He swallowed.
“I…”
Nora waited.
The vice principal’s face had gone pale.
His hands were shaking.
For a moment, he looked as though he might refuse to answer.
Then his eyes softened with an expression Nora could not identify.
Pain.
Disbelief.
Perhaps a memory.
He spoke so quietly that she almost missed the words.
“Your mother… she had that exact mark.”
Nora stared at him.
She felt as though the floor had shifted beneath her feet.
Her mother?
The words made no sense.
Her mother was at home when Nora left for school that morning.
Her mother was the person who reminded her to eat breakfast, asked about her assignments, and worried when she seemed unhappy.
Her mother had always been the familiar answer to the question of where Nora belonged.
And now a man from her school was staring at her birthmark as though it connected him to something painful.
Nora tried to speak.
Nothing came out.
She thought of her mother’s face.
Her gentle voice.
Her patient manner.
She thought of all the ordinary conversations they had shared.
The evenings when they sat together.
The arguments that ended in apologies.
The times Nora had believed that a mother’s love meant always telling the truth.
But the vice principal’s words raised questions she had never considered.
Had he known her mother?
How?
When?
And why had the sight of the birthmark frightened him so much?
Nora did not even know whether his statement was reliable.
Perhaps he was mistaken.
Perhaps someone else had a similar mark.
Perhaps he had remembered something incorrectly.
But there was no mistaking the fear in his expression.
She looked toward Madison.
The blonde girl had gone very still.
Nora remembered the message asking whether she had the same mark.
Suddenly, the words seemed even more disturbing.
The same mark as whom?
Her mother?
Someone connected to her mother?
Someone the vice principal knew?
Nora had no answers.
Only questions that seemed to multiply each time she tried to understand what was happening.
She touched the crescent above her eyebrow.
The motion was almost unconscious.
The vice principal watched her hand.
For a moment, his expression became even more troubled.
Nora lowered it.
“How do you know that?”
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He looked at her.
She could see that he was struggling to choose his words.
But his hesitation only made the situation worse.
“Did you know my mother?”
Nora asked.
His lips parted.
He did not answer.
Nora took a step toward him.
The movement made her forehead sting, but she barely noticed.
“Please.”
The vice principal glanced toward the mirror.
Then toward Madison.
Nora followed his eyes.
She could not understand why he was hesitating.
If he knew something, why would he refuse to explain?
She had been hurt.
She was frightened.
And now he had said something about the most important person in her life.
Something that made Nora feel as though an ordinary part of her childhood might have been hiding a question she had never known to ask.
She remembered her mother’s words that morning.
Being fine doesn’t mean you have to handle everything by yourself.
Nora suddenly wished her mother were standing beside her.
She wanted to ask whether the vice principal was telling the truth.
She wanted to hear the familiar reassurance that there was a simple explanation.
But her mother was not there.
And for the first time in her life, Nora wondered whether asking her mother would make the mystery clearer or more frightening.
She looked at the vice principal again.
His lips moved, but he still seemed unable to speak.
Nora’s fear turned into anger.
Not anger born from certainty.
Anger born from being the only person in the room who did not understand what was happening to her.
Madison knew something about the messages.
The vice principal appeared to know something about her mother.
And Nora, whose face and family were at the center of the questions, knew nothing.
Her voice broke through the silence.
“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT MY MOTHER?”
The vice principal flinched.
He looked directly at her.
For a moment, Nora thought he was finally going to answer.
His expression changed.
His mouth opened.
Madison stood motionless nearby, the phone still clutched in her hand.
Nora waited, trembling with fear and anger.
She could hear her own heartbeat.
She could see the pale concern on the vice principal’s face.
She could feel the small scrape near her birthmark.
And she knew that whatever he said next might change the way she understood her mother forever.
Then, before he could speak—
BZZZT.
Madison’s phone vibrated again.
THE END
