Mga Maiikling Kwento tungkol sa Plot Twists at mga Nobela ng Scumbag na may Campus

At the mall, I bent down to pick up my phone. By the time I stood up, my boyfriend and best friend were already thirty feet ahead of me. I had just wanted to call out, but the place that once belonged to me was slowly being closed. They walked side by side, still discussing investment terms I could not understand. It was as though there had never been anyone between them. In college, Sean and Wendy had been the brightest students in the business school. After graduation, they became the youngest deputy CEOs in the investment banking industry. No matter how hard I worked, I could only manage an administrative job at a small company and barely touched the edge of their world. Sean liked to pinch my cheek. "It's okay. Being a little slow is cute, too." Then, he would turn to Wendy, and the two of them could sketch out an entire merger plan with a single glance. Watching them walk away, I suddenly felt exhausted. I didn't want to keep chasing Sean down a road where I'd always fall behind.

When we are taking our graduation class photo, I cautiously hook my finger around my boyfriend Nathaniel Carter's. He immediately shoves me aside. "You should stand in the back row. The spot in the middle is for the prettiest girls. That's what makes the picture look good. You'll look out of place there. Let Liv take your spot." My face goes pale. Before I can say anything, my best friend, Olivia Morgan, smiles and tries to reassure me. "Eve, Nathaniel's just looking out for you. You're shy, and you'd probably feel uncomfortable standing in the middle anyway. The back row suits you better." Everyone else has already taken their places, and the photographer is beginning to grow impatient. Not wanting to hold everyone up, I quietly move to the corner without saying a word. I've gotten so used to giving in that even my hurt has learned to stay silent. Later, our class representative sends the graduation photo to the group chat. In the picture, the tall guy standing in front of me blocks nearly the entire lower half of my face. Olivia, meanwhile, is standing exactly where I was, her fingers intertwined with Nathaniel's. He tilts his head toward her, his expression soft as he looks at her with complete attention. His gaze has never lingered on me for more than three seconds. We've been secretly dating for three years, and Nathaniel is always the one insisting that we keep our distance in public. "If I'm always looking at you, others will figure it out. Besides, what's so interesting about looking at you?" I've always swallowed the hurt those words leave behind, convincing myself he's right. I buy us a pair of matching rings, hoping we can finally make our relationship public. Nathaniel tosses his ring back into the drawer and tells me, "You're shy. If we go public and people start talking about you, you won't be able to handle it. I'm only keeping us a secret to protect you." But the next day, I see that same ring on Olivia's finger. Not far away, the two of them stand shoulder to shoulder, posing for picture after picture as if they have nothing to hide. Their matching rings catch the sunlight, flashing brightly enough to make my eyes sting. Fine. We don't have to go public. We never will.

On graduation photo day, my boyfriend, Ethan Jones, takes more than 200 photos of Chloe Lloyd, the prettiest girl in our class. As president of the photography club, he knows better than anyone how to find the most flattering angles. Chloe stands beneath a tree and smiles at him. "Are you sure this isn't too much trouble?" Ethan looks down and flips through the photos on his camera. "Not at all. You look good no matter how I photograph you," he says gently. When my turn comes, I clutch the hem of my skirt and walk over. Ethan casually presses the shutter twice. "Done." I stare at him. "That's it?" He frowns at me. "You never look good in pictures anyway. Don't hold everyone else up." I look at the two photos on his camera. My eyes are closed in one, and half my face is hidden in the tree's shadow in the other. I ask him to take a few more, but instead, he puts up a post on the campus forum. "Photographer wanted. 20 dollars to snap a few graduation photos of my girlfriend." Half an hour later, I receive a private message from an unfamiliar profile. I send over my location, then say quietly, "Just so you know, I'm not photogenic." The reply comes almost immediately. "Your photographer didn't know how to work with you." After the shoot, he sends me the unedited photos. I'm stunned when I see the photos. I never knew I could look this good on camera. Even crazier, the photographer who took the job for 20 dollars seems to know what he's doing better than the president of the photography club.

After my father, Peter Johnson, remarried, everyone told me that I had two nemeses. One was my biological mother, Lilian Reid, who had left me to live overseas. Another one was my stepmother, Gloria Black, who had basically taken my father away. Lilian would send me monthly text messages, though, asking if I had enough money. I never answered any of them. Gloria would also often come to my school to give me presents, but I never opened them. They both thought that I hated them. When I was expelled due to overdue school fees, both of them appeared at the same time. My homeroom teacher, Joanne Anderson, placed the overdue bill on the desk. “In order not to spend twenty dollars on her hearing aid’s batteries, your daughter was unable to focus on class for two years.” Lilian’s face fell. “I send her fifty grand every month!” Gloria was also stunned. “I saved up fifty grand for her, too! How is it possible that her school fees are overdue?” I stared at them for a long time without talking. Nancy Andrew, the nanny who took care of me, had told me that Lilian had a new family and that, because of that, she was unwilling to take care of me. Peter, my father, had also told me that Gloria was afraid that I would go after his money, so she was not willing to spend a single cent on me. However, Lilian took out twelve bank transaction slips, while Gloria pulled up a savings account with my name on it. The money that they gave every single month was clearly banked into that same account. But I did not have access to that bank account. I was just about to ask them about it when I suddenly heard Peter’s voice coming from outside. “Why are both of you here?”

Marie Hail had been groomed since childhood to be the perfect good girl. Every aspect of her life was tightly controlled. Her parents approved the colors she wore, forbade her from wearing skirts above the knee, and insisted she take small bites and chew each mouthful thoroughly. She was little more than a marionette, with her parents pulling the strings and dictating her every move. However, everything began to change when she turned eighteen and met Rylan Stafford, a boy who burst into her carefully controlled world like a blazing sun. Rylan had striking features, bright, lively eyes, and a wild, uninhibited laugh. More importantly, he was everything Marie had never dared to be. He took her on reckless motorcycle rides to the beach and drove her across the mountains to watch meteor showers. He even gave her a tattoo, a symbol of freedom inked onto her back. Through him, Marie discovered a world beyond the suffocating rules that had governed her life. As he encouraged her to challenge every restriction holding her back, she gradually found the courage to break free and embrace a passion she'd never known. Rylan was a living flame, and Marie willingly let herself be consumed by him. One day, he asked, "Princess, how about we turn in blank exam papers together during finals?"

The day our SAT scores came out, my boyfriend Wesley Shaw and I were on the high-speed train home from our graduation trip. My foster sister, Cassidy Richards, had come with us. Cassidy wanted the window seat, so Wesley sat beside her. That left me alone for the entire ride. "Daphne, Cassidy and I need to talk about college and what we're planning to major in. You probably didn't score that well anyway. Just sit over there and watch something." They spent the whole ride laughing and talking, never once giving me a chance to join the conversation. So much for the graduation trip Wesley had been promising me for the past three years. At 10 a.m., our SAT scores finally appeared online. Cassidy threw her arms around Wesley. "We did it! With scores like these, Westhaven University is practically guaranteed. We can apply to any program we want!" Wesley hugged her back with a grin. "Check the family group chat. Everyone's already congratulating us." From the seat behind them, I listened as they played a voice message from my parents. "Wesley, Cass, you both did so well! We're so proud of you!" Wesley's parents chimed in next. I lowered my head and opened the chatting app. I wasn't even in the family group chat, and no one had bothered to ask about my score. It didn't matter. They had already chosen the future they wanted. Now, it was time for me to start building mine.