On college move-in day, my mom was busy, so my dad showed up to help me wipe down my dorm cabinets while holding my baby brother. Among my new roommates was Harper, a girl I had gone to high school with. She stared at my baby brother for a long time before she suddenly smirked. "Chloe, is that your son?" My dad froze, then honestly explained: "No, this is Chloe’s biological brother. We had him late." Harper let out a loud, mocking laugh, intentionally raising her voice. "Mr. Sterling, it's one thing to lie to the new girls, but it's pretty pathetic to try and lie to me." "She took a massive leave of absence during our senior year. When she came back, she was super secretive about everything." "This baby is definitely hers." In my previous life, on this exact same day, I had desperately tried to explain. I told them that my mother had a high-risk geriatric pregnancy, her health had deteriorated, and I had taken time off to care for her. No one believed me. Harper secretly recorded a video of us and dropped it into the freshman class GroupMe, claiming I was "a teen mom whose parents were covering up the scandal." The rumor spread through the entire college like wildfire. I was ostracized, bullied, and eventually fell into such a deep depression that I jumped off the roof of a campus building. But this time, I had already texted my mom—a woman currently at the farmer's market aggressively haggling with a butcher. If I couldn't out-talk Harper, then my fiercely sharp-tongued mother certainly would. 1 Harper’s lips curled up, acting like she had finally caught me red-handed. She tossed her backpack onto her bed and deliberately pushed the dorm room door wide open. The freshmen and parents bustling down the hallway were quickly drawn to her loud voice, peeking into our room. "Did I say something wrong?" All the color drained from my dad's face. "Young lady, you can't just make up lies like that." "He really is my son. He's Chloe’s biological brother." Harper covered her mouth, faking a polite giggle. "Mr. Sterling, don't be so nervous! I didn't say it was 100% true." "I just think it's a huge coincidence." She turned to the other two roommates. "You guys probably don't know this, but Chloe and I went to the same high school." "She was always an only child. I never once heard she had a brother." "But during the second semester of our senior year, she suddenly took a huge leave of absence, claiming she had a 'family emergency.'" "And now, on the first day of college, her dad shows up holding a baby that's just a few months old. Doesn't that seem a little suspicious?" "Besides, her parents are pretty old. Isn't her mom past menopause?" The two new roommates exchanged glances. One of them, Mia, asked hesitantly: "You said she took time off senior year? For how long?" Harper immediately jumped in: "A long time. Definitely more than a few days." "When she came back, she completely isolated herself. Whenever anyone asked what happened with her family, she just said it was 'inconvenient' to talk about." My dad gripped my baby brother tighter, his brow furrowing. "Young lady, you can't say things like that." "Chloe was at home taking care of her mother." Harper let out a sharp scoff. "Of course that's what you're going to say, Mr. Sterling." "You're hardly going to admit she went home to give birth, are you?" The dorm room fell dead silent. Someone out in the hallway gasped audibly. This was exactly how it played out in my past life. The more my dad tried to frantically explain, the more guilty they thought he looked. The sharp, piercing phrase "give birth" startled my baby brother. He flinched, and a second later, he burst into wailing tears. I reached out and took him from my dad's arms, gently patting his back. My brother sobbed, hiccuping as he buried his little face into my shoulder. Seeing this, Harper grew even bolder. "Look at that. Look how natural she is at holding a baby." "That doesn't look like a sister holding a brother at all." "It looks exactly like a..." She didn't finish the sentence, but the atmosphere in the room had completely shifted. Mia frowned. "If it really is her biological brother, it is kind of weird that her high school classmates didn't know." The other roommate, Zoey, muttered quietly: "I mean, some parents do cover up stuff like this for their kids." "Especially right before starting college. It's not a good look." My dad waved his hands frantically. "No, it's not like that at all!" "Her mother was older when she got pregnant. We were worried it would distract Chloe from her SATs, so we didn't tell everyone." "After her mom gave birth, she had health complications. Chloe just took a few days off to help out." "We have no reason to lie about something like this." Harper sneered. "I went to school with her for three years. Her family suddenly has a new baby, and I wouldn't hear a single rumor about it?" She looked at me, her tone dripping with mockery. "Come on, Chloe. Explain it to us." "Your parents are pretty old. Why suddenly try for a second kid?" "Were they just desperate for a boy? And when they couldn't have one, they made you have one instead?" My dad rushed to defend us: "That's not true!" "Leo was an unexpected surprise! We love Chloe very much!" Harper rolled her eyes. "Mr. Sterling, don't try to sugarcoat it." "A lot of parents are like that. They say they love their daughters, but deep down, they're desperate for a son to carry on the family name." "Otherwise, why would you pull her out of school during the most critical time of her senior year?" "For all we know, you guys couldn't conceive, so you made Chloe do it for you." My dad was so choked up he couldn't speak. During that time, my mom had suffered massive hemorrhaging during delivery. She almost didn't make it off the operating table. My grandmother was too old to help, and my grandparents on my dad's side had failing health. My dad was running back and forth between the ICU and caring for a newborn. He lost so much weight he looked like a skeleton. I voluntarily took a leave of absence to help my family. They never forced me. But