As graduation approached and it was time to settle the cohort dues, I stared at the message in the group chat: [Cohort Fund Balance: $368.60] I fell into a deep silence. Since freshman year, all fifty of us in the business cohort had paid $500 annually in chapter dues. We even bought our own textbooks out of pocket. How could there be almost nothing left? Liam, our Cohort President, sent another message: [We would never embezzle the cohort funds. Every single transaction is recorded.] But a few seconds later, he unsent it. Everyone in the chat started shouting, demanding to see the ledger. That was when my roommate, Chloe—our VP of Academics—started to panic. 1 I was just about to lie down for a nap. A notification popped up in our cohort’s GroupMe: [Cohort Fund Balance: $368.60] All the sleepiness vanished from my body. I jumped out of bed. I stared hard at the screen, analyzing those three digits, the decimal, and the change, completely lost in thought. We had been paying these dues since freshman year. Four years, $500 a person, fifty students in the cohort. That was $100,000 total. Even our daily class materials and textbooks were bought with our own money. How on earth was there only three hundred bucks left? Immediately, classmates began raising questions, asking Liam if his math was wrong. Liam sent another message: [We would never embezzle the cohort funds. Every single transaction is recorded.] Some fast-typing classmates immediately tagged him, demanding to see the expense sheet. A minute later, the screen showed: Liam unsent a message. At first, I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking he really had just miscalculated the total. I was already daydreaming about how to spend my cut of the massive refund. But then I looked closer. Liam hadn’t unsent the balance. He had unsent the second message. Meaning, after four years and $100,000, our collective fund really was sitting at a pathetic $368.60. The group chat absolutely exploded. 2 Noah, the designated chatterbox of our cohort, was the first to tag the President. [Liam, how did you get $368.60? Did you put the decimal in the wrong place?] [Stop trolling us, man! Everyone’s waiting for that refund so we can be rich for a week!] Other classmates chimed in: [Even with a misplaced decimal, it should be way more than that, right?] Noah then led the charge, demanding to see the official ledger for the cohort’s expenses. Back when we first collected the dues freshman year, Advisor Davis had sworn to us: "The use of the cohort funds will be entirely public and transparent." She handed full control of the money over to us students. To ensure everything was tracked, she even made Liam open a specific, separate bank account just for the cohort dues. It was supposed to keep the money safe, leave a paper trail, and allow for quick audits. So Noah’s request to see the ledger wasn’t out of line at all. It was perfectly reasonable. I chimed in and sent: [I want to see the ledger too +1.] Liam quickly replied: [Still organizing the spreadsheet. Please wait.] Didn't they say we could check the accounts at any time? Besides, he had already announced the $368.60 balance, which meant he had obviously already run the numbers. I glanced over and noticed my roommate, Chloe—the VP of Academics and Liam's girlfriend—sitting at her desk with her brows knitted tightly together. I patted her shoulder. "Chloe, there's no way our fund only has three hundred bucks left. Don't stress. Your boyfriend probably just made a spreadsheet error. He just needs to clarify it with everyone." She hesitated for a second before forcing a smile. "Yeah, exactly." But I could see the panic in her eyes growing stronger. An hour passed. Liam still hadn't posted the itemized ledger. I sent a message to the group: [Liam, is the itemized list ready yet?] The very next second, I was hit with a one-hour mute from the group admin. Seeing the mute notification, Chloe walked over to me and defended her boyfriend. "Emma, Liam has a lot on his plate managing the cohort. Don't push him so hard. It disrupts his ability to serve the students." I mentally gave her a standing ovation for her breathtaking double standards. When Chloe and Liam got into a fight a few months ago, she stayed up until 2 AM loudly arguing with him on the phone for three hours straight. The entire dorm couldn't sleep. As her roommate, all I could do was comfort her and try to calm her down. The next day, when they made up, Liam somehow blamed me for their argument. Then there was the group project incident. We were less than an hour away from the Canvas