Chapter 2

The girl was familiar. Wasn't she the "stinky fat thief" the whole class had publicly exposed barely weeks into her first semester? Back then, I was on welcome week duty, so I'd offered to help the new freshman girl carry her luggage, friendly as could be. But when I walked out of the dorm building, I realized my phone was gone. I was frantic, racing back to retrace my steps. At her roommate's suggestion, we finally dug it out of her drawer. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it back then. I even told her roommate not to spread the word, to give her a chance to clean up her act. But she messed up again just a few days later. The list of her offenses went on and on: stealing her roommates' cosmetics, swiping class funds to buy jewelry, the list went on and on. The final straw was when she flew into a rage in public, deliberately shoving a roommate down the stairs. The poor girl ended up in the hospital for a whole month. Everyone in the department knew what she'd done. On top of that, she was extremely overweight, and a foul stench always wafted off her when she walked. So naturally, everyone started calling her the stinky fat thief. I never would have guessed Donald would pick her as his next target. I was just about to reach out to her, to warn her not to meet up with him, when she beat me to the punch and sent me a video. In the footage, a crowd of men circled her like a pack of wolves eyeing their next meal. And she was hanging off his neck, slurring and sloppy-drunk as she tried to kiss him. The second their lips touched, I couldn't hold it back anymore. I bolted for the bathroom and threw up. I never could have imagined my boyfriend, who'd been so respectful when he was chasing me, so gentle and thoughtful after we got together, would cheat on me behind my back. I almost called him right then to chew him out and break up on the spot. But in the very last second of the video, a tiny object on the table in front of the camera made my scalp tingle with cold dread. I went lightheaded for a split second, then my blood came roaring through my veins so hard I could feel it thrumming under my skin. My heart hammered so fast it felt like it might burst out of my chest, and each breath came in short, ragged gasps. That tiny object was a one-of-a-kind hair tie. Emblazoned on it were two hand-drawn little girls, their features a little wonky and lopsided. Most people would have looked at it and seen nothing special. But I knew exactly what it was. I'd drawn that design with my best friend when we were kids, and we'd custom-made two matching hair ties at a shop together. There were only two of them in the entire world. I kept one locked away in a box, never to be touched. The other belonged to my best friend. It had been buried deep in the earth alongside her when she passed away years ago. Yet here it was, right there on camera, staring me down. Panic crashed through my chest like a stampede of wild horses, sending my whole world reeling. I couldn't steady my breathing for what felt like an eternity. It wasn't until my boyfriend pushed open the front door, which creaked loudly, that I snapped back to reality. I realized I'd been zoning out for two whole hours, my legs completely numb from sitting frozen in the same spot for so long. I quickly faked scrolling through short videos, while a sharp, unshakable resolve clicked into place in my chest. I was going to stay right here, until I dug up the truth with my own two hands. Luckily for me, he was dead tired and didn't pick up on anything off about me at all. He didn't even say a word to me. He stumbled inside, hopped in the shower, and flopped into bed without a second glance, like it was all just another routine night. I slipped into bed next to him silently, my back turned to his body, but that stupid hair tie kept flashing behind my eyelids no matter how hard I tried to blink it away. The next morning, I headed to campus for classes with Donald like usual. But right as we reached the entrance of the teaching building, that fat, thieving, stinky freshman girl everyone called "the gross thief" stormed right up and blocked our path, yelling at the top of her lungs for everyone to hear. "I already slept with Donald! How are you still this shameless, hanging onto him like you've got nowhere else to go? Do the smart thing and step aside right now, or I'll have his kid and make you raise the little brat!"