explaining this to Harper was useless. She didn't want answers. She wanted me humiliated. I looked down at my phone. The voice memo recording app was glowing red. I looked up at her. "Keep going." Harper froze. "What, trying to play it cool?" "You guys, pull out your phones and record this. Let everyone else on campus know to stay away from her." Zoey pulled out her phone and started recording. I stared dead into her camera lens, my voice turning to ice. "Do not film the baby." Zoey's hand stiffened, but she quickly muttered: "If you have nothing to hide, what's the big deal if I film it?" Harper immediately backed her up: "Exactly! If you're innocent, what are you afraid of?" "It's not like we're filming something illegal." I smiled. "Do you know what a violation of privacy laws is?" Harper's face darkened. "Chloe, stop trying to change the subject." "I'm just doing everyone a favor by exposing you early." "Nobody wants to share a dorm with a pathological liar." She purposely raised her voice: "And nobody wants to sleep in a bunk bed with someone who secretly had a baby." "Who knows who else she's sleeping with? What if she brings some disgusting STD into the dorm and infects all of us?" 2 That comment was even more vicious than the last. The crowd gathering at our door grew thicker. I heard people whispering: "Is it true?" "Freshmen are wild this year." "A high school classmate is the one spilling the tea, it can't be completely made up." Seeing the crowd building up, Harper thrived on the attention. She pulled a photo up on her phone. It was our high school graduation photo. In the picture, I was standing on the far edge, looking incredibly frail and pale. She shoved the screen toward the onlookers. "Look at this." "This is what she looked like when she came back from her 'leave of absence.'" "She lost a ton of weight and looked completely exhausted." "If she was just taking time off to 'take care of a sick family member,' would she look like this?" I almost laughed out of sheer anger. "I was spending all day catching up on AP classes, and spending all night doing practice exams. I was sleeping four hours a night." "Is it really that weird that I lost weight?" Harper rolled her eyes. "Who knows? Maybe your postpartum recovery was just really rough." Someone in the crowd couldn't hold back a snicker. My dad's eyes instantly turned red. "How can a young girl like you say such degrading things about someone?!" Harper immediately took a step back, putting on an act of being terrified. "Mr. Sterling, please don't yell at me." "I'm just pointing out the facts, and your whole family is getting so aggressive." "Doesn't that just prove there's a problem?" Mia whispered cautiously: "Maybe... maybe you could just show us some proof?" "Like a birth certificate, or family records?" Harper instantly cut in: "Even if she shows it, it might not be real." "If this was a planned cover-up, they definitely forged all the paperwork in advance." "You said you were taking care of your mom during senior year? Where's the proof of that?" "Whatever. You're obviously guilty, so you won't dare let us check anyway." I stared at her. "What exactly do you want to check?" She thought I was intimidated, and her tone grew even more aggressive. "I want to check if you've ever given birth." "I want to check what your actual relationship to this baby is." "I want to check if your parents are covering up your lies." I didn't say a word. I just picked up my phone and checked my messages. I put the phone back down and looked at Harper. "Keep going." My unnatural calmness seemed to provoke Harper, making her face flush with frustration. "Fine." "Since you're begging for it, I'll lay it all out." She turned to the crowd of onlookers, raising her voice. "Chloe didn't take a leave of absence to take care of her mom." "She was a pregnant teen who went into hiding to have a baby." "To make sure she could still go to a good college, her parents claimed the baby as their own." "And now she has the audacity to bring it to campus." "If someone like her lives in our dorm, who knows if she'll sneak the baby in here later?" "We came here to go to college, not to run a daycare for her bastard kid." Zoey immediately chimed in: "Yeah! This dorm isn't a nursery." Although Mia didn't say anything, the way she looked at me had already shifted to obvious repulsion. Out in the hallway, someone held up their phone. "I'm recording this. Just in case it's actually true." I held my brother tightly and shot an icy glare at the person filming. "Filming a minor without parental consent is illegal." The person muttered defensively: "Stop acting like you're some legal expert." Harper laughed out loud. "Of course she knows the law." "Before she did something this scandalous, she definitely researched exactly how to cover her tracks." My dad couldn't take it anymore. "Enough!" His voice wasn't loud, but it trembled with emotion. "Our family has done absolutely nothing wrong. You have no right to bully us like this." Harper’s eyes instantly filled with tears on command. "Mr. Sterling, why are you screaming at me?" "I'm a girl too. I'm just trying to protect myself." "If she really did nothing wrong, she could just explain it clearly, couldn't she?" "Why is your whole family so defensive?" In a fraction of a second, she had flipped the script from malicious rumor-monger to terrified victim. In my past life, everyone was manipulated by her exact same act. She said she was just scared. She said she was just trying to protect herself. And in the end, I became the "aggressive psycho who refused to explain herself and attacked her classmates." I looked at her, my voice very soft. "Harper. You loved doing this in high school, too." Her expression stiffened. I continued: "You rip apart other people's privacy for everyone to see, and then claim you're just 'concerned.'" "You dump toxic waste on people's heads, and then claim you were just 'asking a question.'" "You are a master at wrapping your pure malice in the disguise of justice." Harper gritted her teeth. "Stop trying to gaslight me." "Which one of my points wasn't based on logical deduction?" "You took a massive leave of absence senior year. Fact." "The baby is a few months old. Fact." "You never mentioned having a brother in high school. Fact." "Your parents are desperately insisting it's their baby now. Fact." "With all these facts lined up, what's wrong with me having a little suspicion?" I nodded. "Alright." "I want you to repeat everything you just said." "And you'd better not change your story later." 