submission deadline. Our entire dorm group was just waiting on Chloe to finish her section. I urged her to hurry up. Instead, she snapped at me: "I'm the VP of Academics! I'm close with the professor. It doesn't matter if we submit it a little late." The rest of us sat in stunned silence as she spent an entire hour doing a full face of flawless makeup at her vanity. Then we watched her leave the dorm looking gorgeous to go on a date with Liam. The result? We missed the submission window. Our group got a flat zero. But Chloe? She used her administrative access to adjust the peer-evaluation scores, secretly giving herself maximum participation points. She ended up passing the class with flying colors. The three of us took the zero, but since we had high grades otherwise, we didn't fail the course. Since she was our roommate, we swallowed our anger and didn't report her. And now, I simply asked a question in the group chat... And I was branded as "disrupting the busy President from serving the students." What a joke. 3 Three hours later, Liam finally sent a few pictures to the group. It was a piece of notebook paper covered in chicken scratch, listing the total expenses over the last four years. The chat lit up immediately: [I knew it! It was just a math error. There's no way Liam would embezzle our money.] [Exactly. We paid $100,000 total. There's no universe where only $300 is left.] But then, Noah cropped the bottom of Liam's photo and sent it to the chat: [Remaining Balance: $386.60.] So after three hours of "auditing," the balance hadn't gone up a single cent? Chloe, acting as the loyal girlfriend and VP, immediately turned on the "Admin Only" messaging restriction. She sent a long paragraph: [Every penny is accounted for. We would never steal from our classmates. If you want to see the detailed itemized spreadsheet, DM me privately.] Me: ? So those scribbled photos posted in the chat were just the "rough draft"? This couple really had a system going. The guy posts a messy, illegible handwritten note, while the girl hoards the actual detailed spreadsheet. If they ever broke up, handing over the cohort documents would require an escrow service. I DMed Chloe: [Can you send me a copy of the detailed ledger?] She turned around, smiling sweetly, and linked her arm through mine. "Of course! Sending it now. Perks of being roommates, right? Our dorm always gets the inside scoop first." Huh? I sat in silence. A moment later, a file popped up in our dorm’s private group chat. This "detailed" ledger didn't clarify Liam's messy notes at all. In fact, it was stuffed with bizarre, inexplicable charges. Even Mia, the roommate who usually got along best with Chloe, gasped out loud. "What?! $20,000 for the Spring Gala props?! Were they made of solid gold?" "Wait, why is there a $2,500 charge for the Business Ethics Certification Exam for 50 people? Half of us never even registered for that!" Chloe's face shifted. She forced a laugh and quickly explained: "Those categories also include Advisor Davis's travel stipends and catering costs. I just bundled them together to make the math easier." I was even more stunned. Advisor Davis needed our cohort funds for her personal travel? Bundled for convenience? Since when is accounting done by mashing random expenses together? Since dozens of classmates were furious and demanding the detailed list, I simply downloaded the spreadsheet and forwarded it directly into the main cohort GroupMe. Chloe glared at me, her voice dripping with annoyance. "Why did you put that in the main chat?" I replied casually, "Everyone wanted to see it. You and Liam are so incredibly busy serving the students, I figured I'd help lighten your workload." Since freshman year, Chloe had always tried to "buy" our loyalty with petty favors. She'd give us a heads-up on pop quizzes or casually delay telling the rest of the cohort about lucrative internship opportunities so we could apply first. Through shady tactics like that, she wiped out half her academic competition. Her title as "VP of Academics" was nothing more than a tool for personal profit. Three minutes later, Noah broke the silence in the group chat. 4 [Wait, the CPR Certification fee is $50. $50 times 50 people is $2,500. Why is this charged to the cohort fund?] [Didn't we all Venmo the Treasurer separately out of our own pockets for that exam?] As soon as Noah pointed it out, other classmates started posting screenshots of their old Venmo transactions. The chat was instantly flooded with payment receipts. [Yeah! I literally Venmoed Liam directly for this. Why is it being deducted