory card had audio recordings of him selling me the pills in the prep room," Leah wept. "Now that it's gone, it's just my word against his. And my parents... they don't believe me. They think I'm just trying to cover up an addiction."

"There has to be another copy," Sadie insisted. "Did you back up your phone automatically?"

Leah blinked, a spark of realization hitting her. "The cloud... I set my phone to auto-sync with my laptop every midnight. But my laptop is still in my locker at school!"