Chapter 3She Smashed My Life in Her Sleep

Advisor Evans didn't make a ruling on the spot. She told us to "take a breath," instructed me to focus on my backup interview arrangements, and ordered all four of us to report to her office in the Student Services building at two that afternoon.

I didn't argue. The trap was only half-sprung.

By noon, Megan had posted a five-hundred-word manifesto in our four-person suite group chat:

I am so, so deeply humiliated. I genuinely had no idea my childhood sleep disorder would resurface under the stress of senior year. If Natalie feels unsafe with me in the room, I will pack my bags and sleep in the lounge. But my family is barely scraping by on financial aid; I cannot afford thousands of dollars in sudden damages out of pocket. I just don't want everyone on this floor to hate me over something my body did while my brain was asleep.

Samantha had been the first to reply:

Don't you dare sleep in the lounge. Nobody hates you, Megan. We know your heart.

Paige chimed in next:

Natalie is just overwhelmed because of her interview. She’ll cool off once she gets through the day. Don't stress yourself sick.

I read the notifications on my phone and smiled to myself.

It was the classic playbook. Position yourself as the fragile, underfunded victim of an unchosen tragedy, and society will gladly compel the actual victim to swallow their losses in the name of grace.

Before heading over to Student Services, I walked up to Samantha’s desk.

"Sam, my laptop is completely dead," I said, keeping my voice mild and apologetic. "Meridian agreed to push my technical assessment back by twenty-four hours to let me set up on an alternate machine, but I need to review my slide models tonight. Can I borrow your iPad for twelve hours?"

Samantha hesitated. Her eyes flicked toward the cracked screen on my desk, her mouth twitching with reluctance. "Just... don't mess it up, okay? My parents bought that for my design seminar."

"I’ll treat it like gold," I said.

Right in front of her face, I held up my phone, took a high-resolution photo of the iPad’s pristine screen, and texted it directly to her number: Borrowing Samantha Brooks’s iPad Pro 11-inch. Zero cosmetic damage, functional display, battery at 92%. Return scheduled for 8:00 AM tomorrow.

Samantha frowned at the notification banner. "Okay... that’s a little intense, Natalie."

"Expensive gear," I replied with an easy smile. "A clean paper trail protects both of us."

Next, I turned to Paige. "Paige, the mic on my phone is picking up too much ambient room hum for the audio check. Can I borrow your Sony noise-canceling headphones and your desktop ring light for tonight’s prep?"

Paige sighed, handing them over. "Sure. But seriously, why are you documenting everything like we’re in a courtroom?"

"Because precision matters," I said smoothly.

Finally, I walked down to the ground floor of the residential college and found Ryan Cooper sitting in the common room. Ryan was our senior class representative, a quiet, fiercely intelligent finance major who had spent four years staying out of dorm politics. In my previous life, when the entire floor had turned into an echo chamber calling me a cold-blooded bully, Ryan had been one of the only people who hadn't joined in the whispers.

"Hey, Ryan," I said. "Is the student council DSLR camera available for overnight checkout? I need to reshoot headshots for the departmental honors panel."

He looked at me, his sharp gray eyes taking in the fatigue behind my eyes. He’d clearly heard the morning rumors. "You need help with something, Natalie?"

"Not yet," I replied quietly. "Just checking out the equipment through the official ledger."

He nodded, pulled out the clip-board, and signed the form. "Item logged under your name. I’ll email you the digital timestamped checkout slip."

By ten that night, my desk looked like an electronics showcase.

Samantha’s iPad sat propped on the stand. Paige’s premium headphones were resting beside the keyboard. The heavy ring light was mounted on the hutch, its power cord neatly coiled, and the council’s Canon DSLR camera sat squarely on the mousepad.

Everything was aligned, documented, and pristine.

At 1:05 AM, the floorboards groaned again.

Megan slid out from beneath her covers.

This time, she was far more cautious. She stood dead still at the base of her ladder for nearly ten full seconds, her head tilted, listening intently to the rhythmic breathing of Samantha and Paige.

Satisfied that the suite was unconscious, she stepped toward my desk.

Her eyes were slit open just enough to track the silhouettes of the objects.

She grabbed Samantha’s iPad and hurled it face-down onto the corner of the metal trash can. Glass shattered with a sharp, brittle snap.

She seized the Canon DSLR and slammed the fragile lens barrel directly into the edge of the oak desk, fracturing the glass elements inside the mount.

She caught the cord of Paige’s Sony headphones, gave a sharp, violent yank until the headband cracked in two, then grabbed the shears and severed the power line of the ring light in a single, smooth snip.

I lay in the dark, watching the red recording light pulse soundlessly from the nanny cam hidden in the hutch. My pulse was completely flat.

The screaming started thirty seconds later—only this time, it wasn't mine.

Samantha was on her knees, clutching her fractured iPad to her chest, her face turning an ugly, blotchy shade of purple. "Megan! Are you fucking kidding me? Again?"

Paige stared at her snapped headphones and the ruined ring light, her hands shaking with unadulterated fury. "Those were three hundred dollars! I literally bought those last week!"

Megan sat huddled on the lower rung of her bed, tears streaming down her cheeks in great, theatrical rivers. "I don't know... I don't know what happened! I woke up and I was standing there! I swear I didn't mean to!"

Samantha stood up, her voice cracking with pure outrage. "Every single time you 'don't mean to,' it’s someone else’s property that gets annihilated!"

In Advisor Evans’s office the next morning, Megan was practically hyperventilating, burying her face in a soaked tissue.

"She baited me, Dean Evans! Natalie knew I had an active parasomnia episode the night before! She deliberately placed everyone else’s expensive property on her desk to frame me! She set a trap!"

I didn't raise my voice. I didn't shed a tear.

I simply stepped forward and laid a thick manila folder on Evans’s desk: the 4K video footage from both nights, the signed loan agreements, the timestamped photos, the equipment checkout slips, the Hall Director correspondence, and the official repair assessments totaling over four thousand dollars.

Then, I turned to Megan.

"Tell me, Megan," I said softly. "Did I control your nervous system while you climbed down that ladder at one in the morning?"

Megan’s lips parted, but no sound came out.

"Did I force your hands to completely bypass your own desk, your own laptop, and your own phone, and walk straight across the room to mine?"

She gripped the edges of her chair, her knuckles turning white.

I pulled out my phone, turned the screen toward her and Evans, and tapped on the gallery.

Displayed on the screen were high-resolution screenshots of Megan’s private, anonymous search history from her secondary burner account, synced through the suite's shared IP address:

Can a college student be held financially liable for property damage caused during a documented sleepwalking episode?

How to make your roommate fail a corporate investment banking superday.

How to submit an anonymous student bullying post to campus forums to guarantee maximum engagement.

Every single drop of color drained from Megan Clark’s face, leaving behind the pale, sickening gray of exposed rot.