from the communal fund again?] Liam hurried to do damage control: [It was a long time ago. It might be a clerical error. We definitely spent that money, I just might have logged it under the wrong category name.] A wall of question marks materialized in the chat. [Insert meme of confused old man looking at his phone.] I typed: [So you double-charged us?] Liam deleted my message at lightning speed. He was so fast I genuinely wondered if my Wi-Fi had glitched. Liam rapidly started typing out new, fabricated expense categories to cover the gaps. Everyone was stressed with graduation right around the corner. The only reason people were even active in the chat was because of the refund money. To a broke college senior, getting back a slice of a $100,000 pie is life-changing money. Noah then dropped a screen-recorded video of himself doing a line-by-line audit of the spreadsheet. In the video, he said: "There’s a flat $5,000 withdrawal here with no receipt, and a $1,212 'tech fee' that literally makes no sense." Someone else asked: [If the math is this bad, where did all the missing money actually go?] The uproar grew deafening. In just ten minutes, the chat hit 999+ notifications. Liam finally sent one ominous message: [Noah, DM me right now.] 5 Gradually, the group chat fell silent. When I came back from grabbing lunch, Chloe was hunched over her desk, furiously writing. I looked closer. She was manually recalculating the cohort funds. Didn't she say the math was already finalized? Why was she crossing things out with white-out? Then I witnessed a masterclass in fraud—she quietly deleted the $1,212 tech fee. Then she added $602 to "Tailgate Supplies." And bumped up the "Spring Gala" budget by another $610. I watched her operate in pure awe. She was a prodigy at cooking the books! Noticing me, she smiled smoothly and explained: "There were a few minor discrepancies earlier. But it's all fixed now! The ledger is perfectly balanced, every penny matches up." "As long as it balances," I replied flatly. "Everyone is just waiting for the final, accurate version." I opened GroupMe. Strangely, Noah—our resident chatterbox—had completely vanished from the conversation. The chat had returned to its usual dead silence. Later that afternoon, I bumped into Noah on campus. I stopped him and asked: "Why so quiet all of a sudden?" He laughed awkwardly, lowering his voice. "You know how it is. Graduation is coming up. Too busy. No time to check group chats." Was that the truth? I walked with him to the dining hall and we sat in a quiet corner. I whispered, "Did Liam threaten you? "If he did, just nod." Noah shook his head aggressively like a rattle. Then, he gave two very heavy, deliberate nods. He didn't want to get into the details, and I didn't press him. It was exactly on-brand for that toxic power couple. Back in our junior year, Liam and Chloe had entered a National Business Case Competition. A classmate discovered they had blatantly plagiarized their winning presentation. At the end of the semester, Liam and Chloe used their authority to tank that classmate's peer-review scores to the absolute minimum. The poor guy was forced to retake the entire course. If you can't solve the problem, just eliminate the person pointing it out. Before leaving, Noah looked deeply conflicted. "Emma, just let it go. We're about to graduate. He's the President, his girlfriend is the VP. It's not worth the fight." I nodded and waved goodbye. When I opened TikTok later, a familiar image popped up on my For You page. Someone had leaked our cohort's spreadsheet! The creator captioned it: [This is my college cohort’s expense ledger. Can you guys help me spot the red flags?] There were already hundreds of comments. The internet sleuths immediately tore the ledger apart. Everyone agreed the remaining balance was completely fabricated and the missing funds had to be massive. By the time I got back to my dorm, the video had been taken down for "violating community guidelines." I had to marvel at Liam's speed. He worked fast. Behind me, Chloe was texting so fast her thumbs were a blur. "Chloe, who are you talking to?" I asked. She glanced over her shoulder. "Just my mom. Talking about graduation stuff." But the profile picture on her screen was unmistakably Liam's. I took a screenshot of the deleted TikTok post and dropped it into the group chat. Less than five minutes later, Liam privately messaged me, demanding I come downstairs for a "talk." I found a furious Liam waiting outside the dorm building. "Emma, how could you post internal cohort documents on the internet? "Delete it