Chapter 1

When I sat up in bed, it was still dark out.

The dormitory was very quiet, and all I could hear was the faint snoring of one of my dormmates, June Farrell.

I stared at the unlit light above me, my heart pounding harder with every passing second.

My phone screen was lit, showing that the date was the 16th of October.

I had returned to the day that one of my dormmates, Mona Joyce, first stole my money.

I slowly opened my drawer.

The kraft paper envelope I'd placed the money in was still there.

I'd stapled the flap tightly shut, but the staples had been undone.

The envelope was flat and light.

I turned it upside down and shook it, but not a single bill fell out.

320 dollars, all gone.

I'd saved up that money bit by bit from tutoring an eighth-grader for half a month.

I clutched the empty envelope so hard that my knuckles turned white.

In my past life, it had also been this very morning that I discovered my money missing.

Mona had been the first person who came to mind.

I'd rushed off to ask her why she'd stolen my money.

In response, she'd broken down in anguished tears before the entire dormitory.

She'd come off incredibly genuine with big, fat tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Natalie, I really didn't steal it. How could I steal your money?" she sobbed. "My family is poor, but I have my pride. I've never taken a single cent from anyone!"

June had been the first to get out of bed and pull me back.

"Natalie, stop this. It's not as if you're unaware of her family situation," she'd said to me.

Our other dormmate, Rosa Cheney, had also frowned and chimed in, "How could she possibly have stolen your money when she's always eating plain bread? Could you have misplaced it somewhere?"

Our class president, Shannon Kirby, wrote a text in the class group chat the next day to smooth things over.

"Let's all resolve in-dormitory conflicts internally first instead of involving the entire school. It'll only impact our school's reputation."

Everyone advised me to be the bigger person and spoke up in Mona's defense, so I let things slide.

However, Mona proceeded to steal from me a second time, then a third.

Items disappeared from my drawer one by one—my lipstick, my serum, my facial lotion.

Meanwhile, Mona's brother, Matthew Joyce, started flaunting his girlfriend's new lipstick and skincare products on Instagram.

His captions were always the same.

"Thank you, Mona."

Later, she also "borrowed" the tablet I'd spent half a year saving for.

When she first borrowed it, she promised to return it after a week, but a month went by without any news about it.

When I questioned her about it, she replied through sobs, "It wasn't me. I honestly don't know what you're talking about. Stop blaming me every time you lose track of your things. You're so well-off, and it's just one tablet. Can't you just consider it a short loan?"

Further into the future, on the day before my thesis defense, she stole my flash drive.

My graduation thesis, defense presentation, and experimental data were all stored on that small flash drive.

With two hours remaining until my thesis defense, I knelt on the floor and begged her to return it to me.

She replied with teary eyes that Matthew, assuming it to be an ordinary flash drive, had formatted it and stored his games on it.

Four years of my hard work had been wiped clean, just like that.

In the end, my graduation was deferred.

I had a breakdown and went to the police about the incident, only for her and her entire family to corner me by the school gates.

Her mother, Karen Pratt, pointed accusingly at me and shouted, "That's her! She's the one who wanted to ruin my son's future and make my daughter face disciplinary action!"

At that moment, not a single person stood up for me.

June, Rosa, and Shannon all stood silently among the crowd, watching Mona and her family tear into me.

Bile rose in my throat at the memory, but I took a deep breath and swallowed it down.

As I looked at the empty envelope in my hand, I suddenly smiled.

In this life, I was done arguing with Mona.

I was going to make her cough up everything she stole from me—with interest.

I put on my shoes, got out of bed, and walked over to June's desk.

Her fat pink wallet was lying on the desk, filled with her living expenses for next week.

I picked it up and put it into my drawer.

Then, I walked over to the head of Rosa's bed and lifted her pillow to reveal a pair of silver earrings lying underneath it.

The earrings had been her mother's birthday gift to her and had cost 1,200 dollars.

I took them and placed them in my drawer as well.

Once that was done, I returned to my bed, set my phone to silent, and tucked it under my blanket.

I positioned it so that only the lens was visible and directly facing my desk.

I knew that Mona would definitely drop by that night.