Chapter 1

After my roommate secretly drank the protein powder I kept in our dorm,

her weight shot up from 100 pounds to 135 pounds in just a single month.

She literally cried and accused me of poisoning her.

"What the hell did you put in here? Are you trying to kill me?!"

I let out a cold laugh. "When you were busy stealing it, why didn't you bother asking what it actually was?"

What she didn't know was that it wasn't protein powder. It was a rapid fattening formula I had custom-mixed for my lab pigs.

Harper Vance stood by my desk, clutching the empty plastic tub in her hands, tears streaming down her face.

"Chloe Miller! Did you put something in this powder?!"

She had visibly bloated.

Her once-sharp jawline was now completely round, her collarbones had vanished under layers of puffiness, and the rolls around her waist practically spilled out of her pajamas like rising dough.

I closed my lab notebook, slowly looking up at her.

"Who told you to steal my powder? Did I force it down your throat?"

"So you admit it! You did put something in there! You wanted to ruin me!"

Her voice pitched into a shrill shriek. "You’re an Animal Science major—you spend all day with farm animals! What kind of sick chemical did you mix into this? I gained thirty-five pounds in a month! Thirty-five pounds!"

She slammed the empty tub onto my desk.

I didn't even flinch.

"I’ll ask you again. Who told you to touch my stuff?"

Harper choked on her words, her face turning a furious, blotchy red.

Our other roommate, Maya Brooks, poked her head out from her bed, took one look at the drama, and quickly pulled her curtains shut.

Someone walked past our door in the hallway, their footsteps pausing briefly before hurrying away.

Harper’s voice suddenly dropped, her eyes darting around nervously. "I—I just thought it was regular organic protein powder. You left it sitting there and weren't using it, so what’s the big deal if I had some? Roommates are supposed to share. Why do you have to be so incredibly petty?"

I stared at her.

"Share."

She sure loved using that word.

Last semester, she ate a whole pint of organic strawberries I left in the shared fridge, claiming she "didn't want them to go to waste."

She took handfuls of my expensive imported vitamins every single day, claiming she just "needed some extra nutrients."

She even wore my limited-edition designer hoodie to a frat party and brought it back reeking of cheap beer and weed. When I asked why she didn't ask for permission first, she scoffed and said, "It’s just a hoodie, Chloe. You’re not gonna die."

Every single time, she called it "sharing."

Every single time, she took it for granted.

When we first moved in, I thought she just had a few boundary issues. Everyone has flaws, right?

Back then, I was naive. I figured we had to live together in this suite for a couple of years, so there was no point in making things tense.

So I let it go. Every single time, I let it go.

But being passive never makes a bully back down. It only makes them take more.

Midway through freshman year, my mom ordered a massive, five-pound box of premium Rainier cherries from Whole Foods and had it shipped to me.

The box was huge. I kept it in the corner of our shared kitchen, planning to savor them.

That afternoon, I went to my chemistry lecture. When I came back, the box was completely empty, with nothing left but a few crushed, rotten stems rolling around at the bottom.

Harper was lounging on the couch, picking her teeth. Seeing me walk in, she smiled. "Oh, Chloe, those cherries were so sweet! I invited the girls from next door over, and we finished them."

A fifty-dollar box of imported cherries, and she just "invited the girls" to eat them.

"Why didn't you text me first?" I stood at the door, my keys still clenched in my hand.

"Oh, come on, I assumed you bought them for the suite anyway," she said, rolling over on the couch. "Don’t be so dramatic, Chloe. We’re practically sisters."

Sisters.

Hearing that word roll off her tongue made me physically sick.

I stared at her, wanting to scream, but in the end, I said nothing.

It wasn’t because I was scared. It was because I felt it wasn't worth the energy.

Screaming over a box of cherries? What would that even solve?

She still slept in the room next to mine. We still had to see each other every single day. I didn't want to turn our dorm into a war zone.

But now I realize that when you refuse to treat someone as an enemy, they just treat you as their prey.

"That wasn't protein powder," I said flatly.

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