Chapter Text
Highcrest academy was considered one of the most elite universities in the world. It was the kind of school that produced some of the most influential people and some of the greatest minds. Nestled in a secluded, impeccably landscaped campus, the ultra-elite private university exudes exclusivity and prestige. With acceptance rates in the low single digits, it admits only the most exceptional students from around the world, those who demonstrate not just academic brilliance but also extraordinary leadership, creativity, and influence. World-renowned faculty, cutting-edge research facilities, and unparalleled global connections define the student experience. Tradition meets innovation in its ivy-covered halls, where future leaders, Nobel laureates, and captains of industry are quietly shaped.
The campus itself was a relic of grandeur, a former palace once belonging to a British nobleman, later transformed into the hallowed halls of Highcrest. Ivy clung to its ancient stone walls, whispering secrets of centuries past, while inside, cutting-edge research facilities and world-renowned faculty bridged the gap between tradition and innovation. Here, excellence isn’t just expected, it’s the baseline. The alumni network read like a who’s who of global power players, and the weight of that legacy pressed down on every student who walked its corridors.
Highcrest academy also has some of the highest tuition rates resulting in the children of some of the most influential families, think the CEO’s of fortune 500 companies, diplomats, politicians, and even members of the aristocracy.
So a disgraced daughter of a Nobel laureate was not a surprising sight, but the disgraced daughter of a broke Nobel laureate certainly was.
Friday Barnes wasn’t an unhappy child, that’s to say she wasn’t exactly all that jovial either. As the fifth child of theoretical physicist, being forgotten and overlooked was not an uncommon occurrence. Dr Evangeline Barnes was a very systematic woman, however there is always something that slips through the cracks in every system and in the Barnes system that something was Friday.
Friday had long ago learned the value of invisibility and being overlooked. When a child spends their entire childhood being overlooked and there’s a quiet cost to being neglected. When you spend all your energy avoiding notice at home, that habit doesn't stay confined to one space; it starts to shape how you exist everywhere. Friday had become equally invisible at school, on public transport, even in the corner shop.
And when no one sees you, no one speaks to you. A silent childhood leads to stunted social growth. It's difficult to form connections when your instinctive way to start a conversation is something like, “How many moles of acid does it take to make your hair that shade of yellow?”. So while her classmates socialised and formed connections Friday took solace in books.
Her parents’ library was vast floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with volumes on molecular structures, quantum theory, the kind of texts that could suck the life out of words. But she devoured them anyway, page by page, fact by fact, as if knowledge alone could fill the hollow spaces inside her. By the time she was ten, she had read them all. School became a formality. Teachers soon realised there was little they could offer her that she hadn’t already absorbed, so they left her to her own devices a small, solitary figure at the back of the classroom, lost in the pages of crime novels.
As the years went on Friday grew to enjoy the thrill of a good mystery, she enjoyed hearing all the stories her favourite uncle Bernie had about his former days as a cop and the newer stories he had as a private investigator for a major insurance company. And soon Friday’s penchant for crimes and her meddlesome personality landed her in hot water. You see when a child who wasn’t protected or cared for properly as a child grows up they will seek comfort from anything and anyone, making them vulnerable to people with bad intentions. And given Friday’s intellect and lack of social awareness, she hadn’t noticed the trap she fell into until it was too late. For a girl like Friday, people paying attention to you wasn’t a common occurrence,
So when a charming boy took an interest in her, it felt good. Good enough that when he started asking strange questions, about crimes, of all things, she didn’t question it. Maybe he was just being polite, indulging her interests. She didn’t understand what was happening until the handcuffs closed around her wrists, and the officer read out her charges of aiding and abetting organised crime. Given the fact that she was only seventeen and didn’t actually know that she was helping the Tainos family, the courts were kinder to her and sealed away her record. But at the end of the day they needed a scape goat and there was no way that the Tainos family were ever going to be prosecuted. But she made sure to drag the boy who betrayed her down with her.
The aftermath of her sentence was, without a doubt, the worst part of it all. The cell bars, the court hearings, the crushing anxiety of being locked up, they had been difficult, sure. But nothing compared to the silence that followed. What little contact she had once clung to with her parents and siblings had completely dissolved. It wasn’t just distance or disappointment, it was as if she had been erased from their lives entirely. Calls went unanswered. Letters came back unopened. The closest thing resembling contact with her siblings was the occasional deposit in her bank account from her brother Quantum that he sent from whatever little money left over from his grants. She no longer had a home to return to, at least not the one she'd grown up in.
Friends? There weren’t any real ones left. Most had quietly faded away after the conviction, unwilling to risk their own reputations by staying close to someone now known for a criminal record. Whether they had believed she was guilty or not didn’t matter anymore. They were gone.
All she had was Uncle Bernie.
Bernie, with his cluttered apartment and his endless supply of corny jokes, had taken her in without hesitation. He never asked questions, never looked at her with suspicion or pity, just offered her a place to sleep, a roof that didn’t leak too much, and the space to start over. He became the rock she didn’t know she needed.
She spent the entirety of her eighteen-month probation quietly rebuilding what had been shattered. It was a slow, sometimes humiliating process. She had already graduated high school before everything had gone wrong, before the charges, the courtroom, and the sentence that changed her life. She’d even had a full scholarship to Highcrest Academy, a prestigious university with the kind of reputation that could change a life. But dreams don't survive on tuition alone. Her parents were supposed to cover the rest, housing, food, and her car. But now that they were gone, the scholarship was little more than a cruel reminder of what she’d lost.
Instead of dorms and textbooks, she spent her days working long shifts at a café a few blocks from Bernie’s place, pouring coffee, wiping down counters, and saving every dollar she could spare . She was saving for something, anything. A second chance, maybe. Some new version of a dream.
Then one lucky day, though she hadn’t recognised it as lucky at the time, Uncle Bernie came home with a new case.
A bank robbery. Not just any robbery, though, this one involved a stolen diamond worth five million dollars, snatched from a secure deposit box with no signs of forced entry. Bernie worked part-time as a private investigator, mostly for insurance companies and sketchy divorce cases. This job was different. The case was offering a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for whoever could solve it.
Bernie wasn’t getting anywhere, and the case files were just sitting out on the dining room table for days. Curiosity got the better of her, as it always did. She started watching the security footage late at night after work, analysing every second, rewinding, replaying. At first, it was just a distraction, a puzzle to keep her mind off of everything else.
But then she saw it. A subtle tell. A moment of hesitation. A second glance.
It took several nights and a whiteboard filled with notes and timelines before she was confident. The thief wasn’t some outsider or clever cat burglar. It was the owner of the diamond himself, Mr. Rodger Fredricks. He had staged the entire thing in a scheme to collect the insurance money, assuming no one would question a man of his status and wealth.
She handed everything over to Bernie, video timestamps, motive breakdowns, inconsistencies in Fredricks’ statements, and two weeks later, he turned in the case and collected the reward. Without blinking, he handed her the check.
It was the reason she now stood outside the ivy-covered gates of Highcrest Academy, the sun rising behind her as students filed past with bright eyes and clean slates of their own.
This was her clean slate. A second chance, paid for not with privilege or forgiveness, but with hard-earned proof that she was more than her past.
And this time, she wasn’t going to let anyone take it from her.