Killing Them With Pure Honey Chapter 2

The moment I crossed the threshold into the senior homeroom the next morning, a shower of confetti dumped directly over my head.

The largest scrap fluttered down and landed faceup on my desk. Scrawled in thick black Sharpie were four bold words:

"TRAILER TRASH PRINCE."

The room erupted into snickers.

Emmett’s best friend, Chad, leaned back in his leather desk chair, smirking behind his palm. "My bad, man. Just a little welcome prank for the new transfer. Didn't realize you’d be so sensitive."

Emmett chimed in immediately, full of wounded virtue: "Jackie, please don't be upset. Chad didn't mean anything by it."

I picked up the scrap of cardstock, turning it over to inspect the ink with the grave focus of an art appraiser.

"It’s really quite stunning," I said admiringly. "Particularly the penmanship. It’s so remarkably, consistently ugly—you can tell this level of illiteracy takes years of dedicated practice."

Chad’s smirk curdled.

Just then, our homeroom teacher stepped through the door.

I pivoted on my heel and greeted him with glowing reverence: "Good morning, sir. What an inventive tradition your class has. Publicly ridiculing a transfer student’s socioeconomic background would be categorized as a Title IX bullying violation in a public school, but I’m sure a prestigious institution like this has a much more elevated, philosophical defense for it."

The teacher froze mid-stride. He looked at me, looked at the floor covered in shredded paper, and his face turned the color of a thundercloud.

Ten minutes later, Chad was balanced precariously on a plastic stool with a dustpan, while Emmett was forced to stand beneath him holding the trash bin.

I sat in the front row, marveling at the five-star concierge service of private education.

Second period was an unannounced math diagnostic.

As the test packets were handed out, Chad raised his voice so the whole room could hear: "Emmett ranks in the top percentile of the state every semester. Some people shouldn't assume that sharing a last name makes them an Aldridge in the head."

I turned slightly in my seat, beaming at him.

"Your loyalty to Emmett is truly inspiring, Chad. For someone who lives permanently at the bottom of the grade curve to celebrate the top rank with zero personal envy—that kind of emotional generosity is so rare in boys your age."

A muffled wave of laughter rippled through the desks.

Chad’s ears flushed scarlet.

The results were posted by two that afternoon.

I had scored a clean 100. Emmett had scored a 92.

Emmett stood before the bulletin board, his smile stretched thin and brittle. "You did so well, Jackie. You must have practiced this exact mock paper back at your old public school, right?"

In an instant, the ambient chatter died down.

The test had been custom-drafted by the regional Olympiad committee that very morning. He was casually floating the accusation that I was a cheat who had bought an advance leak.

I didn't argue. Instead, I turned toward the head of the math department, Dr. Becker, who was pinning up the answer key.

"It’s remarkable that you wrote and administered an exam all on the same morning, Dr. Becker. It demonstrates such unshakeable faith in your department's security protocols. Anyone accusing a student of having an advance copy is essentially claiming your elite faculty leaks like a broken sieve."

Dr. Becker’s expression hardened instantly. He pulled the digital time logs, then handed me an alternate version of the Olympiad diagnostic on the spot.

Twenty minutes later, a second perfect paper was pinned over the first.

Dr. Becker cleared his throat and made an additional announcement to the room: on Emmett’s paper, three complex, multi-step calculus problems contained the exact same bizarre calculation errors found on Chad’s paper.

Emmett went dead pale. "We... we just studied together last night."

This time, even Chad kept his mouth shut.

Before the final bell, the school hosted its annual alumni charity gala preview.

A pair of custom platinum-and-sapphire cufflinks that Mom had gifted me vanished from the locked display case in the lobby. Ten minutes later, during an emergency security sweep, they were pulled from the side pocket of my backpack.

Chad yelled for the campus security guards at the top of his lungs.

Emmett rushed forward, grabbing Chad’s arm with tears in his eyes. "Don't call the police, please! Jackie had a hard life before this. He probably just... he’s never seen anything this valuable before."

Sophia had just arrived on campus for the alumni board meeting. The moment she saw the cufflinks on the table, her first instinct was to reach for the door handle.

"Shut the doors," she ordered sharply. "Don't let this get out to the press."

I looked at her, my eyes swimming with theatrical admiration.

"Sophia is such a protective sister. Emmett whimpers 'don't call the police,' and you immediately assume I’m guilty. It’s so efficient of you to skip the burden of proof entirely."

Sophia flinched.

I turned toward the event director, whose clipboard was trembling.

"A seasoned administrator like yourself wouldn't exhibit half a million dollars of insured jewelry without an itemized chain-of-custody log. If the school can't even trace who checked out an exhibition case, your risk management insurance must be an absolute thrill to negotiate."

Sweating through his collar, the director yanked open the logbook.

The last signature authorizing the removal of the cufflinks from the vault wasn't mine.

It was Emmett’s.

"Emmett told me to take them!" Chad blurted out in a blind panic.

Emmett seized Chad’s wrist with white-hot intensity. "Chad, you’re confused! You said you wanted to inspect the setting, so I only signed the ledger to help you out!"

For the first time, their synchronized routine slipped.

The director pulled the hallway cameras. At the exact timestamp the cufflinks were pocketed, Chad had been on the auditorium stage running mic checks for the evening gala. He couldn't have gone anywhere near my locker.

Sophia stared at Emmett. Slowly, the warmth drained from her face, leaving behind a cold, heavy shadow.

Emmett suddenly clutched his chest, gasping for air, his complexion turning ghostly. "Sophia... I can't breathe..."

In the past, the moment he pulled that routine, the entire family would drop everything to swarm him with water and inhalers.

This time, Sophia didn't move an inch.