Faking Bankruptcy, I Saw My Dorm's True Colors

We'd barely moved back into the dorm for the new term when my roommate Cyril Delgado shoved his phone screen in front of me.

Look at this, Godfather. Helicopter skydiving, only three grand a head. I've been counting on you to take me the second school started.

A year ago I'd already be dragging him out the door.

But now my face went a little stiff. "I can't treat you to stuff anymore. My family went bankrupt."

I figured, with everything between us, he'd at least say something to make me feel better.

Instead he just frowned. "You can't even scrape together a few thousand?"

I stared at him, stunned. There wasn't a shred of sympathy in his eyes, only irritation.

"God, so annoying. You should've said something sooner about going broke. I already had the caption for my post picked out."

I froze where I stood. He turned and walked off.

That night, when he collected the electricity money in the group chat, my share was fifty more than everyone else's.

I called him on it straight out, and all he said was, "You always paid the electric bill before. All I'm doing now is making you cover an extra fifty, not the whole thing. That's already me being generous."

Then he accidentally posted a screenshot in the group: "Kissed up to him all this time just to land a spot at his family's company, and now they've gone bankrupt!"

I didn't say anything. I just opened my phone and messaged my mom: "Mom, faking bankruptcy really does show you what people are made of."

1.

When Cyril realized he'd sent the message to the wrong place, our other roommate, Dirk Joyce, cleared his throat, hinting for him to delete it.

Cyril glanced at his phone, rolled his eyes, and muttered, annoyed, "What's there to delete? He can't even afford a three-grand helicopter skydive anymore. I'm not obligated to be his little source of emotional support."

Dirk's page-turning stopped. He ducked his head, awkward, and buried his face in the book.

I rolled over in bed with my back to them, but my eyes slowly went red at the rims.

For more than a year, I won't say I gave them my whole heart, but I never once shortchanged them.

Dropping a few thousand on a single meal was nothing unusual.

Game consoles, cartridges, anything from a few thousand to over ten grand, I handed over without a second thought.

Back then Cyril would clutch whatever console or pair of sneakers I'd given him and squeal, "Thank you, Godfather. So young and I already own a PS5 and a Switch. I could cry."

Dirk was a little different. I'd take him out to eat, drink, have fun.

He always insisted on splitting the meal with me, only ever throwing in a few dollars, but I never made an issue of it.

When I gave him electronics, he'd transfer me ten bucks.

He'd say, "Just say I bought it."

Even when the money he handed over wouldn't have covered a single key on the keyboard, I only smiled and took it.

Because he was a scholarship student with top grades, I chalked it up to a top student's pride, a refusal to take charity.

But today it slowly came clear to me.

Maybe it wasn't that he didn't know the price. Maybe paying his little share was his way of settling up, of owing me nothing.

He wanted my things and he wanted to stay my equal.

It wasn't backbone. It was wanting it both ways.

The thought left me feeling nothing but cold contempt.

I slowly got my emotions back under control, opened my tablet, and started building a slideshow.

I typed out the first slide: "Fake Bankruptcy Plan, Day One."

I filled the slideshow with the chat messages and the way each of them had acted.

And just as I was about to turn out the light and sleep, Cyril knocked on the rail of my bunk.

I leaned my head out, my face still dark.

He looked briefly taken aback, then said something that turned my heart colder still.

"My birthday's next month. Can you still get me a gift?"

I stared at him blankly, my mouth opening but no words coming out.

Seeing me like that, he knit his brows. "You promised me last year you'd get me a twelve-hundred-dollar Alienware laptop for my birthday this year"

Looking at that entitled face, I was so angry my hands were shaking.

I wanted to slam the tablet into his head and tell him the bankruptcy was fake.

But thinking of what my mom had said, I forced the anger back down.

Seeing me still speechless, he clicked his tongue in disgust. "If I'd known, I'd have made you buy it for me before break."

