After Faking Bankruptcy to Test Hearts, I Saw My Roommates' Faces

The semester had barely started and we'd just moved back into the dorm when my roommate, Daniela Delgado, turned her phone screen toward me.

Babe, this sushi place is only a thousand a head. I've been dying to go for ages. I've been counting on you taking me once school started.

A year ago I'd already be dragging her out the door to check it out.

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

I thought, with everything between us, she'd at least offer a few words of comfort.

Instead she just frowned. "You can't even cover a couple thousand?"

I stared at her, stunned. There wasn't a trace of sympathy in her eyes, only irritation.

"Ugh, so annoying. You could've said something sooner about the bankruptcy. I already had the caption picked out for my post."

I froze where I was, and she turned and walked off.

That night she collected everyone's share of the electric bill in the group chat, and mine was fifty dollars more than the others'.

I confronted her about it directly, and she just said, "You always paid the electric before. All I'm asking is fifty extra, not the whole thing. That's already generous."

Then she accidentally dropped a screenshot into the group chat: "Sucked up to her all this time just to get into her 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 test people's hearts."

1.

Seeing that Daniela had sent the message to the wrong place, the other girl in the dorm, Selina Joyce, cleared her throat, signaling her to delete it fast.

Daniela glanced at her phone, rolled her eyes, and muttered impatiently, "What's there to delete? She can't even spring for a thousand-a-head sushi dinner anymore. I'm under no obligation to give her emotional support."

The sound of Selina turning a page stopped. She looked a little awkward and lowered her head, burying her face behind the book.

I turned over in bed with my back to them, but my eyes slowly went red.

For the past year and more, I wouldn't say I'd poured my heart out to them, but I'd never shortchanged them either.

Dropping a few thousand on a single meal was a regular thing.

Skincare and makeup, anywhere from a few thousand to over ten thousand, I handed over without a second thought.

Back then, Daniela was always cradling the skincare I'd given her and squealing, "Thank you, Lauren Walker, letting me use La Mer and La Prairie this young. I could cry."

Selina was different. When I took her out to eat,

she'd always stubbornly split the bill with me, only ever chipping in a few dozen dollars, but I never made an issue of it.

When I gave her skincare, she'd Venmo me ten bucks.

She'd always say, "Just consider it something I bought."

Even though what she gave wouldn't cover the empty jar, I only ever smiled and took it.

But since she was a financial-aid student with top grades, I just figured she had that scholar's pride and didn't want to accept a handout.

Today, though, it slowly came into focus for me.

Maybe she'd known the prices all along, and paying that little was her way of settling up so she'd owe me nothing.

She wanted my things and wanted to stay on equal footing with me.

It wasn't integrity. She just wanted it both ways.

The thought left me feeling nothing but bitter and cold.

I slowly wiped my eyes clean, opened my tablet, and started building a slide deck.

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

I filled the slides with the chat logs and both of their reactions.

And just as I was about to turn off the light and sleep, Daniela knocked on the railing of my bunk.

I leaned my head out, my eyes still a little red and swollen.

She was startled for only a second, then said something that chilled me even more.

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

I stared at her blankly, opened my mouth, and couldn't get a word out.

Seeing my reaction, she knit her brows. "You promised me last year. For my birthday this year you'd get me a bag worth over ten thousand"

I looked at that entitled face of hers, so angry my hands were shaking.

I wanted to smash the tablet over her head and tell her the bankruptcy was fake.

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

Seeing that I couldn't speak, she clicked her tongue in distaste. "If I'd known, I would've had you buy it for me before break."

Her tone was matter-of-fact, and she looked at me as if I owed her that ten-thousand-plus.

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

"Then you shouldn't have promised. Did I force you to get it for me? You say it and then you can't do it, and I'm not even allowed to be upset?"

With that, she tossed her hair, turned, and climbed back into her own bed.

Daniela lay there typing fast on her phone, and I didn't have to guess that she was trashing me to someone again.

I stopped paying her any attention, switched off my bunk light, and went to sleep.

The next day, before it was even light, the dorm erupted in a clatter of banging, and Daniela flicked every light on with a loud snap.

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

I leaned my head out and asked Daniela irritably, "Can you keep it down?"

She dropped her shower caddy on the floor with a bang.

"Still think you're some heiress? Your family's bankrupt. Can you quit the act? So I get up early to wash up like normal, and that's a problem for you?"

I came back to myself and stared at her coldly.

Selina, already awake, only opened her eyes slowly to glance at us, then rolled over and pulled the blanket over her head, saying nothing.

Daniela didn't say anything more. She picked the caddy up off the floor and strutted off toward the bathroom, chin in the air.

She slammed the door hard enough to shake the walls and blasted music inside.

I wasn't angry anymore. I quietly opened the deck and wrote down the second page.

