My Roommate Tried to Frame Me for Giving Her Syphilis, So After Rebirth, I Went on the Warpath Chapter 01
My roommate, Chloe Marsh, stopped me in the shared bathroom on our floor.
“I forgot to bring my shower stuff. Can I borrow your towel real quick?”
I didn’t hand it over.
I walked out into the hallway instead and shouted loud enough for the whole floor to hear.
“Chloe Marsh forgot her towel! Anybody got a spare she can borrow?”
In my old life I felt bad for her and handed over the towel I had just bought.
Seven days later every girl in our room came down with a fever, and Chloe got diagnosed with syphilis in its most contagious stage.
She cried in front of everyone until she was shaking.
“The only towel I ever borrowed was Mia Lawson’s. There were these strange stains on it, and I didn’t think twice about it at the time.
“I don’t believe she did it on purpose, but I have never even been with anyone. How am I supposed to look people in the face now?”
The school wanted the whole thing to go away, so they pushed me into taking a voluntary leave of absence.
I turned into the campus plague overnight, the threads calling me a whore ran thousands of comments deep, and both of my parents lost their jobs because of me.
In the end the pile-on wore me down to nothing, and I took my own life.
It wasn’t until after I died that I found out she had been working the club scene to pay for designer bags, and she had been sick long before any of it started.
She borrowed something personal on purpose, so that when it all caught up with her she already had somebody lined up to take the fall.
This time I turned her down with the whole floor listening, and I wanted to see who she was going to pin it on now.
*****
“Mia, what are you screaming about?”
Chloe stood in the bathroom doorway with her eyes already going red.
She bit down on her lip.
“I forgot a towel. If you didn’t want to lend me one, fine, but did you have to humiliate me in front of everybody?”
Doors opened up and down the hallway as people leaned out to look.
They stood there holding their shower caddies, eyes bright with the kind of curiosity that turns into gossip by dinner.
“You said you didn’t have one. I was asking around for you.”
I looked straight at her and kept my voice even.
“We all live on this floor. People help each other out. What is wrong with that?”
Chloe’s chin trembled and her eyes filled.
“Fine! I won’t borrow anything from anybody!”
She stomped her foot, turned around, and ran back to our room.
The muttering started up behind me.
“Who does that? It’s a towel. Did she have to make it an announcement?”
“Right? Chloe is so sweet all the time. No wonder she’s shaken up.”
I let them talk.
In my old life I explained myself over and over, and every word of it got clipped and edited into fresh evidence against me.
Chloe was gone by the next morning.
I was scrolling Instagram around noon when her post came up.
The photo showed her in a hospital bed with an IV taped to the back of her hand.
The caption was one line.
[Why is this happening to me? I am so scared. I didn’t do anything wrong.]
The comments filled up within minutes.
[Chloe, are you okay??]
[Oh my god, what happened? Sending you so much love.]
[This is what happens when someone treats you like that. Don’t let anybody that cold live in your head.]
Chloe didn’t answer a single one of them.
Half an hour later my phone rang, and it was Grant Mercer, our academic advisor.
“Mia, I need you in my office right now.”
I pushed the office door open.
Chloe sat on the couch with a lab report crushed in her fist, and her eyes were swollen from crying.
Grant looked up when I came in, and his voice came out heavy.
“Mia, do you want to explain what Chloe was just diagnosed with?”
I looked right at him.
“Explain what, Mr. Mercer? Whatever she caught, what does that have to do with me?”
Chloe started shaking, and she jabbed a finger at me through the tears.
“Mia, look at what I have! And you’re still going to sit there and play innocent?”
“That whole show you put on in the bathroom, turning me down in front of everyone, that was you covering your tracks!”
She covered her face and broke down.
“You handed me that towel in our room the night before! You offered it to me!”
“I actually thought you were being kind. How was I supposed to know what was on it?”
Grant slammed his hand down on the desk and raised his voice.
“Mia! What exactly do you have to say for yourself?”
“You knew you were infected and you handed your own towel to the girl who sleeps four feet from you. That’s not just cruel, it’s a felony.”
I watched him work himself into all that righteous outrage over nothing.
“Mr. Mercer, do you need any evidence at all for this? She opens her mouth and says I gave it to her, and that settles it?”
I threw the question back at him without any warmth in it.
“If she says I handed it to her, then where is the towel? Have her produce it and get it tested.”
Chloe shrank back into the couch and wouldn’t look at me.
“I gave it back to you as soon as I was done with it. You have obviously washed it or thrown it out by now, so where would anybody even find it?”
Grant waved a hand at me like he was finished listening.
“Enough. Stop trying to talk your way out of this.”
“For the safety of everyone in this department, you’re going to Mercy General right now for a full STD panel.”
I didn’t hesitate for a second.
“No. I’m not doing that.”
That stopped him cold, and then his voice shot up an octave.
“You refuse? Mia, this is a directive from the department. It isn’t up to you.”
“Right now this is one accusation from one person. You haven’t investigated anything, you’ve already decided I’m guilty, and now you want me to prove I’m not.”
I looked him straight in the eye and didn’t give an inch.
“Walking into that clinic is the same as telling this entire campus I’m a suspect. I am not carrying that for her.”
Grant came up out of his chair.
“This is called cooperating with an investigation! If you have nothing to hide, why won’t you go?”
Chloe kept sniffling beside him.
“You won’t go because you know what they would find.
“You can’t admit what you have, and you’re going to drag this out until every girl in our room catches it too.”
The office door hung half open, and a crowd had already gathered in the hallway to watch.
The whispering carried straight through it.
“I never would have guessed. She always seemed so wholesome, and she’s walking around with that?”
“And she gave it to her own roommate. That’s evil.”
“They should expel her. Keeping her here just puts the rest of us at risk.”
Grant came around the desk and lowered his voice.
“Mia, this is already out of hand. If you don’t cooperate, it gets uglier.”
“You’re telling me to confess to something I didn’t do.”
I cut him off and swept a cold look across the two of them.
“There’s a camera outside that bathroom and a whole floor of witnesses. She says one sentence and I’m supposed to strip down at a clinic to prove her wrong?
“Whoever makes the claim brings the proof. If you really think I did this, call the cops and have them arrest me. I don’t have time to play pretend with you people.”
I turned and walked out, and I let the door slam behind me while Grant pounded his desk and shouted at my back.
