3: 3

The police arrived fast, and Mr. Chavez, the faculty advisor, showed up right after, sweating through his shirt.

In the back of the patrol car, Lucretia sobbed until she could barely breathe, unsteady on her feet.

At the police station, in front of the officer, I pulled up the purchase records, the invoice, and the customs clearance slip.

Eighty-eight thousand dollars, in black and white, stamped with an official seal.

The officer checked everything, confirmed it, and turned to Lucretia with a hard look.

"Miss, theft and destruction of another person's property, at this value, is a serious matter. If the victim doesn't drop the charges, you're looking at three years, minimum."

The instant she heard three years, Lucretia slid straight off the chair, lunged, and clamped both arms around Mr. Chavez's leg, wailing.

"Mr. Chavez, save me! I really didn't know the dress cost that much! If I get a record, my whole life is ruined! My parents will kill me! Please, please put in a word for me!"

Mr. Chavez wiped the sweat off his face and pulled me aside, anxious.

"Marion, this is entirely her fault, and I fully support you protecting your rights."

"But her family really is struggling. She's on loans just to be in college. She can't possibly pay eighty-eight thousand. Could you, as a favor to me, let her write an IOU? The school will act as guarantor, and she pays you back in installments. Don't push this all the way to a formal case. Leave her a way out, all right?"

I looked at how frantic Mr. Chavez was, then glanced at Lucretia, still slumped on the floor.

"Fine. Mr. Chavez, I respect you as my elder, so I'll do this for you."

I dragged a chair over and sat down, staring at her.

"Write the IOU, thumbprint it. Three thousand a month. Miss a payment, and I'll take this IOU to court for enforcement and freeze every account you have. One cent short, and I sue."

Under the advisor's watch, Lucretia wrote out the IOU for eighty-eight thousand, her hand shaking.

When she pressed her thumbprint down, her head was bowed, and the look in her eyes was pure venom.

I'd assumed the debt would keep her quiet. I underestimated how vindictive she was.

To weasel out of paying, she started scheming a different angle.

Half a month later, the school began deciding the year's financial aid and sponsorship grants.

The biggest of them was the Harding Sunshine Foundation special award. One recipient, fifty thousand dollars.

As student welfare officer, Cicely Lawrence was fully in charge of the initial review of the hardship applicants' files.

Three days before the review panel, a post suddenly blew up on the campus forum.

The title read: 《Exposing a Rich Heiress's True Colors: Chauffeured Luxury Cars, a Scandalous Private Life, and Forcing Her Poor Roommate Into Crushing Debt!》

The post named no names, but it was packed with blurry shots of my back getting into the Maybach, plus photos of the climate-controlled closet in my dorm.

Whoever posted it played it up in tears, casting themselves as some poor oppressed victim.

"One dress of hers costs eighty-eight thousand. I borrowed it once, got it a little dirty, and she forced me to write an IOU and threatened me with the police and prison. But where her own money comes from, whether it's clean, who knows?"

"I hear she gets into some older man's luxury car every weekend. Is this what they call high society? Using dirty money earned by selling herself to trample the dignity of ordinary people like us!"

The comments hit several hundred replies instantly, the whole thing exploded.

"Damn, are girls in college running games this wild now?"

"Why should someone like that get to compete with us regular students for an honor? It's disgusting!"

"Say no to bullying! Kick this trash out of school! Her background needs a full investigation!"

The rumor spread through the school. Walking through the dining hall, I could always feel people pointing.

In the dorm, Cicely held her cup of water and sneered at me. "My, my. Some people look all polished on the surface, but who knows how filthy they are behind it. Well, now it's all out in the open. Let's see how you can stand to stay in this dorm anymore."

Lucretia hid behind her bed curtain, snickering to herself, smug.

Sitting at the desk, reading the forum post, I calmly dialed the family's tech department.

"Trace the backend IP address of the person who made this post."

