I’ve spent my entire life happily living in my sister’s shadow. From the time we were kids, my absolute favorite thing in the world was catering to her—fetching her water, carrying her bags, grabbing her coffee. It was my chosen role, and I loved every second of it. So when Charlotte got into Columbia University, I pulled off a massive academic sprint, skipped a grade, and followed her right in. On move-in day, Charlotte rolled into our dorm suite with a security detail of eight men. My new roommates were practically bowing, whispering about “the campus princess,” while I was quietly smoothed out the silk sheets on her bed. Only Elma Marshall watched me with a dry, knowing smirk. “You don’t look like a roommate,” she murmured, loud enough for the room to hear. “You look like her lady-in-waiting.” I just smiled and kept tucking in the corners. Later that afternoon, Charlotte casually tossed her brand-new, blush-pink quilted Chanel handbag onto my desk. “This shade suits you better anyway,” she said. “Take it.” As I beamed and caught the bag, Elma was just walking past our open door, her eyes lingering a second too long on the gold chain. Over the weekend, while Charlotte was away on a trip to Paris, Elma and I were the only ones left in the suite. “Zoey,” Elma said, leaning against the doorframe, “do you have any idea what everyone in our class calls you behind your back?” I didn’t look up from my laptop. “Charlotte Harrington’s golden retriever.” The next morning, my boyfriend, Zach Caldwell—the golden-boy lacrosse captain—asked to meet me on the campus quad. Elma was already standing next to him, her eyelashes wet with tears. When Zach saw me walk up, his forehead creased into a deep, disgusted frown. “Zoey, can you please have some self-respect?” he snapped. “You’re selling your dignity for a purse?” “Elma comes from a modest background, and she still has more grace and pride in her little finger than you do.” Elma gently tugged at his sleeve, her voice soft and trembling. “Zach, please don’t. Don’t ruin things with Zoey because of me. I’m not worth the trouble.” I looked at their joined hands, and for a second, I actually had to suppress a laugh. Seriously? Had neither of them noticed that Charlotte and I shared the exact same last name? … I adjusted the Chanel strap on my shoulder and let out a soft laugh. “You’ve been holding that in for a while, haven’t you, Elma?” I said, looking her up and down. “What’s the matter? Do you want the bag too? Too bad you can’t afford it.” Elma’s face instantly flushed a violent red. Her lips trembled as she took a fragile step backward. Zach’s brow furrowed deeper, and he stepped forward, shielding Elma with his body. The disappointment in his eyes was palpable. “Zoey! I had no idea you could be this cruel.” I tilted my head. “Cruel?” “When did you become so incredibly petty and arrogant?” he said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “Elma doesn’t have much, and you’re using your hand-me-downs to mock her? Have you lost your mind?” He looked at me with pure distaste. I froze. Petty? Arrogant? My mind flashed back to a year ago, when Zach had stopped me outside the library. His smile had been as warm as mid-July. “Zoey, you’re the brightest, most genuine girl I’ve ever met,” he’d said, his ears turning bright red. “When you laugh, it’s like the whole campus lights up. Be my girlfriend? I want to spend every day making you smile.” I guess when the love is gone, being bright is just loud, and sunshine is just blinding. A sharp, sour ache bloomed in my chest. Elma pulled at Zach’s sleeve again, her voice thick with tears. “Zach, don’t blame Zoey. It’s my fault. I just… I wanted you to talk to her. I didn’t want her to keep letting Charlotte treat her like a…” She bit her lip, cutting herself off as if the word was too dirty to utter. “But she wouldn’t listen. She just started flaunting her things to make me feel small…” As her voice trailed off into a whimper, Zach’s expression softened into pure adoration and pity. By now, our little drama had drawn a crowd. Students walking across the quad began to slow down, whispering in small huddles. Some recognized the Chanel bag; others recognized Elma. “Isn’t that the girl who practically grooms Charlotte Harrington’s hair? Why is she carrying Chanel?” “Please, the maid gets a bonus and suddenly thinks she’s royalty.” “Keep it down. You don’t want the master coming after you.” “Oh, please. Her master is out of the country. Right now, she’s just a stray with no one to whistle for her.” The comments drifted over, sharp and precise, as if they’d