Chapter Fifteen P: Iris Changes the Question
Iris watched the latest interviews with her headphones on while Lila prepared dinner downstairs.
She had assembled a rough sequence in which every adult explained what Nolan had done.
The film was accurate, but something about it bothered her.
It made the story sound as though everyone else had been waiting for a single villain to act.
She called her teacher, Ms. Calder, and asked whether a documentary could show people making bad decisions without turning them into monsters.
Ms. Calder said the question was worth exploring, but she warned Iris against treating a real person’s humiliation as entertainment.
Iris looked again at the moment Marla raised the axe.
The image was sharp enough to show the tension in her jaw.
It was also the kind of image classmates would replay because it was dramatic.
Iris asked whether she should remove the attack altogether.
Her teacher said the event belonged in the story because it had happened.
The challenge was to show its consequences without making the violence the most exciting part.
Iris opened a new timeline and placed a photograph of the crushed school model immediately after the first swing.
The model had taken her three weekends to build.
She had planned to use it for a lesson about how a neighborhood changed over time.
Becca’s boot had flattened the miniature library and bent the roof of the tiny bakery.
Iris had been angry when she found it.
Now she understood that the model’s destruction mattered because it made the trespass personal.
She recorded a short narration about returning to her room and discovering that somebody had entered the house while she was filming outside.
She did not call the event a clever twist.
She described the fear of realizing that the place she had believed was safe had been used as part of someone else’s plan.
Lila came upstairs with a plate of toast and listened to the new narration.
She said Iris sounded more like herself than she had in the earlier version.
Iris asked whether she should interview Becca again.
Lila said the choice depended on what Iris wanted to understand.
Iris wanted to know why Becca had continued working for Nolan after recognizing that he lied.
She called Becca and asked if they could speak with Evan present.
Becca agreed to come to the house the next afternoon.
Iris placed her phone on the desk and stared at the damaged model.
She decided not to repair it before the interview.
She wanted Becca to see what had been broken, but she also wanted to ask questions that a broken cardboard roof could not answer.
That evening she wrote a new list of questions.
The first was not about the axe or the basement.
It asked when Becca had first begun to doubt Nolan.