Before, when they got up to wash up, they'd move so gently, terrified of waking me.

Daniela liked to shower in the mornings, and sometimes she'd rather feel her way to the bathroom in the dark than use a flashlight.

Because she knew I was a light sleeper. Once, she accidentally stubbed her toe on the table leg and let out a yelp.

Seeing that she'd woken me, she immediately felt so guilty she wouldn't stop apologizing.

I thought I'd just gotten lucky, that I'd landed two saintly roommates who respected boundaries.

But it turned out their sense of boundaries had rested entirely on my money.

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

My period came early.

I climbed out of bed with a hand pressed to my stomach and started digging through everything I owned, but I couldn't find a single pad.

Back when I used to buy pads, I bought them by the thousand-dollar haul.

And I just left them out in the shared area of the dorm for everyone to use.

Remembering that, I steeled myself, walked over to Jacob, and asked, "Do you have a pad? Can I borrow one?"

I thought that, both of us being girls, and after the way I'd treated them before, at the very least she could spare me one pad.

But I didn't expect Jacob to just glance up at me, then drop her eyes back to her show and toss out two flat words. "I don't."

My heart sank straight to the bottom. None of it felt real.

Just last semester, when she'd found out my period had come, she'd secretly boiled hot tea with honey for me on that little pot in the dorm.

But the dragging ache low in my belly told me all of this was really happening.

The bankruptcy was fake. Her true face was real.

I didn't dare imagine how I'd be falling apart right now if I really had gone broke.

I didn't say anything else. I shuffled, step by step, over to Selina's spot.

"Do you have a pad I can borrow?"

She chewed her lower lip and hesitated for a long time before finally opening her cabinet.

Her hand hovered inside it for a moment before she pulled out a shady, no-brand pad and handed it to me.

But I saw it clearly. Inside her cabinet were the liquid-tech pads I'd bought last year and left out in the dorm's shared area.

I took that dust-covered no-name pad, closed my fist around it, and said nothing more.

I went to the bathroom, folded some tissue as a stopgap, washed the blood out of my sheets, and then headed to the convenience store to buy new pads.

The weather in Seattle switches between sun and rain by the hour.

I'd just finished paying and was about to leave the convenience store when the rain came down hard.

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

Whenever Daniela noticed I hadn't come back to the dorm, she'd get anxious and message to ask where I was, even though the library was a half-hour walk from the dorm.

She'd come running to bring me an umbrella without a single complaint, tilting it toward me with that look of concern on her face.

I used to think that was friendship, so I learned from them and treated them just as sincerely. Bringing umbrellas, grabbing meals for them, buying them food and whatever else they needed.

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

Since I was "broke" now, I wasn't going to embarrass myself by asking whether one of them could bring me an umbrella.

I sighed, pulled out my phone, and sent a message to the dorm group chat. "It's pouring. Could you please bring in my sheets and clothes for me? Thanks."

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

I've never had what you'd call a normal social life, but a request like that should be about the most ordinary thing in a girls' dorm.

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

I lowered my eyes, waited for the rain to ease a little, then ran back through the drizzle.

Seeing me come in soaked and bedraggled, Jacob only glanced up before going back to her phone.

And Selina kept drilling English vocabulary, not paying me the slightest attention.

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

My clothes and sheets were still hanging out there, thrashing in the wind and rain.

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

Worse still, they'd crammed all of my things together into one tight bunch, clearly just so their own clothes could hang with more room to dry.

Before I could brace for it, my tears fell.

Hurt and bitterness tangled together in my chest.

In their eyes, the broke version of me wasn't even worthy of being treated like an ordinary classmate.

I took out my phone, photographed it, and added it to the slide deck.

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

And Selina came up close to me, and one sentence left me frozen where I stood.

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

I frowned, thinking for a moment before I remembered what she meant, that three-hundred-dollar Jellycat plush.

I nodded. "Yeah, still have it. Why?"

Selina hesitated, like the words were hard to get out.

"It's just, Daniela invited me to her birthday, and I don't want to spend money buying another gift. I noticed you never really use that plush, so I was wondering if you could give it back to me"

I stared at her, thrown.

She must have felt it herself, because she rushed on, "Don't worry, though. When it's my birthday you won't have to get me anything back, we'll just call it even for this."

"I mean, your family went bankrupt, so you probably won't be able to afford anything decent anyway."

I didn't say a word. I got up, went to the wardrobe, and handed her the plush rabbit.

Selina turned it over in her hands a few times, checking it, and only let out a slow breath once she was satisfied it still looked new.

She tucked it carefully into a gift bag, then, playing at kindness, she started in on me. "Honestly, your family's broke now, you don't need to keep putting on those rich-girl airs. The reason Daniela can't stand you is that your family went under out of nowhere and threw off all her plans."