practiced the volume just to ensure I’d hear every word. Some of them laughed. Others surveyed me like a piece of cheap merchandise. Zach stood right there. He heard every single word, and he didn’t say a thing to defend me. His eyes held the exact same judgment as the crowd’s. Elma buried her face against Zach’s arm, her shoulders shaking with faux-sobs. But from where I was standing, I saw the tiny, victorious curl of her lip. It was almost comical. It was just a Chanel bag. I had a closet full of them back home. I’d spent my freshman year keeping a low profile because I didn’t want the drama of being a “trust-fund kid,” but my silence had apparently branded me as a servant. Charlotte had insisted on me rooming with her only because she wanted to make sure I was eating well. I took a deep breath. “I’ll carry whatever bag I want, Elma. Why do you even care?” My indifference seemed to hit a nerve. Elma’s delicate facade cracked, and she suddenly yelled, “Zoey, who do you think you are to talk to me like that?” Her eyes were wide and swimming with tears, but her chin was tilted up in defiance. “Yes! I’m poor! My family doesn’t have money, and I’ve never owned a designer bag in my life. But at least I don’t sell my soul to get one. What gives you the right to look down on me?” The crowd’s eyes locked onto me like tiny needles. I almost laughed out loud. I hadn’t even started on her, and she was already playing the martyr. I took a step closer, looking down at her. “Elma, what makes you think I can’t afford this myself?” Before Elma could speak, Zach let out a sharp, cynical laugh. “Zoey, stop embarrassing yourself,” he said, his voice dripping with irritation. “Maybe you can fool these people, but you can’t fool me. You wear the same five outfits every week. You order the cheapest salad on the diner menu. Last month, you spent an hour on the phone arguing over a fifteen-dollar overage charge on your cell bill. Elma is at least honest about who she is. What do you have?” He gestured to my bag with a sneer. “A designer bag on you looks like a cheap knockoff from a street corner. Using someone else’s charity to humiliate Elma… aren’t you ashamed?” A low murmur of chuckles rippled through the crowd. The pain in my chest felt like a physical blow. Last month had been Zach’s birthday. He’d forwarded me a post of some influencer’s girlfriend gifting him a rare, limited-edition gaming console, adding a caption about how lucky some guys were. I wanted to buy it for him with money I earned myself. So, I took a job at a local espresso bar, standing for eight hours a day until my feet swelled so badly I could barely get my sneakers on. I took on a tutoring gig for a high school junior, spending two hours on a noisy subway after classes just to get to their apartment. I saved every single penny. But on his birthday, he’d barely glanced at the console before rushing out to a frat party with his boys. He’d probably forgotten about it the next morning. I swallowed the lump of bile in my throat. “Are you finished?” I asked, my voice deadly quiet. “Whether I can afford it or not is none of your business. Excuse me.” I turned to walk away. The crowd parted reluctantly. But I’d only taken two steps when Zach’s voice boomed behind me, sharp and furious, like a man whose pride had been wounded in public. Heavy footsteps crunched on the gravel, and then his hand clamped down hard on my arm. “Zoey, stop!” he snarled. “Elma had the decency to ask me to talk to you, and this is how you act? Who are you throwing tantrums at?” I yanked my arm out of his grip. His face flushed with rage. “You’re going to apologize to Elma right now, and then you’re going to give that bag back.” Give it back? It belonged to my family. Who was I supposed to return it to? I didn’t say a word. I just turned and kept walking. Behind me, Zach’s voice reached a desperate, angry crescendo. “Zoey! If you walk away right now, we are over!” The whispers in the crowd died down instantly. Everyone was waiting for me to turn around, to beg, to apologize. I paused for a fraction of a second. Then, without looking back, I took another step forward. When I got back to the dorm, I pulled my laundry basket from under the bed. Charlotte was coming back the day after tomorrow, and her sheets needed to be washed. I stripped her bed, soaked the linen in the basin with detergent, and knelt on the bathroom floor to scrub. The cool soapy water covered my hands, grounding me. The bathroom door creaked open. Elma walked in, carrying a bundle of dark sheets. When she saw me kneeling there, scrubbing, a