Plot Twists Campus Short Stories & Hypocrisy Face Slapping Novels

My roommate was Rachel Travis, and something about her behavior always felt… off. On social media, she hit the like button on every single person’s posts, except mine. Whenever she asked for help, I was always there. However, the one time I asked her for a pad, she wrinkled her nose and called it "disgusting". For my birthday, I invited the whole dorm to dinner. When hers rolled around, she invited everyone, except me. Then, I saw my boyfriend, Ryan Cooper, at her birthday party. That’s when I finally snapped and confronted her. She looked at me, wide-eyed, all innocence. "What? Everything’s fine. Why are you acting like this? You’re just too sensitive." Even the other girls in the dorm piled on, saying I was overreacting and telling me I needed therapy. So maybe I was "too sensitive". Fine. Then, I would treat her exactly the way she treated me. Let’s see how she liked it.

The day before the semester began, my childhood friend Daniel Carter asked if he could borrow my private jet. Thinking he'd finally changed his ways, I agreed without a second thought. A moment later, he transferred a single dollar, calling it rent because he couldn't stand the thought of freeloading. The quirky amount said more than words ever could. I smiled and accepted it. On the first day of school, I kept things low-key, taking a cab back to campus. But when I arrived, there it was, my private jet parked right in the middle of the quad. The jet had been decked out in bubblegum pink, and students crowded around, their eyes shining with envy. My heart leapt. For once, I thought Daniel had finally figured it out. Beaming, I braced myself for his surprise. But as I drew closer, my smile froze. Sitting barefoot in the pilot's seat, my seat, was Clara West, the campus' queen bee.

As a low-income student who's specifically recruited by the elite college this year, I can still feel my hands trembling as I clutch the letter that tells me I get to study for free. Not only are my tuition and miscellaneous fees waived, but I also get to receive 30 thousand dollars' worth of student grant per year. I even get to have free access to the leather seats inside the library, the equipment inside the gym, as well as the aerial garden on the roof. The best surprise for me has to be the cafeteria. All low-income students get a 50% discount on their meals, but the quality of their food doesn't decrease at all. Best beef is used in the steak dinners offered by the cafeteria, whereas a seafood platter showcases the entire huge lobster. Even the most basic mac and cheese meal has different types of freshly grated cheese baked into it. As I sit in the brightly lit classroom and look at the rich students around me, who wear custom-made uniforms and have branded watches latched around their wrists, all I have is one thought. I must be on good terms with them. But my seatmate, who's also a low-income student, isn't as thrilled as me. In fact, she just looks at the people around her with disdain in her eyes. After the first lesson, a rich student arrives at our table. He might not sound polite at all, but at least he's not putting on airs. "Do any of you have time to head over to the cafeteria and buy me breakfast?" I'm about to respond to him when a shrill voice booms out next to me. "You're so annoying! What, you think you rule the campus since you're rich? Had I known that this classroom is filled with useless scions like you who just waste their lives away on nothing, I wouldn't have enrolled in this college in the first place!"

I suffered from a skin condition. I scratched myself in the library, and millions of netizens spammed my private inbox. Only then did I find out that a girl accused me of harassing her. I took out my diagnostic report to defend my innocence, but the girl cried pitifully. “You really know how to make an excuse for yourself! How could someone innocent like me frame you?” Even my elder brother spoke up for her! “Why would she frame you of all people? Can’t you take a look at yourself?” I could not bear the cyberbullying, and I died from a sudden heart attack the day before the court hearing. My grandfather could not accept my death, and he collapsed into a coma. My parents cut off ties with my brother before they committed suicide at home. Meanwhile, the girl did not just successfully make her way into graduate school, but she also dug open my grave and used my ashes to make fireworks. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day when she had asked me to reserve a seat in the library.

Everyone thinks Jimmy Hudson, my college roommate, is the typical brutally honest and socially clueless guy who just has zero filter sometimes. A friend and I meet up to go boxing and practice our hooks, but he calls it a hookup when texting the group chat about it. He even nonchalantly says he won't be deleting his message. When I meet my boxing buddy, he says I'm meeting my hookup buddy. He even has the nerve to say, "It's just a joke. Don't be overly sensitive and read so much into it." Thanks to a few more of his dirty tricks, my reputation is ruined, and the entire class ostracizes me. But Jimmy doesn't stop there. He slips sleeping pills into my drink, which leads me to miss an exam. Later, he claims it was just a careless mistake and blames it on his scatterbrained tendencies. Eventually, he dumps crushed cherry pits into my water bottle, which ends up poisoning me to death. This all happened because our campus belle, whom he has a crush on, helped me with my luggage on our first day on campus. All of a sudden, my eyes open again. I've returned to the first day of my freshman year at college. This time, I'm going to let Jimmy get a taste of what it's like to have his life ruined with a helping of some social cluelessness of my own.

