CW3 - Proven Innocent

Once you were treated unfairly by someone in your family. You were blamed for something that was not actually your fault.

For the entire two weeks, I put up with cold stares from my elder sister, Zoe, every single day. It pained me because she was the closest person to me in this world. She was more than a just a sister. She was also my advisor, confidant and best friend.

She started giving me cold shoulders when she was questioned by my mother on her hefty phone bill.

It was a Tuesday afternoon. Three of us were in the living room. My mother was going through the mails when out of the blue, she hollered, "Zoe, your phone bill chalked up to more than $400 last month! Explain yourself!" In her fury, she had clutched the bill so hard that it had lost its crispness. She shoved the creased phone bill to Zoe.

Composed, as she always was, and the main reason why I looked up to her so much, she took the bill from my mother's shaky hands. Her eyes widened in disbelief as she studied the bill.

"Mum, Singtel must have made a mistake. How is it possible for me to send more than a thousand sms'es in a month?" she explained.

Not buying what Zoe had said, my mother raised her voice by a few decibels, "Don't you dare try to push the blame? Fancy you to say that it was the fault of Singtel! How brilliant!"

"It's not me, Mum. I am not the one! If it's not a mistake made by Singtel, it must be someone else using my phone without my knowledge! After all, I always leave my phone on the coffee table," Zoe answered, not at all threatened.

With that, both of them turned simultaneously and cast accusing glares at me. Those glares were deadly, so deadly that my soul was jolted out of my skin. Before I could speak up to defend myself, my eardrums were treated to a flurry of false accusations and reprimanding!

"It must be you, right? How could you? You do not have to resort to this even if I don’t agree to buy you a handphone!" My mother blared into my ears. "Why must you behave like a thief? I don't understand! You're such a disappointment!" she continued, seething in rage.

Cupping my ears, I turned to look longingly at Zoe for help only to receive a cold stare. The coldness invaded every single blood vessel and into the bones. My heart sank and as it sank, it broke into a million pieces. I had lost Zoe, my once dear sister. She did not believe that I was innocent.

"I did not! I am innocent! Get the detailed billing if you don't believe me!" I uttered in sadness.

I would describe the two weeks which followed as thoroughly torturous. The seconds felt like minutes, the minutes like hours and hours like days. Time crawled at such a slow pace that the sheer two weeks seemed an eternity.

The detailed billing finally arrived. We pored through the thick stack of 30-odd page report. Upon close examination, there were, on a few occasions, sms'es were sent to the same party every ten seconds. It puzzled us but we finally analysed how that was possible. Zoe had left her phone in her waist pouch and with the keypad unlocked, and some forces of fluke, messages were sent over and over again to the same party.

Terribly relieved was I that it was all over. The detailed billing report had proven me innocent. Zoe had figured out that it was no fault of mine. No one was at fault. If you were to ask me, I would say that the biggest culprit is the keypad of the phone. It was not locked properly or rather it was unlocked accidentally.

"I am sorry," Zoe apologized sheepishly. "It was foolish of me to think that you were the one. And guess what, my next phone will be a clamshell phone and you should know why!"

We laughed. I finally had Zoe back!