Classmates

The housekeeper’s daughter just locked me out of my own Bentley.

"Bob, drive," Ella Brooks—the school's untouchable Queen Bee—ordered my chauffeur. She leaned into her boyfriend, Ryan Harrington, shooting me a look of fake pity. "My family already pays her tuition. Charity cases don't get free rides."

A bunch of kids nearby laughed, always eager to kiss up to the fake heiress. Ryan glared at me ...

On my first day at St. Clair University, my roommate Lysandra laughed at me in French.

Wrapped in designer logos, she called me a nobody who did not even recognize luxury perfume.

She thought I could not understand her.

She was wrong. French was my first language.

I was also Iris Russell, the hidden heir to the Russell Group.

But I kept that to myself.

Then Lysandra set me up at a Michelin-s...

The night before graduation, a confession post blew up the school forum:
“Daphne, I’m gonna rip up my Harvard offer onstage during commencement to confess to you—my whole college future as my love token.”
The OP bragged nonstop in the comments that he’d locked down the state’s only full-ride Harvard scholarship, his admission was a done deal, and graduation was nothing but a meaningless formality ...

My best friend Sophie has a rich dad, a romance-novel addiction, and Daddy’s black card.

I have student loans and three part-time jobs.

So when Sophie decided to live out every love story she’d ever read, she hired me to play the villainess.

The mean girl who corners the class genius? Me. The spoiled heiress who won’t leave the campus heartthrob alone? Also me. Ten bucks per cringey text. Cash ...

My cousin stole thirty thousand dollars from our dying grandmother.
Not for an emergency. Not for bills.
For liposuction.
Then she told everyone I did it. Said I was jealous of her figure — that I'd drained Grandma's cardiac surgery fund because I wanted to look different. And the terrible part is, everyone believed her. My boyfriend. My uncle and aunt. Every single person who'd watched me grow up...