His tone was matter-of-fact, and the way he looked at me, you'd think I owed him a thousand dollars.

My voice came out hoarse. "I don't owe you anything, Cyril."

"Then you shouldn't have said yes. Did I force you to give me anything? You promise and then can't follow through, and I'm not even allowed to be upset?"

With that he spun around and climbed back into his own bunk.

Cyril lay there typing fast on his phone, and I didn't have to guess to know he was trashing me to someone again.

I stopped paying him any attention, switched off my reading light, and went to sleep.

The next morning, before the sky was even light, the dorm erupted with clattering and banging, and Cyril slapped every light on with a snap.

Frowning, I grabbed my phone and looked. It was only five in the morning.

I leaned out and asked him irritably, "Can you keep it down?"

He dropped his shower basin on the floor with a bang.

"Still think you're some rich young master? Your family's broke. Can you quit the act? I'm just getting up early to wash up like normal. How is that bothering you?"

I came fully awake and looked at him coldly.

Dirk, already up, only slowly opened his eyes, glanced at us, then rolled over and pulled the blanket over his head, saying nothing.

Cyril didn't say anything more. He scooped his basket up off the floor and strode toward the bathroom, chin high.

He slammed the door hard enough to shake the room and blasted music inside.

I wasn't angry anymore. I quietly opened the slideshow and logged the second slide.

They used to be so careful getting up and washing in the mornings, terrified of waking me.

Cyril liked to shower first thing. Sometimes he'd rather feel his way to the bathroom in the dark than use a flashlight.

Because he knew I was a light sleeper. Once he stubbed his toe on the table leg and yelped.

The moment he saw I was awake, he apologized over and over, wracked with guilt.

I'd thought I was just lucky, that I'd landed two saintly roommates who understood boundaries.

But it turned out their boundaries were built on the fact that I had money.

When it was finally time to get up, I sat up, and my whole body went rigid.

I smoke a lot, and now, of all times, the pack that lived by my bed was nowhere to be found.

I got up and started tearing through everything, but I couldn't turn up a single cigarette.

Back when I bought cigarettes, I'd stock up a thousand dollars' worth at a time.

I'd just leave them out in the dorm's common area for anyone to take.

Remembering that, I forced myself to walk over to Cyril and ask, "Do you have any cigarettes? Could you lend me one?"

I figured we were both guys, and after the way I'd treated all of them before,

surely one cigarette wasn't too much to ask.

But Cyril only glanced up at me, then dropped his eyes back to his game and flatly tossed out two words: "Nope."

My heart sank straight to the bottom. The whole thing felt fake.

Just last semester, knowing how much I smoked, he'd sneak his dad's Cohibas out of the house and slip them to me right here in the dorm.

But the itch clawing at my throat told me all of this was really happening.

My bankruptcy was fake. His true face was not.

I didn't dare imagine how wrecked I'd be right now if I'd actually gone broke.

I said nothing more, and shuffled step by step over to Dirk's spot.

"You got a cigarette I could borrow?"

He kept his eyes down, wrestling with it for a long moment before he finally opened his cabinet.

His hand hovered inside for a second before he pulled out a five-dollar pack and handed it over.

But I saw it clearly: still sitting in his cabinet were the soft-pack Marlboros I'd bought last year and left in the common area.

I took the pack, already damp and gone soft, squeezed it in my palm, and said nothing.

Right in front of Dirk, I dropped the cigarettes in the trash and headed out to the convenience store to buy new ones.

Seattle weather swings from sun to rain and back.

I'd just paid and was walking out of the store when the rain came down hard.

If this had been before, I wouldn't have had to say a word.

If Cyril noticed I wasn't back at the dorm, he'd get anxious and text to ask where I was, even though the library was a half-hour walk away.

And he'd come running to bring me an umbrella, no complaints, tilting it toward me on purpose the whole way.

I used to think that was friendship, so I learned from them and treated them just as sincerely, bringing umbrellas, grabbing food for them, buying them things to eat and use.