"And while you're at it, take everything in my inbox on Cicely Lawrence and Lucretia falsifying hardship-student files and illegally collecting kickbacks, all the transfer records, put it into a PowerPoint deck and send it to my email."

I hung up and turned my head to look at the two of them.

"Clowns. Since you two insist on blowing this up and love a trial by public opinion, I'll build you the stage myself."

4: 4

The foundation's public review panel was held Friday afternoon in the main auditorium, hundreds of people packed into the tiered lecture hall.

Even the associate dean and several foundation representatives sat in the front row.

Lucretia had deliberately changed into an old shirt washed pale, canvas sneakers worn through at the toes.

She'd left her hair dirty on purpose, so she looked utterly haggard.

As the first speaker, the representative for the hardship students, she took a deep breath, gripped the microphone, and the tears came right on cue.

"Teachers, fellow students. I come from a remote little mountain village. My parents are both farmers who work the land. Even the tuition to send me to high school was money they had to beg and borrow from everyone they knew."

"I've always believed knowledge can change your fate. But once I got to college, I found out that some people have wealth we could never touch in our whole lives, without even trying. And people like us have to read someone else's face just to breathe."

She paused on purpose, eyes red, her gaze swinging precisely toward me where I sat in the back row.

"I'm not afraid of being poor. I'm only afraid of my dignity being trampled by people with privilege!"

"My roommate, Marion Harding. One of her dresses costs eighty-eight thousand dollars! I only borrowed it for an event and got it a little dirty by accident, and she forced me to sign an IOU for an outrageous sum! She even used a police report to shake down someone like me who can't afford to eat!"

"I don't understand why the school lets a person like this, someone with a loose private life who gets chauffeured around every day in a luxury car, bully us bottom-rung students however she pleases!"

The whole hall erupted. Hundreds of furious eyes snapped along her line of sight and fixed on me.

Several boys in the front rows shot to their feet, righteous, slamming the tables and shouting.

"This is too much! This is blatant campus bullying!"

"We have to trace where her money comes from! Throw someone like her out of the dorms!"

"Protest! Expel her! Give ordinary students justice!"

Down in the crowd, Cicely led the chanting, her face lit with satisfaction.

Mr. Chavez jumped up in a panic and tried to restore order, but there was no holding back the crowd's anger.

The panel's moderator, Dean Lawrence, frowned and pointed at me sharply.

"Marion Harding! What exactly is going on here?"

Up on the stage Lucretia sobbed until she couldn't speak, propping herself weakly against the podium. "Dean Lawrence, you have to stand up for me! If I weren't pushed to the end of my rope, how would I ever dare to say something this shameful out loud in front of the whole school…"

I sat there watching this sob story and couldn't help laughing out loud.

I stood, smoothed my jacket, and walked toward the stage step by step through the crowd's curses.

Cicely rushed up and jabbed a finger in my face, screaming. "Marion Harding, haven't you humiliated yourself enough? The facts are right in front of us, what are you still trying to argue? You think money can seal everyone's mouth?"

"Move."

I shoved Cicely aside and strode up onto the stage, wrenched the microphone out of Lucretia's hand, and looked out over all those angry faces below.

"Lucretia, that little speech of yours about struggling from the bottom was really moving."

"But maybe you've forgotten one thing."

"You keep saying I'm an evil capitalist, that I use power to crush you, that I make my money off some dirty old man who has to hide in the shadows."

I pulled the data cable from the console, plugged in my own phone, and hit enter to cut off her slideshow.

"So do you even know who set up this Harding Sunshine Foundation, the charity money you'd all fight tooth and nail over?"

Lucretia's tears froze on her face. She stared at me blankly as the image on the big screen changed.

It was a document establishing a dedicated fund, stamped with a red official seal.

In the field for the legal donor: Graham Harding, Chairman of Harding Group.

"See it clearly now?"

"Graham Harding is my father. And the old man who picks me up in his car is also my father."

"So you curse my money for being dirty while wracking your brain to get your hands on money my family gave out?"