"Her family's comfortable enough, and she spent so long bowing and scraping to you, of course she resents it. If you let her order you around a few times, maybe she'd get over it."

Every line she said landed like a hammer, each word striking hard against my chest.

The dull ache and the sheer absurdity of it left me barely able to breathe. I looked at her, almost laughing. "And what do I get out of flattering her? Just for her to stop bullying me? Was I ever the one ordering her around? Wasn't it her, mooching my meals and my skincare, cashing in a favor off me every single time?"

"Or is her time so precious that buying me lunch once is worth ten thousand dollars in skincare?"

My sharp questions left Selina without a sound.

That mouth of hers, so quick and clever in debate club, couldn't produce a single word now.

Because her logic didn't hold up at all.

All that reasonable, fair, objective act was really just her trying to drag me into flattering Daniela alongside her, and getting a kick in at me while she was at it.

"I'm only giving you advice. You take good intentions for ill will."

She turned away and said nothing more.

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

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

And it stayed that way, right up until Daniela's birthday.

Daniela invited plenty of our classmates. Everyone but me.

There was a mocking little smile at the corner of her mouth. "I'm doing it for her own good, really. Wouldn't want her to have to buy a gift she can't afford."

And that night, her birthday night, while I was lying around in the dorm bored on my phone, Selina called me.

There was a probing edge to her voice. "Do you want a part-time job?"

I was caught off guard.

Selina came from a tight household, so she took part-time work all the time.

I just never imagined she'd be willing to share one of her money-making channels with me, of all times.

I gave a small laugh and asked, "What kind of job? What's the hourly pay?"

The moment I finished asking, she started a video call.

She turned the camera toward the hiring notice by the door of a karaoke lounge.

It read: "Now hiring private-room hostesses. Eight hundred cash, paid daily."

I fought down the churn in my stomach and demanded, "What's that supposed to mean?"

Selina's tone carried a certain matter-of-factness. "Isn't your family bankrupt now? What are you still putting on airs for? I'm doing this for your own good. Eight hundred a day, just sing a little, drink a little with some people, and you've earned it."

Blood rushed straight to my head, and my scalp prickled with fury.

I was so angry I laughed. "If it's that good, why don't you do it?"

She shrugged. "I've got my own part-time gig. Besides, you've got experience..."

She drew out that last word, then said, with heavy meaning, "Aren't you always out eating and drinking with those older men?"

I couldn't hold back a dry heave.

The business dinners I'd once attended with my elders, and she twisted them into something that filthy in her mind.

"Get lost."

I was about to hang up when Daniela, half-drunk, grabbed the phone. Her words slurred. "Can pride fill your stomach? Your family's bankrupt. Drop the rich-girl act and go make some real money."

Then she called the others over. "Come look. Take a good look. This is our dorm's very own Miss Walker. From now on you'll have to give her plenty of business."

Laughter erupted around her, a dense buzz of talk that stabbed into my ears like needles.

"So this is Lauren Walker, the one whose family went bankrupt? She's pretty. Nice figure too. But she's in college and she still has to do this?"

"What do you know? She used to be a proper little heiress. She's used to throwing money around. Apart from quick cash, why would she ever swallow her pride and take a real job?"

"True enough. A private-room hostess is still a hostess."

My grip tightened on the phone until my fingertips went white.

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

I wanted them publicly destroyed in front of the whole school one day, wanted everyone to see just how dirty the hearts under these pretty faces really were.

One guy pulled three hundreds straight out of his pocket, belching from the drink. "Come on, little sister, come drink with me. I'll give you three hundred."

Everyone dissolved into laughter. I didn't break down sobbing the way they'd expected.

Instead, I looked back at them through the screen, cold and detached.

That look, high and untouchable, set Daniela off again. She screamed at the phone. "You know what? What I hate most is that stuck-up, holier-than-thou face of yours. So you had a little money. What's with all the airs?"

I felt nothing at all facing Daniela now, only the way you'd watch a child throwing a tantrum. "What exactly is it you're so unhappy about?"

That one line seemed to enrage Daniela.

Her face went cold as she roared, "Handing us the things you couldn't use up, that was all just to watch us fawn over you with gratitude, wasn't it?"

It had never once crossed my mind. This whole year, I'd given them everything, poured my heart out to them.

And this was how they'd seen me all along.

"Daniela, Selina, if you didn't want my things, you could've 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 couldn't use them up and handed you brand-new ones."

"Too bad you never valued any of it. Now that I'm down on my luck, suddenly you two feel wronged? When you were taking it all, why didn't you say a word then?"

Daniela's features twisted nearly together. She was just opening her mouth to speak.

Someone let out a sharp, shrill shriek.

The guy who'd offered three hundred to make me come drink pointed at his phone screen. "Look, quick. It's Lauren Walker's family's company."

Everyone yanked out their phones to check the trending list for the day, and then every pair of eyes went wide.