3 Harper really didn't change her story. She even connected her phone to the communal TV screen in our dorm lounge area. Because it was move-in day, every floor had a shared screen that the RA used to display dorm rules. She somehow got the pairing code and cast my high school graduation photo, along with several candid shots of me before and after my leave of absence, directly onto the massive screen. Mia gasped: "How do you have so many photos of her?" Harper brushed it off casually. "We were high school classmates. I just had them saved." But I knew she didn't "just have them saved." In my past life, I only found out much later that she had started secretly taking candid photos of me during our junior year. She was waiting for the perfect opportunity to destroy me. A photo popped up on the screen. I was standing outside the high school nurse's office, holding a sick leave slip. Harper pointed at the photo. "Look at this. Her physical condition was already super suspicious back then." Next photo. My dad standing at the school gates, holding a manila envelope. "Her dad was constantly running to the school handling paperwork during that time." "What kind of paperwork requires a parent to come in that often?" Another photo. I was sitting in the very back row of the classroom, my head down, my desk buried in practice exams. "After she came back, she became completely mute." "If that isn't a guilty conscience, what is?" I watched her performance with cold, dead eyes. "Harper. You stalked and photographed me for three years?" She immediately frowned. "What do you mean stalked? Don't make it sound so creepy." "Classmates take pictures of each other all the time. What's the big deal?" "If you didn't do anything wrong, why are you so afraid of people keeping photos of you?" Zoey nodded in agreement. "Yeah, everyone takes pictures of everything nowadays." I looked at her. "Then how about you project your entire camera roll onto the TV for everyone to enjoy?" Zoey instantly shut her mouth. Harper’s face looked a bit ugly. But she quickly steered the conversation back. "Chloe, stop trying to deflect the issue." "Right now, we are talking about this baby." She stared at my brother. "Do you dare admit that he isn't just a 'normal brother'?" I gently patted my brother's back. "Of course he isn't a normal brother." Harper’s eyes lit up triumphantly. I continued: "He is the child my mother risked her life to give birth to." "He is the child my father raised by waking up five times a night to mix formula." "He is the child I taught how to wave over FaceTime every single day after school during my senior year." "He is not a prop for you to use to spread disgusting rumors." Harper’s expression froze. But she quickly sneered. "You have a great way with words." "But who can actually prove it?" I looked at her. "What kind of proof do you want?" "Birth certificate? Family records? Hospital discharge papers? A written statement from my high school homeroom teacher?" "I can provide all of it." Harper immediately put on a 'called it' expression. "Did everyone hear that?" "She has it all prepared." "What normal person brings a full dossier of legal documents on their first day of college?" "Unless she already knew someone was going to ask." I gave a short laugh. "Two minutes ago, you demanded proof." "Now that I say I have proof, you accuse me of being 'prepared'?" Harper's voice turned cold. "I'm just reminding everyone not to be fooled by a pile of forged papers." She spoke as if she was getting more and more confident. "It is so easy to fake things nowadays." "Documents can be forged. Text messages can be faked. You can even bribe a doctor for hospital records." "Chloe, your parents are working overtime to cover for you. Who knows how far they went?" My dad exploded in anger. "You have crossed the line!" Harper’s tears arrived perfectly on cue. "Mr. Sterling, I know you love your daughter." "But you can't just treat everyone else like idiots just because you feel sorry for her." "We're freshmen here, we have a right to know the truth." "Nobody wants to live with someone whose private life is a total disaster, and whose entire family lies to cover it up." Private life is a total disaster. The moment those words were spoken, the hallway completely erupted. "Wow, that's a massive accusation." "But her classmate seems so sure. There must be some truth to it." "Her family says it's her brother, but they really can't prove it." "Her dad looks super panicked, too." My dad was panicked because he wasn't good at arguing. Because his daughter was being viciously slandered. Because his infant son was being surrounded and filmed by a mob of strangers. But in the eyes of these people, an honest man's distress was interpreted as guilt. Harper raised her phone and snapped another picture of the baby in my dad's arms. My eyes turned to ice. "Delete that." She looked at me provocatively. "I'm not deleting it." "Unless you admit he's your son." Before I could even speak, a chilling, sarcastic woman's voice echoed from the end of the hallway. "Admit my ass." The entire hallway suddenly went dead silent. My mom, holding a plastic bag of groceries, walked over in her sensible flats. She placed the bag on the table near the door and slowly, methodically rolled up her sleeves. She took one look at my dad’s red eyes, and then at my sobbing baby brother. Finally, her gaze locked onto Harper's face. "So, it's you." "You think because you can flap your lips a few times, you're hot shit? Think you have the right to assign a new mother to someone else's kid?"
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