During the mandatory freshman orientation camp, my skin had flared up with a severe allergic reaction, so I didn't use the plastic washbasin the school handed out. Instead, I opened my suitcase and took out the custom silver basin I had brought from home. My roommate, Louisa Carter, immediately made a snide remark, drawling, "You're really something, huh? Kids from broke families like us are lucky to have any basin at all." I didn't bother responding. I simply pulled out my facial essence to do a cold compress, but she immediately rushed over, slapped the bottle out of my hand, and jabbed a finger at my face. "Bet you get tens of thousands a month for living expenses. You have a sugar daddy, don't you? Don't you feel guilty making your folks work their fingers to the bone back on the farm? People like you don't deserve to be at our school. I'm reporting you to the student counselor." I laughed in disbelief and slapped her. … The next morning, the family photo I'd left on my desk had been slashed to ribbons. Across the back, carved in ink, were the words: 'Daughter of a homewrecker. Go to hell.' I went straight to the police. While officers pulled the dorm security footage, our student counselor and the university president rushed in. The moment the president saw the man whose face had been cut apart in my photo, his legs nearly buckled. He almost dropped to his knees.

After the Ritualist declared that Amber would not live past 18, I, a perfectly healthy girl, became the Misfortune Vessel. When Amber broke a leg, my left leg was crippled. When Amber tried to kill herself with shards of glass, the tendons in my hand were severed. I could no longer hold a pen. From childhood to the present, every wound meant for Amber landed on my body. She never stopped testing how far she could go. Skydiving from two miles up. Chasing sharks in deep water. Survival expeditions to the extreme North. Every choice courted death. I cried. I screamed that it hurt. My brothers refused to allow it. "Enough already. It's just a small injury. How could it hurt that much? You're too delicate." "If it hurts, then endure it." So I endured until the day I turned 18. That was when the Shared-Sense System found me. I enabled family sharing, and every single one of them went insane.

On Christmas Day, my dad gave me a golden apple. My roommates gasped in envy and immediately demanded I treat them to a meal. I smiled and agreed. I told them to head out first and that I'd join them shortly. When I came out of the bathroom, the dorm was empty. Sharon Everton's laptop was still glowing. I walked over to shut it down. That's when a WhatsApp group named 'Anti-Gold Digger Alliance' popped up on the screen. [No wonder she didn't come back last night. Bet she spent the whole night escorting again just to get that golden apple!] [A designer bag the day before, a golden apple today. With how many men she's serving every day, I wonder how wrecked she is down there.] [We have to hit her with a big bill today. Her money's dirty anyway. Spending it for her is basically doing a good deed!] There were four people in the dorm. Three of them were in that group chat. There was no doubt that they were talking about me. The friends I'd treated with genuine kindness all this time turned out to be ungrateful snakes.

My roommate Sue Lynd had gotten addicted to the tiramisu that went viral lately, and always brought a box back to our room every evening. She always kept telling us how smooth and sweet it tasted, but I never cared for it, until the day before the announcement of postgraduate admissions. I was reviewing past exam papers when I saw the lines scribbled on the sheet. [Your roommate Sue Lynd will ask you to get her tiramisu tonight, and then she will leave the room in a hurry.] [The next day, the cops will arrest you for premeditated bodily harm, and you will be exposed on the internet for poisoning your roommate, drawing public outrage.] [You will miss your postgraduate admission interview, after which that spot falls to Sue.] [The cyberviolence won't stop, with even your parents losing their livelihoods, while you die from mental breakdown and severe depression.] I threw the sheet aside—must be seeing things since my stress had been building up. However, as evening arrived, Sue entered the room, asking in her melodious voice, "Can you get me tiramisu, Zoe?" My brain short-circuited for a moment—the scribble was actually prophetic?! As Sue smiled sweetly and leaned close, I felt the creeps because the most important part of those scribbles still weighed heavily on my mind: [You will miss your postgraduate admission interview, after which that spot falls to Sue.] She wants to destroy my life over a spot at postgraduate admission? My fingers clenched around my pen, and I replied, "Sorry. Can't do."