small, ugly smile touched her lips. She walked over, and with a casual flick of her wrists, let her sheets drop directly into my soapy water. Suds splashed all over my face. I looked down. A dark, rusty menstrual stain was smeared across her sheets, bleeding into the clean suds of Charlotte’s linen. I slowly raised my head. “What do you think you’re doing?” Elma crossed her arms, her chin tilted up. “I started my period. My cramps are awful, and I’m too tired to wash this.” “Since you’re already doing laundry, you might as well do mine. You’re so good at washing other people’s things anyway.” She smiled, her eyes glittering with cheap victory. “We’re roommates, Zoey. Don’t be selfish.” I slowly stood up, wiping the suds off my hands with a towel. I looked at the blood-stained sheet floating in the basin, reached down, pulled it out, and shoved the dripping wet fabric right into her chest. “Wash your own damn sheets.” I knelt back down and went back to scrubbing Charlotte’s linen. The cold water soaked through Elma’s top, and she froze in shock. Then, her voice went shrill. “Zoey! What is wrong with you?” she screamed. “I’m in pain! Can’t you show some basic empathy?” I ignored her. Our other suite-mate, who had been studying in the common room, poked her head in. “Elma, starting your period doesn’t mean your hands are broken. Zoey isn’t your maid.” “Exactly,” another agreed from the doorway. “Why should she wash your blood?” Elma’s face turned an unsightly shade of grey. She bit her lip, her eyeswelling with tears, before she threw her wet sheets into her own basket and slammed out of the suite. Twenty minutes later, my phone buzzed three times in my pocket. I pulled it out. It was an unsaved number. Zoey, do you have to be such a bully? Would it kill you to help her wash a sheet? She’s on her period, for God’s sake. She’s sitting out on the bench crying her eyes out. How do you sleep at night? Another buzz. I never realized you were this cold-blooded. You won’t even help a roommate with a small favor. I am so incredibly disappointed in you. I stared at the screen and let out a dry laugh. I tapped the screen and typed a quick reply. If you want to wash her bloody sheets so badly, go do it yourself. You can lick them clean for all I care. Also, we’re broken up. You don’t have the right to be disappointed in me. I hit send. Then, I blocked the number. The screen went dark, and I went back to scrubbing. The next morning, I was woken up by a barrage of notifications. My phone was vibrating like a live wire. I squinted at the screen. My suite-mate had sent me a dozen messages, capped off with a link to the campus forum. The headline read: [EXPOSED: The Truth About Columbia’s ‘Lady-in-Waiting’—Is Zoey Harrington Actually a Fraud?] I was wide awake now. I clicked the link. The post had been uploaded at 3:00 AM. Remember Zoey Harrington? The girl who follows Charlotte Harrington around like a shadow and spent move-in day making her bed? You thought they were just close roommates? Think again. Her dad is actually a driver for the Harrington family. She’s literally domestic help. Turns out she’s just a glorified maid. The truth is finally out. Below the post was a laundry list of my “crimes.” This girl is obsessed with social climbing. She looks down on anyone from a normal background. It’s honestly embarrassing sharing a campus with someone this pathetic. At the very bottom of the thread, an anonymous user had commented: I’m her suite-mate. She never talks to any of us in the dorm. Probably thinks she’s too good for us because she gets the Harrington family’s scraps. That whiny, self-pitying tone—I could recognize Elma’s writing anywhere. The post had already gone viral on campus, with hundreds of comments rolling in. Makes sense. No normal person would be that subservient unless they were raised to do it. It’s disgusting how she acts so superior just because she gets to carry rich people’s bags. Wait, isn’t she dating Zach Caldwell from the lacrosse team? What does he see in her? Someone had tagged Zach’s account. I clicked his name and saw his public reply from an hour ago: We broke up. Thanks. Honestly, she was the one who kept throwing herself at me. The comment had hundreds of likes, with people praising him for “dodging a bullet.” Throwing myself at him? I guess he’d conveniently forgotten how he used to wait outside my lectures for hours just to walk me to the subway. I shut off my phone and stared out the window at the gray, overcast New York morning. Before I could even get out of bed, my academic advisor’s office called. “Zoey, please