immediately. If you have a problem, you bring it to me directly." I pulled out my phone and played an audio comment someone had left on the video: "Why is there a $6,000 catering fee for five people? Did they eat gold-leaf steaks at a diner..." Before the audio finished, Liam snatched the phone out of my hand and started furiously tapping my screen. He used so much force he nearly knocked me over. I rubbed my bruised arm as he stepped back, creating distance between us. After ensuring the post was deleted from my phone, he reluctantly handed it back. His eyes were dark and menacing as he lowered his voice: "You really need to stop sticking your nose where it doesn't belong. You wouldn't want anything to happen to your diploma in June, would you?" 6 A smart woman knows when not to fight a losing battle. I took my phone, muttered a quick goodbye, and walked away. What he didn't realize was that his little physical altercation had been captured in crisp HD by the dorm's security cameras. When I got back to the room, Chloe saw my slightly shaken expression and immediately handed me a Starbucks iced latte, playing the sweet peacemaker. "Emma, my boyfriend has a terrible temper, but he doesn't mean any harm. Just ignore him." With everyone swamped with graduation prep, the chatter about the refunds began to fade. The topic even shifted completely when someone in the chat started congratulating Liam and Chloe for surviving four years of college as a couple. People were praising them as the "perfect campus sweethearts." The legendary romance between the President and the VP started all the way back in our freshman year. Back then, Chloe had caught a lot of attention for her flawless makeup and trendy outfits. Liam, as President, was assigned to hand-deliver some administrative paperwork with her. After a few trips to the Dean's office together, they grew close. One sunny afternoon, Chloe returned to the dorm looking incredibly flushed and giddy. She squealed, announcing they were officially dating. From that day on, our dorm became ground zero for all her relationship drama and complaining. But that wasn't even the worst part. During our sophomore year, there was a notoriously strict Ethics professor who called roll personally. When he called Liam's name, the class murmured that he wasn't there. The professor sighed and asked the VP of Academics to take over roll call. The class erupted into laughter. They informed the professor that the VP wasn't there either. Just as the professor was getting confused, someone shouted: "The President took the VP out for bottomless brunch!" The professor nodded and marked them absent. This professor was infamous for failing students over attendance. We all thought Liam and Chloe were doomed. Then, a miracle happened. At the end of the semester, both of them had perfect attendance scores, and their final grades were a sparkling 'A'. The dark magic behind that grade change was an open secret. After they started dating, Chloe ditched her "girl-next-door" aesthetic entirely. She rebranded as a hypebeast fashionista. Prada bags, limited-edition Dior lipsticks, rare designer perfumes—you name it, she had it. Where did the missing cohort funds go? Looking back now, her sudden influx of wealth that completely mismatched her actual financial background definitely had something to do with our missing money. 7 A few days later, Advisor Davis finally spoke up in the group chat: [The cohort funds are entirely student-managed. Please direct all refund inquiries to Liam.] I instantly typed: [Professor Davis, could we get a PDF of the actual bank statements for the cohort's debit account?] Dozens of classmates immediately echoed the request. Advisor Davis replied: [Liam, please upload the statements for the students.] Liam immediately sent me a threatening DM, telling me to remember what he said outside the dorm. After all, the last guy he threatened (Noah) had been silenced completely. But I had put up with them for four years. Now, they were playing dumb with our money. This time, I wasn't backing down. What was wrong with defending the money I paid out of my own pocket? Under pressure from the Advisor, Liam reluctantly uploaded screenshots of the bank statements to the group. The statements clearly showed the exact timestamps of every massive withdrawal. Some eagle-eyed classmates quickly realized that the dates of the massive expenditures perfectly aligned with the exact days Chloe showed up to class flaunting new designer items. The chat exploded into a forensic investigation: [Wait, that May 20th withdrawal for $4,820... isn't