On the day the college entrance exam results are released, I clutch my phone and wait anxiously for 40 minutes. When I see that I've scored 1580, I'm just about to shout in excitement when my sister, Rose Ward, screams and throws herself into my boyfriend, Shane Hudson's arms. "I got 1400! And you got 1450! Shane, we can both apply to Johnsburg Medical University!" I try to tell them that I can also join them, but Shane has already grabbed Rose and ran out the door with her. It isn't until the celebration party that Shane finally remembers me. "Oh, Lily. Johnsburg Vocational School is right next to the medical university. Why don't you apply for nursing there? Then the three of us can still get together," Rose says. She smiles and lightly taps me on the head. "Shane and I will be doctors, and you can be our nurse and help us out. We'd make the perfect team!" They are a perfect match, a couple made for each other. They are two jigsaw pieces that fit perfectly together, leaving no room for a third. I have spent so long chasing after them that all I ever see is them disappearing into the distance. But this time, I decide not to do so anymore.

Before filling out our college preferences, Ethan Barron, our class president and son of the richest man in the country, suddenly claims that he can get everyone in our class into Meridian College. "My parents have donated several buildings to the college. It'll be a piece of cake to get all of you in." Even though most of my classmates have scores that fall well short of Meridian College's admission threshold, they fall for his promise, skip their official applications, and count on Ethan to pull strings and get them into college. In my previous life, I realize Ethan's words can't be trusted, so I immediately urge them to submit their college applications, just in case. I also make a point of calling their parents one by one to warn them. However, this infuriates Ethan. He mocks me for being a penniless nobody who knows nothing about the rules of high society and accuses me of ruining the lives of our classmates. My girlfriend, Sasha Corbin, also berates me for being consumed by jealousy. "You're just jealous that Ethan comes from a wealthy family and can get all of us into Meridian College. So what if your grades are good? You could work your ass off your entire life and still never catch up to what his family has amassed over three generations!" For the sake of our three years as classmates, I choose not to hold it against them. Yet, when I realize right before the deadline that they still haven't submitted their college preferences, I immediately call the cops and expose Ethan's fake identity. Ethan is vilified by everyone and, overwhelmed by despair, jumps into the river to end his life. My classmates claim he got what he deserved and thank me for saving their futures. However, at our class farewell dinner, Sasha poisons my drink. My classmates watch coldly as I writhe in agony. "We may have lost our chance to get into college, but Ethan has lost his life!" When I open my eyes again, I find myself back on the day Ethan claims he can get us into Meridian College through his family connections.

With just seven days left until the college entrance exam, the high school's PA system suddenly crackled to life during the morning break. “My name is Lily Smith. I’m a senior. Before I graduate, I’d like to confess my feelings to my crush.” Inside the classroom, every eye instantly locked onto Jack. The room exploded into rowdy cheers and teasing. Jack felt his face burn as his heart hammered against his ribs. After all, he had spent three whole years cracking jokes to help his childhood friend, Lily, overcome the deep dark pit of her depression. On her eighteenth birthday, she had even initiated their first kiss. “You were the light that pulled me out of the darkness. I hope that once finals are over, I’ll finally get your answer,” Lily’s tender voice continued over the speaker. “I love you, Matthew Fox.” Jack froze. His hand trembled as he crumpled the textbook in his grip. Lily had not confessed to him. It was Matthew Fox, the bad-boy transfer student who had arrived that semester, made Jack's life a living hell, and spread malicious rumors that he had multiple older sugar mommies.

My sister lied and accused me of cheating right in the middle of the college entrance exam, all to snatch my guaranteed spot in college. My results were voided, and I was banned from taking the exam for life. "I don't want her to stray from the straight and narrow…" My sister cried in front of the cameras, as if she were the victim here. Then, she took the acceptance letter from a famous college that should've been mine. She also stole my boyfriend and told everyone they were an official item. Eventually, she got her happily ever after. Meanwhile, I got into a car crash on my way to the precinct to clear my name and died a horrible death. When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the exam room.