Her Brother's Innocence

1: 1

The summer break was over, and on the day my brother drove me back to campus, my phone rang with an unknown number.

The voice on the other end was exactly the same as mine.

Don't let your brother drive Savannah Henson to the hospital. She's going to accuse him of sexual harassment.

Your brother will be hounded online until he's so depressed he takes his own life. You and your parents will go bankrupt, end up on the street, and starve.

I gripped the phone. "Who is this?"

The call cut off with a single beep.

I dialed straight back. The number was already dead.

I turned to my brother right away.

"Do you know a Savannah Henson?"

He shook his head.

I told myself it was probably just a prank.

Then, as I stepped out of the car at the campus gate, a girl came rushing over.

"Can you take me to the hospital? My stomach hurts so much..."

My brother was already reaching out to help her into the car when the phone call flashed back into my mind.

I grabbed his arm.

"My brother's busy. Get yourself a cab!"

...

The girl froze on the spot.

"It's so late, there are no cabs at the gate! I really can't take the pain anymore!"

"That's your problem, not ours." There wasn't a trace of give in my voice.

The students gathered around us broke into an uproar, and someone recognized me.

"Isn't that Professor Pruitt from our department?"

"That's cold. A student in that much pain, and she won't even lift a finger?"

"Not an ounce of compassion. She calls herself a teacher?"

The girl's eyes went red at once.

"So you're a professor. Don't worry, I'm a sophomore here, I'm not some shady person. I only asked because I had no other choice."

She pulled out her student ID and held it up in front of me.

Printed clearly across it were two words: Savannah Henson.

Every hair on my body stood up.

I stared hard at her. "Your name's Savannah Henson?"

She nodded timidly. "Y-yes, Professor."

I knocked her student ID aside and said coldly,

"If you're not well, call 911. Don't come to us."

Savannah burst into sobs.

"An ambulance costs four or five hundred dollars! That's my whole month of living money! I can't possibly afford it!"

My voice stayed cold.

"That's still your own problem."

The words set the crowd off for good.

"Unbelievable! She won't help, fine, but she's this aggressive about it?"

"A teacher without the most basic decency!"

"Cold-blooded, that's what this is. Fire her already!"

Countless phone cameras were trained on me, flashes going off nonstop.

My brother hurried over.

"Forget it, the girl can barely stand. I'll drive her"

"Stay out of it. Get back in the car." I held him back hard.

"It's on the way, one trip. What could possibly happen?" His tone turned firm; he was set on helping.

My eyes stung, and for the first time in my life I snapped at my brother.

"I said no! You absolutely cannot drive her!"

He was stunned. Not once, growing up, had I ever raised my voice at him.

Beside us, Savannah was still crouched on the ground, crying her heart out.

That was when the dean called, and the moment I picked up, his furious roar came down the line.

2: 2

"Maria Pruitt! Someone already sent me the video of you bullying a student at the front gate! I'm ordering you right now, get your brother to drive that girl to the hospital immediately!"

"Dean Whitfield, she can call 911 herself," I said, keeping my voice level.

"Is that any way to talk to me!"

The dean's voice cut sharp over the line.

"A student collapses at the school gate, and if something happens to her, can you carry that responsibility? This is the school's order, and you will obey it!"

The words landed, and the line went dead with a slam.

My brother looked at me and said, resigned, "The dean's already furious. It's one trip. It'll be fine."

I knew there was no getting out of it now, so I said, "You can drive her. But I'm coming along."

Miles waved that off. "Don't you still have things to handle at the dorms? No need to put yourself through it. Look, have her bring two female classmates to ride along. Nothing's going to happen."

I turned to Savannah, still playing pitiful. "Bring two classmates with you, or you don't get in the car."

Savannah lifted her head. Something vicious flickered through her eyes and was gone in an instant, replaced by the same fragile, wronged look.

She picked the girl who'd cursed at me the loudest earlier, and pulled along another girl who kept filming the whole thing on her phone.

I still couldn't shake the unease. I hurried back to the car, loaded everything in, and only then got out.

The four of them climbed in, and Savannah made a point of taking the front passenger seat.

I fixed my eyes on my brother and told him again and again, "Call me the second you get to the hospital. Don't say a word to her alone the whole way there."

Miles nodded and drove off into the distance.

I called the show's director right away. "That reality program you mentioned, I'm in. I've already set everything up."

Two hours later, my phone rang.

It was the dean.

"Come to my office."

Before I could ask what this was about, the line went dead.

I ran straight for the administration building.

The moment I pushed open the dean's office door, my heart dropped.

My brother stood in the middle of the room, his face bloodless.

He saw me, and his eyes went red at once.

Savannah sat off to the side, head down, crying without stopping.

The office was crowded with people.

The dean of academics, the head of student affairs, two academic advisors, and seven or eight colleagues, some I knew, some I didn't.

Every pair of eyes was locked on my brother and me.

The dean sat behind his desk, his face livid.

"Maria Pruitt, Savannah Henson has filed a report. On the drive just now, your brother sexually harassed her."

Miles panicked instantly. "I did not! Absolutely not! Halfway there she said her stomach stopped hurting and she wanted to go back to school, so I turned the car around right then! I never touched her, not once, start to finish!"

The more he said, the more frantic he got, his face flushing dark red.

Savannah cried louder at once, curling into her chair. "On the way there he touched my thigh. I was so scared I didn't dare fight back, so I pretended my stomach was better and asked him to take me back first..."