that the exact retail price of that Chanel bag in this pic? attaches photo] [Hold up, what about that $3,700 charge? Didn't Liam start wearing those limited-edition Dior sneakers the very next week?] The horrifying truth dawned on everyone: Liam had been using our cohort’s bank account as his personal debit card! Everyone finally knew exactly where the $100,000 went. [Liam, are you gonna say something?!] [You were our President for four years! Explain yourself, we still want to give you the benefit of the doubt!] Seeing the outrage, Advisor Davis ordered Liam to give the cohort a proper explanation. Liam went radio silent. Meanwhile, back in the dorm, Chloe’s face was ashen. She was frantically shoving her designer bags into the deepest corners of her closet. Clearly, the internet detectives had hit the nail on the head. She looked at me in a pure panic, stammering: "D-don't get the wrong idea! I bought these bags with my own money! It has nothing to do with Liam!" I gave her a slow, deliberate nod. "Oh." I hadn't asked a single question, yet she had essentially confessed to everything. The uproar in the group chat reached a boiling point. Chloe quickly fired off a message to the group: [We are currently verifying every single transaction. If there are any mistakes, we will refund the missing amounts out of our own pockets!] I was actually looking forward to seeing what kind of creative accounting this Bonnie and Clyde duo would attempt next. 8 Surprisingly, two days later, Chloe wasn't panicking at all. She was lounging on her bed, casually scrolling through TikTok. Meanwhile, I noticed two expensive bottles of perfume sitting on my desk that definitely didn't belong to me. As I stared at them in confusion, I saw Chloe actively typing into the shared Google Doc ledger: [Emma's Spring Gala Perfume Expense: $250.] While I was processing that, I glanced over and saw several performance outfits draped over Mia's chair. They were the exact same outfits Chloe had worn during the sports festival last year. Seeing that Mia and our other roommate had returned, Chloe locked the dorm door and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper: "Guys, the ledger is a little messy right now. Since we're roommates, I need a favor. Just claim these items as your expenses. "You guys can keep the stuff as a gift." Mia and I exchanged bewildered looks. When they were living large, we didn't see a dime. Now that the feds were closing in, we were supposed to be accomplices? She was trying to drag the entire dorm down with her to muddy the waters! "Chloe, I don't think this is a good idea. We never used this stuff. Giving it to us now doesn't change anything," Mia said hesitantly. Chloe practically shoved the clothes into Mia's arms. "It's fine, just do me this favor! If you see anything else you like in my closet, just take it." The other roommate eventually caved and agreed to follow her "arrangement." When Chloe turned to me, trying to pin a $2,000 fraudulent expense on my name, I held my hands up and backed away. "Leave me out of this. I don't know anything about it." Hearing this, Chloe's face twisted in fury. She pointed a manicured finger right at my nose and screamed: "I’ve been your roommate for four years! Do you have any idea how many perks you got because of me? Now that we hit a little bump in the road, you won't even help out? "How can you be so selfish?! Do you really want to make things ugly right before graduation?" I was genuinely stunned by her sheer delusion. Did she actually think that pinning fake expenses on her roommates would convince the rest of the cohort? Did she think that legally absolved her of stealing $100,000? In her twisted mind, I was the ungrateful villain. It was laughable. I slammed my hand onto my desk, making sure everyone in the room could hear me loud and clear. "What perks?! You waking me up at 2 AM with your screaming matches? "Or how about when you begged me to buy you breakfast, then changed your mind, leaving me to pay for two meals? "Or was the 'perk' when you refused to do your part of the group project, earning me the only flat zero of my college career?!" Having her hypocritical mask ripped off, Chloe's face turned beet red with rage. We didn't speak another word to each other. Later, while walking out of the campus gates, I spotted Liam. Driven by curiosity, I glanced in his direction—and witnessed something explosive. The girl he was holding hands and laughing with was not Chloe! The cohort's legendary "campus sweethearts" were officially a sham.
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