Now I understood it was only ever because I had money back then.

Now that I was "broke," I wasn't about to embarrass myself by asking if any of them would bring me an umbrella.

I sighed and pulled out my phone, sending a message to the dorm group chat: "It's pouring. Could you guys bring my laundry in for me? Thanks."

Five minutes after I sent it, no one had replied.

I've never had much normal social experience, but a request like that had to be about as ordinary as it got in a guys' dorm.

Yet fifteen minutes later, the group chat still sat right where it had, on the message I'd sent.

I lowered my eyes, and once the rain eased up a bit, I ran back to the dorm through the drizzle.

When I came in soaked and miserable, Cyril just glanced up at me, then dropped his head back to his phone.

Dirk stayed buried in his English vocabulary and didn't spare me a word.

I walked out to the dorm balcony. Their clothes had all been brought in.

Mine, along with my bedsheets, were still swaying out there in the wind and rain.

I stood there staring at the clothes, soaked all the way through and still dripping, and couldn't get a single word out.

Worse still, they'd shoved all my laundry into one crowded bunch, plainly so their own clothes could spread out and dry.

Out of nowhere, my tears fell.

The hurt and the ache tangled together in my chest.

In their eyes, a bankrupt me wasn't even worth treating like an ordinary classmate.

I took out my phone, photographed it, and edited it into the slideshow.

By the time I'd cleaned everything up, Cyril had already gone out with friends.

And Dirk sidled up to me, and one sentence left me frozen where I stood.

"That birthday present I gave you last year, it's still in the room, right?"

I frowned and had to think for a moment before I placed it: the three-hundred-dollar basketball.

I nodded. "Yeah, it's still here. Why?"

Dirk hesitated, like it was hard to say.

"Cyril invited me to his birthday, but I don't feel like spending money on another gift. I remembered I never saw you use that basketball, so could you give it back to me..."

I stared at him, stunned.

He must have known himself how it looked, because he rushed on, "Don't worry, though. When my birthday comes around you won't need to get me anything. We'll call it even with this."

"I mean, your family's bankrupt now. You probably wouldn't be able to afford anything decent by then anyway."

I didn't say a word. I got up, went to the wardrobe, and handed him the basketball.

Dirk turned it over in his hands a few times, checking it, and only when he was satisfied it still looked new did he let out a slow breath.

He tucked it carefully into a gift bag, then put on a helpful face and offered his advice. "Honestly, your family's broke now. There's no point still acting like some rich young master. The only reason Cyril can't stand you is that your family suddenly went under and threw off all his plans."

"His family's comfortable enough, and he spent all that time bowing and scraping in front of you. Of course he's bitter about it. If you let him order you around a few times, maybe he'd get over it."

Every word landed like a hammer, slamming down on my chest.

The dull ache and the sheer absurdity of it left me barely able to breathe. I looked at him and almost laughed. "And what do I get out of flattering him? Just for him to stop bullying me? Was I the one ordering him around before? Wasn't it him, coming back again and again to mooch my meals, my cigarettes, my drinks, cashing in favors off me every time?"

"Or is his time so precious that buying me lunch once is worth a three- or four-thousand-dollar game console?"

My sharp questions left Dirk with nothing to say.

That mouth of his, so quick and clever in the debate club, couldn't get out a single word now.

Because his logic didn't hold up at all.

What looked like reasonable, even-handed advice was really just him trying to drag me into flattering Cyril, and getting a kick in at me while he was at it.

"I was only giving you a suggestion. Fine, take my good intentions for garbage."

He turned away and said nothing more.

For the days that followed, neither of them gave me a decent look.

In the room, we all treated each other like strangers.

And it all kept going, right up until the day of Cyril's birthday.

Cyril invited a lot of our classmates. Everyone but me.

The corner of his mouth curled in a sneer. "I'm doing it for his sake too. Wouldn't want him stuck not being able to afford a gift."

