Chapter 3

The next day, my classmates' insane behavior shocked the entire college.

Led by Kendra, they hauled mountains of GRE prep books, practice exams, and even textbooks from all four years of college down to the dumpsters outside the dorms.

Dozens of them crowded around a dumpster, set the books on fire, and burned every last one.

"Burn them! Burn all of it! We're practically grad students already. What do we need this garbage for?"

"Hahaha! Let the idiots still suffering in the library keep studying! This is what it's like to be part of the privileged class!"

Carly stood right at the front, holding up a thick GRE prep book before hurling it into the flames. "Starting today, I'm never reading this crap again! Hawthorne University, here I come!"

I stood beneath the trees a short distance away, silently watching the absurd spectacle.

Then I took out my phone, switched to high-resolution video, and recorded every second of them burning their books, celebrating, and shouting. I saved the footage in a folder called "People Being Idiots."

As the deadline for submitting GRE scores drew closer, the class's bullying and ostracism of me reached their peak.

To them, the fact that I still carried my backpack to the library every day and showed up early to claim a study spot was practically an insult to their newfound privileged status.

Because I hadn't bought into their AI admissions scheme, they saw me as a ticking time bomb who might report them to the academic advisor at any moment.

So they stepped up their harassment.

Whenever I ate at the cafeteria, the moment I sat down, Kendra would swagger over with a few other girls and deliberately splash sauce from their food onto my plate.

"Well, look who it is. Anders Dawson, the only genius in our class who still has to take the GRE." Kendra's voice dripped with sarcasm. "What, still studying those practice tests? What's the point? You could study all you want, and it still wouldn't beat Preston getting our requirements waived with a few words."

Carly came over too, her arm linked through Preston's as she looked down at me. In just a few short months, she'd completely turned into Preston's little follower.

"It's too late for regrets now, Anders. Preston said all our GRE waivers have already been approved. Even if you got down on your knees and begged him, he wouldn't add your name."

Preston gave a smug laugh. "Come on, Carly, don't say that. Anders wants to get in the old-fashioned way. If he gets lucky and manages to get into some no-name school, then as future grad students at Hawthorne University, we should be gracious enough to congratulate him."

The students around them immediately burst into laughter.

I looked at them coldly and quietly switched on the voice recorder in my pocket.

"Kendra, Carly, what you're doing is harassment. I suggest you stop while you're ahead." My voice remained calm, without a trace of the anger or breakdown they were hoping to see.

"Harassment? Hahahaha! Go ahead and report us!" Kendra slapped the table arrogantly. "All 45 of us are future grad students at Hawthorne University. We're going to be elites in every field! The school will be bending over backward to protect us. You really think they're going to care about some loser who can't even get into grad school?"

And they didn't stop at verbal abuse. They even started spreading disgusting rumors about me on the campus forum.

A post titled [Exposing the Truth About a Certain Senior Applying to Grad School] shot to the top of the campus forum.

It didn't name me outright, but every detail pointed directly to me.

The poster fabricated an entire story claiming I'd shown up at my advisor's house in the middle of the night to beg him to pull strings and get me into Hawthorne, only to be thrown out.

They also claimed I'd become so twisted with jealousy over everyone else's supposed guaranteed admission that I spent every day in my dorm obsessively cursing them.

The comments underneath were full of anonymous posts from my classmates, piling on with insults and calling me a desperate suck-up, a jealous loser, and a psycho.

Finn was so furious he was trembling. He grabbed me, insisting we go straight to the academic advisor or report them to the university.

"Anders, they've gone way too far! They're trying to destroy your reputation! How can you just sit there?" Finn's eyes were red with anger.

I leisurely took a sip of my latte and opened my laptop. Then I saved every defamatory comment from the post, the poster's IP address, and all the audio and video recordings I'd collected over the past few months of them mocking and insulting me. I carefully sorted everything into an encrypted folder titled "My Classmates Digging Their Own Graves."

"Don't worry, Finn."

I looked at the vicious insults on the screen, a cold smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.

"If we report them now, the worst they'll have to do is delete the post and apologize. That's barely a punishment at all. And something that minor hardly seems worthy of the 'bright future' they have waiting for them, does it?"