Several teachers around us frowned at once, and the way they looked at my brother turned even more scornful. They clearly believed her.

I stared hard at Savannah. "You got in the car with two classmates riding along. Four people in that car. How could something like that possibly have happened?"

3: 3

Savannah's crying cut off for an instant, then picked right back up through the tears.

"Those two students were threatened by your brother. He told them if they said the wrong thing, he'd make sure they never graduated. They're too scared to testify."

I turned to the dean, my voice hard. "Dean, just bring those two students in for a face-to-face. Four people were in that car. Ask them and the truth comes out."

The dean turned straight to the counselor. "Go get them."

The office went quiet in an instant, nothing left but Savannah's crying.

I crossed to my brother and took his hand.

He looked at me, his voice raw. "Maria, I really didn't. I swear I didn't do it..."

I gripped his hand tight. "I know. I believe you."

The office door flew open.

My brother's fiance, Juliana Fox, stood in the doorway.

Her hair was a mess, like she'd run the whole way here.

Miles froze. "Juliana? Why are you here?"

Juliana didn't say a word. She walked straight up to him.

She stared at him, hard.

The next second.

Crack!

A ringing slap. Everyone in the room sucked in a breath at once.

His head snapped to the side with the force of it.

Juliana's tears kept falling. "Miles Pruitt, the engagement is off."

He panicked, reaching to catch her arm. "Juliana, let me explain, it isn't what"

"Explain what?!"

She wrenched her hand away like a woman gone wild and screamed in his face. "You harassed a female student! You're that filthy! And you still have the nerve to explain to me?! I must have been blind to ever get engaged to you!"

I rushed forward and put myself between them. "Juliana, calm down! There were four people in that car! Two other girls were with them the whole way! How could my brother do something like that in front of two witnesses?! Use your head! Don't let them fool you!"

Juliana went rigid. A flicker of doubt crossed her eyes.

And in that pause.

Footsteps at the door.

The two summoned girls walked in, heads down.

I spoke at once. "They're here! Listen to them say it themselves! What actually happened!"

I fixed my eyes on the two of them. "What actually happened on the way to the hospital!"

The two girls exchanged a glance and answered under their breath. "He touched Savannah's thigh on the way there.

"And he threatened us! Said if we said the wrong thing, he'd make sure we never graduated, that we'd never be able to stay at this school again!"

The words landed and the whole room erupted.

Juliana looked at my brother, all the hope gone from her face. "Miles Pruitt, what do you have left to say?"

His head jerked up and he roared at the two girls.

"You're lying! I didn't!"

"I had both hands locked on that wheel the whole time! I never let go for a second!"

"I never said a single word to either of you! And I never touched her."

Juliana said nothing more. She turned and walked out.

He stood frozen where he was, tears of despair sliding down. "I really never said one word to them. I didn't do anything..."

4: 4

The whole office went dead silent.

Every administrator, every teacher, stared at my brother with nothing but contempt in their eyes.

I stepped right up to the two girls and lowered my voice.

"Slandering someone, giving false testimony on purposethat's against the law. That's a crime. It goes on your record, you go to jail. You're lying right now. Can you really live with what comes next?"

Savannah blew up on the spot.

She shot up out of her chair, jabbed a finger at my face, and shrieked through her tears.

"Professor Pruitt, this is going way too far!"

"The dean is standing right here! You're openly threatening witnesses!"

"Your brother did something filthy, and the proof is right there! Now you want to use your position to bully students and force us to shut up?"

The second the words left her mouth, every teacher and administrator around us erupted, all of them pointing at me, all of them shouting me down.

"So arrogant! Threatening students in the open!"

"Throwing her weight around, plain and simple!"

"The two of them, brother and sister, both running wild! What a disgrace to the profession!"

Savannah looked at me and said, cold and flat,

"If your Pruitt family doesn't give me an answer today, I'm calling the police."

She fixed her eyes on me, certain of herself.

I suppose, in her mind, at this point I should have been panicking.

I laughed out loud.

"Stop crying," I said coldly.

Her sobbing caught in her throat. She frowned at me.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket.

"This call to the policelet me make it for you."

Right in front of everyone, I dialed 911.

Savannah's eyes went wide.

The line connected, and I said calmly,

"Hi, I'm in the dean's office at Blueridge University. Someone here is accusing my brother of sexual harassment."

The officers arrived quickly.

Savannah launched into her tearful account, talking fast, running through the "details" again and again, each pass more specific than the last.

The two girls stood beside her, nodding along without a break. One said, "I saw him touch her." The other said, "When he threatened us, his voice was really vicious." The three of them meshed together without a single seam.

An officer turned to me. "Do you have anything else to say?"

"No way."

I stood beside my brother.

"My brother would never do something like this."

Savannah started crying again, harder than before.

"I know I know your Pruitt family has money and power. I'm just a girl from the country. I can't afford to take you on"

She lifted her head and looked at me, her whole face wet with tears.

Her voice climbed. "But I know that if I don't stand up, more girls like me are going to get hurt later on!"

The people around us picked up the cry, one after another.

"That's right! We're behind you!"

"They can't get away with this!"

The shouting rolled over me like water.

Then I clapped my hands.

"Wow, wow, that was really something. I almost got choked up."

"Oh, but I forgot to mentionI signed my brother up for a hidden-camera driving show. The whole time he was in that car today, they were filming him in secret."

"And the episode airs in five minutes."