And on the night of his birthday, while I was killing time on my phone in the room, Dirk called me.

There was something testing in his voice. "You want to pick up a side gig?"

I froze for a second.

Because of his family's situation, Dirk was always taking on odd jobs.

I just hadn't expected that, in a moment like this, he'd be willing to share one of his money-making channels with me.

I smiled and asked, "What kind of job? What's the hourly rate?"

The second I finished, he flipped over to a video call.

He pointed the camera at the hiring notice by the door of a karaoke lounge.

It read: "Now hiring private-room hosts. Eight hundred a night, paid daily."

I fought down the surge in my stomach and demanded, "What exactly are you getting at?"

Dirk's tone was matter-of-fact, as if none of it needed explaining. "Didn't your family go bankrupt? What's with all the airs? I'm saying this for your own good. Eight hundred a night, you sing a few songs, drink a little with people, and it's yours."

Blood rushed straight up to the top of my head, my scalp prickling with fury.

I laughed, pushed past rage into something colder. "If it's that great, why don't you do it?"

He shrugged. "I've got my own gig. Besides, you've got experience..."

He drew out that last word, then said, with a heavy little meaning behind it, "Weren't you always out eating and drinking with those older women?"

I couldn't hold it back. I gagged.

The business dinners I used to attend with my elders, and he had twisted them into something this filthy.

"Get lost."

I was about to hang up when Cyril, half-drunk, took the phone. His words came out slurred. "Can pride put food on the table? Your family's bankrupt. Drop the young-master act and go earn some money."

Then he waved the others over. "Come look, get a good look. This is the young Locke heir from our dorm. From now on you'd all better give him some business."

A wave of laughter went up around him, and their crowded, overlapping chatter jabbed into my ears like needles.

"So this is that Ryan Locke, the one whose family went under? Good-looking, decent build. But he's a college student and he's really doing this?"

"What do you know? He used to be a young master, used to throwing money around. Apart from fast cash, why would he ever swallow his pride for real work?"

"True. A private-room host is still a kind of host, right?"

My fingertips had gone white from how hard I was gripping the phone.

I glanced at the reminder in the top-left corner, still recording the screen, and forced myself not to hang up.

I wanted them to die of shame in front of the whole school someday, wanted everyone to see just how filthy the hearts under these faces really were.

One of them pulled three hundreds straight out of her pocket, hiccupping from the drink. "Come on, cutie, come drink with me and I'll give you three hundred."

They all dissolved into laughter. I didn't break down and sob the way they'd expected.

I just looked back at them through the camera, cold.

That look, like I was above all of it, set Cyril off again. He screamed into the phone, cursing me. "You know what I hate most? That high-and-mighty, too-good-for-us face of yours. So you had a little money. Who are you putting on airs for?"

I had nothing left for Cyril, watching him the way you'd watch a kid throwing a tantrum. "What is it you're actually so unhappy about?"

That one line seemed to set him off all over.

His face went hard and he roared, "Handing us the stuff you couldn't use up, that was all just to watch us grovel and thank you for it, wasn't it?"

It had never once occurred to me. This whole year, everything I'd given them, everything I'd done for them with my whole heart.

So this was how they'd seen me the entire time.

"Cyril. Dirk. If you didn't want the things I gave you, you could have just said so. I'd have smashed them before I let you have them. To spare your pathetic pride, every single time I said I'd bought too many, and handed you brand-new electronics."

"Too bad you never valued any of it. Now that I've fallen, suddenly you're the ones who got wronged? Back when you were taking it all, why didn't you say a word?"

Cyril's features twisted almost into one another, and he was just about to speak.

Then someone let out a sharp, piercing shriek.

The girl who'd just said she'd pay three hundred to have me drink with her pointed at her phone. "Look, everyone, it's Ryan Locke's family company."

Everyone pulled out their phones and checked what was trending that day, and one by one their eyes went wide.