come to my office immediately.” Mrs. Albright pushed a stack of printed pages across her mahogany desk. It was the forum thread, with dozens of comments highlighted in bright yellow ink. She frowned, tapping her pen against the wood. “The entire university is talking about this, Zoey,” she said. “The allegations of elitism, harassment of low-income students… it’s reflecting very poorly on the department. The dean’s office is already asking questions.” She sighed, softening her tone slightly. “Look, if you just apologize to Elma, we can make this go away.” I let the word settle on my tongue. “Apologize?” “She threw a blood-stained sheet into my laundry basin, posted lies online claiming my father is a servant, and orchestrated a targeted harassment campaign against me. And you want me to apologize to her?” Mrs. Albright’s expression hardened. “Zoey, are you trying to make this more difficult than it needs to be?” I stood up, my chair scraping loudly against the hardwood floor. “Mrs. Albright, you don’t need to worry about this.” “Once my parents are back in the city, you can discuss this directly with them.” Mrs. Albright’s brow furrowed. “Fine. Let’s get your parents in here.” “I’d love to see what kind of parents raise a child to be this stubborn.” I looked her dead in the eye. “Richard Harrington. Mrs. Albright, would you like me to dial his personal office for you?” The pen slipped from Mrs. Albright’s hand, clattering onto the desk. Her lips parted, and she hurriedly pulled up the university’s donor directory on her computer. She stopped at a prominent name on the Board of Trustees. Her face went from irritation to a pale, ghostly white. “Richard… as in Richard Harrington?” she stammered. “You’re… his daughter?” “Why didn’t you say anything?” I didn’t answer. I turned, opened the door, and walked out. I was halfway back to my dorm when I saw two figures walking down the tree-lined path. Elma was clinging to Zach’s arm, her face pale and her eyes red-rimmed as if she’d been weeping for hours. Zach was leaning down, whispering something comforting to her, his expression gentler than I’d ever seen it. When they spotted me, Elma froze, then gripped his arm tighter. Zach’s face turned to stone. Elma spoke first. “Zoey… I’m so sorry. I didn’t think the post would get this big.” “I only complained in a private group chat. I have no idea who screenshotted it and put it on the forum.” “Please don’t be mad at me. I’ll apologize to you, okay? I’ll do whatever you want.” Tears began to spill over her eyelashes, perfectly timed. Zach immediately wrapped a protective arm around her shoulder. The practiced choreography of it made my stomach turn. I let out a cold laugh. “Elma, aren’t you tired of acting?” “You’ve been eyeing Zach since the day we met, haven’t you? Too bad he was my boyfriend then, so you had to play the fragile, pity-me card to get his attention.” Zach shielded her, his voice rising. “Zoey, shut up!” I ignored him, keeping my eyes locked on Elma. “Let me make something clear today.” “You went through all this trouble to steal a piece of garbage like Zach? You really shouldn’t have bothered.” “If you want him, take him. He’s a rotten apple anyway. Yours for free.” The air went dead silent. Then, Zach’s hand whipped through the air. My brain registered the movement too late to dodge. The slap landed squarely across my left cheek. My head snapped sideways. The force of the blow sent me stumbling backward, my knee slamming hard against the concrete step behind me. A sharp, searing pain shot through my leg. My cheek felt like it was on fire, my ears ringing with a deafening buzz. Zach stood at the top of the steps, looking down at me, his chest heaving, his fist still clenched. “Zoey, don’t you dare think I won’t put you in your place,” he breathed, his voice trembling with rage. “I’ve given you enough slack.” “Apologize to Elma right now. Don’t make me force you to your knees.” I slowly lifted my head, looking at him, then at Elma, who was trying to look terrified but couldn’t quite hide the smug satisfaction dancing in her eyes. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. I let my eyes water, my voice cracking slightly as I dialed. “Dad… my ex-boyfriend just hit me.” “And he’s trying to make me kneel and beg for forgiveness.” A few onlookers in the crowd snickered. “Is your driver dad going to come down here and kneel with you?” Right then, the loud, rhythmic thrum of helicopter blades began to echo over the campus quad. “Who dares to bully my youngest daughter?!”
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