Chapter 1

When I went to pay my tuition, the card showed a balance of fifty dollars.

But my mom had just transferred me ten thousand for tuition yesterday.

I quickly asked her to send another ten thousand. The moment it landed, the balance refreshed and dropped right back to fifty.

Meanwhile my roommate, the one on financial aid, had suddenly draped herself in designer labels, claiming her parents had gotten rich through honest hard work.

Then my mom transferred the money one more time.

The instant it vanished from my card, I saw a deposit alert light up on her phone.

I looked at the balance, back to fifty again, and gave a soft little laugh.

Honest hard work, huh? All of it built on stealing from me?

Then I'd make her cough it back up. Double.

……

Staring at that fifty-dollar balance, I broke into a sweat.

Beside me, my roommate Virginia Dickerson sniped away in that sugary, poisonous tone of hers.

"I heard you're keeping some male escort at a club. You didn't hand him all your tuition, did you?"

"Guys like that are filthy. Aren't you scared of catching something? The rest of us sharing this dorm with you sure are."

I shoved her off me. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Virginia's voice went all innocent. "Can't even own up to your own choices? I'm just looking out for you here!"

"Otherwise, go on, tell me where your money went. Your family's loaded. There's no way they wouldn't cover your tuition."

I couldn't waste another second on her. I turned and ran for the bank.

"Hi, my mom just transferred me two payments, and both of them disappeared out of nowhere!"

Every person waiting at the counter turned wary.

"I've heard banks skim money off accounts. This isn't actually true, is it?"

The lobby manager went pale and quickly steered me over to the VIP window.

"Let's help this young lady figure out what happened first."

She had the teller start on my case while turning back to soothe the crowd.

"Everything we do here follows regulation, everyone, please don't worry……"

The teller took my card and tapped at the keyboard.

A record of transactions printed out.

"Two deposits of ten thousand each. As soon as they landed, they were transferred straight to an overseas account. The system shows it was done by the account holder through mobile banking."

"Young lady, did you fall for some kind of scam?"

I took the statement and studied it closely.

"I never made either of these transfers. Could something be wrong with my card?"

The bank manager glanced at the teller's screen, then hardened her face at me.

"Every one of these was done by you. There's nothing wrong with the card."

"If you got scammed, you tell your family. You don't come here asking the bank to lie for you."

Hearing the manager, the people around me started shaking their heads too.

"Kids these days. All they know how to do is bleed their parents dry."

"The way she came running in, I honestly thought she'd lost her money. Turns out it's all an act."

I looked at the two strange transfers on the statement, and Virginia's face rose up in front of me.

My money vanished, and out of nowhere she was spreading filth about me, like she'd known all along exactly what was going to happen.

Then I thought about that coat she'd been wearing. Michael Kors. Over three thousand dollars.

Three thousand-plus was half a year of her parents' government assistance. How could she bring herself to buy a coat that expensive?