Chapter 5 Ruined

 MILA

Morning sunlight pushed through the thin curtains and landed straight on my face. I woke up slowly with a heavy pounding in my head, like someone was hitting the inside of my skull again and again with a hard hammer. My mouth felt dry. For several long seconds I did not even know where I was.

I sat up carefully. The big hotel bed was soft under me, but the other side was empty and cold. No one else was in the room. 

My eyes landed on the bedside table. A neat stack of money sat there under a small white card. I reached for it with shaking fingers and counted the bills one by one. One thousand. Two thousand. Three thousand. That was all. Not the five thousand I had been promised. Only three.

Humiliation crashed over me first, hot and sharp. Then anger rose up right behind it. Then deep regret that made my stomach twist so hard I thought I might be sick. Aaron had done this. He had taken what he wanted while I was unconscious and then cheated me out of the rest of the money. The thought made my skin crawl. I felt dirty and used and stupid all at the same time. Tears burned in my eyes, but I wiped them away fast.

I got dressed as quickly as my shaky hands would let me. The buttons on my dress felt too small. I did not look in the mirror above the desk. I could not stand to see my own face. I grabbed the three thousand dollars, shoved them deep into my bag, and left the room without looking back even once. The long hallway felt too bright and too quiet. The elevator ride down to the lobby felt endless. I kept my head low and my arms wrapped around myself as I walked past the shiny floors and the smiling staff and out the front doors into the morning air.

A taxi waited at the curb. I climbed in and gave the driver the university address. As the car moved through the morning traffic I pulled out my phone and tried to call Janet. I needed to tell her what had happened. The call started to connect, the ringing sound soft in my ear, but then the screen went black all at once. The battery was completely dead.

When the taxi finally stopped at the campus gates I paid the driver with shaking fingers and stepped out onto the path. The moment my feet touched the ground something felt terribly wrong. Students walked past me in small groups. Their eyes followed me. Soft whispers started the second I began to walk.

“That’s her.”

“Look, it’s the girl from the pictures.”

“I can’t believe she actually did it.”

A few girls sneered openly when I walked by. One of them said in a loud, mean voice, “Shameless. Completely shameless.” 

Another girl laughed and added, “Scholarship girls will do anything for money, I guess.” 

Several boys looked me up and down and laughed under their breath. My face burned so hot it hurt. Tears pressed hard behind my eyes, but I forced them back with everything I had. I kept walking faster, almost running, toward the dorm building. Every step felt like people were staring straight through my clothes.

I pushed the door open to our room and stopped in the doorway. Janet was packing. Clothes were folded neatly in an open suitcase on her bed. Her books were already stacked in a cardboard box. She looked up when she heard the door, and her face changed the moment she saw me.

“Mila… you’re back,” she said. Her voice sounded careful.

I did not answer right away. My eyes went to the charger on my desk. I plugged my dead phone in with fingers that still would not stop shaking. Janet opened her mouth to say something else, but the phone lit up before she could speak another word.

Notifications flooded the screen so fast the little numbers climbed higher and higher without stopping. Messages. Group chats. Tags. Mentions. My heart nearly stopped beating. I opened the first message with my thumb.

Pictures filled the screen one after another.

Me standing outside the tall hotel in the evening light.

Me walking through the glass doors into the bright lobby.

Me in the long hallway outside Room 1908.

Me stepping inside while a man held the door open—his face completely blurred so no one could tell who he was.

Every single picture showed my face clearly. There was no way to pretend it was someone else.

I scrolled down. The same photos were in every university group chat I could see. Comments poured under them like poison, each one worse than the last.

“Disgusting.”

“I always knew girls like her were like this.”

“Scholarship trash selling herself.”

“She should be expelled today.”

“How shameless can one person be?”

My knees felt weak and strange. I sat down hard on the edge of my bed because I was afraid I would fall to the floor. The room seemed to spin around me. Everything I had tried so hard to protect—my quiet life, my small chance at finishing school, the little bit of respect I still had left—was gone in the time it took to open one message. My whole world collapsed right there in that small dorm room while Janet stood frozen near her suitcase.

She looked at me and then at the phone in my hand. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. I could not speak either. The tears I had held back all the way across campus finally spilled down my cheeks without stopping. They fell onto the phone screen and made the cruel words blur together, but I could still see them. I could still feel every single one of them cutting deep into me.

Outside the open window the university’s emergency announcement system suddenly crackled to life. The voice echoed across the whole campus, clear and cold and impossible to escape.

“Scholarship student Mila Kamal is to report to the disciplinary board immediately.”