Me and my BFL were getting our nails done when she asked, “What’s your love language?” I smiled, “Probably touch. I love feeling a man’s hands around my waist.” She turned to me with disgust.

“You [ __ ] slut.”

Before I could respond, she stormed out of the salon with her nails only half done. Like, what in the actual hell?

I figured maybe she was having issues with her man or something. But when I FaceTimed her, she hung up straight away and blocked me on everything. Even her mom blocked me. Her mom.

I ran back to my apartment trying not to cry. My roommate took one look at me and literally sprinted to her room. Click. She locked her door.

“Sarah, is everything okay in there?”

Nothing.

That’s when my phone buzzed. Text messages from unknown numbers.

“Mia, my ex-BFL told me you were looking for some fun. HMU.” and “Dale mamasita. Don’t be shy.”

More texts poured in. Girls from my classes were calling me a home wrecker. A hoe. Screenshots of group chats planning to expose me. It felt like the world was playing some sort of cruel prank on me.

The morning after crying myself to sleep, my work manager pulled me aside. He wouldn’t even let me clock in.

“We heard about what happened. Can’t have that reputation here.”

Fired. Just like that. Four days until rent was due, and now I had no job.

I called my big sister crying because she always knew how to fix things. But the second I told her what happened, she went completely silent. The bad kind of silent.

“I can’t believe you said that.”

“Said what?” I was practically screaming into the phone.

“Just what exactly did you say when she asked about your love language?”

“That I love a man’s hands around me.”

“Oh my gosh.” She sounded disgusted. “I didn’t think you were that type of girl. Mia was right about you.”

“Ashley, what are you—”

Beep.

She hung up and she blocked me everywhere within minutes. My own sister.

I logged into my old Finsta with shaking hands and stalked Mia’s page. Every single photo of her boyfriend was deleted. They weren’t even following each other anymore.

Tuesday night, Sarah finally came out of her room dragging a suitcase.

“My parents don’t want me living with someone who, you know…” She couldn’t even look at me. “They saw the posts.”

“What posts?” I was basically screaming now.

She just shook her head and left.

No roommate meant double rent I couldn’t afford. My life was imploding and I didn’t even know why.

For days, I couldn’t sleep. I tried everything. Showed up at Mia’s sorority house, begging for answers.

“Stop playing dumb. You know what you did,” they said before slamming the door in my face.

By Wednesday, I was desperate. And if anyone knew what happened, it’d be Jake’s best friend, the horn dog who always liked all my Instagram stories.

I waited until 2 a.m. to text him.

“You up?”

In a second, he was practically begging me to come over.

I stared at myself in the mirror. Bodycon dress, push-up bra, lip gloss. I looked exactly like what everyone was calling me.

His apartment reeked of the devil’s lettuce. I did shots I didn’t want and laughed at jokes that weren’t funny. By 4:00 a.m., his hands were all over me.

“Bingo.”

That’s when I forced myself to sound like I was out of breath.

“Wait, can we stop for a sec? What happened with Mia?”

Brad laughed, but not in a mean way. More like he felt sorry for me.

“You really don’t know about the test system?”

I shook my head.

Suddenly, he whipped out his big black iPhone and opened TikTok. It was a video with millions of views. The woman in the video was explaining how girls who say physical touch has no boundaries are 73% more likely to steal taken men.

My blood went ice cold as the realization hit me. Mia knew her man was on some sneaky shit and she thought I was the other woman.

“Mia tested all her friends. You were the only one who said physical touch,” Brad was slurring, but I caught every word. “She screenshotted your answer and sent it to everyone. Said you literally admitted you can’t keep your hands to yourself.”

I felt like I was going to throw up.

Brad laughed. “She sent a screenshot saying you were desperate to be touched by anyone who’d have you. Made this whole group chat called ‘easy target’ with your photos and number. My boys have been passing it around since Saturday, thinking you’re down for whoever.”

I stood up to leave. My phone had recorded everything from my purse.

Brad grabbed my wrist hard. “Where are you going, chica? You said we’d continue.”

I yanked away. “I got what I came for.”

His face twisted ugly. “You really are a manipulative [ __ ] like Mia said.”

I looked him dead in the eyes. I had 48 hours until I’d be homeless. But Mia and Brad? They had 24 hours before their entire world imploded. And by the time I was done, they’d be begging for the days when their biggest worry was a failed TikTok test.

I walked out of Brad’s building into the cold morning air, and my hands were shaking so badly that I could barely hold my phone. The second I got to my car, I locked the doors and pulled up the voice recorder app.

There it was. Forty-three minutes of audio, with Brad’s confession right in the middle.

I played back the part where he talked about the easy target group chat, and my stomach turned, but at least I had proof now.

I forwarded the file to three different email accounts—my personal one, my old school email, and a backup Gmail I made just for this. Then I uploaded it to Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud because I wasn’t taking any chances with this evidence disappearing. My battery was at 12%, so I plugged in my car charger and sat there in the parking lot, making sure every upload went through.

Back at my apartment, I locked myself in the bathroom and sat on the cold tile floor with a notebook I found under the sink. My hand was still shaking as I wrote down everything I needed to do.

Secure all evidence was already done. Finding legal help was next. Figure out the rent situation. Clear my name somehow. Get my job back, maybe.

The list kept growing, and I felt sick looking at it, but at least having a plan made me feel less crazy.

I opened my banking app, and the number made me want to throw up. $842 in checking, 200 in savings. Rent was $1,500 and I’d already spent my last paycheck on groceries and gas. Even if I drained everything and sold stuff, I’d only have maybe half. The late fee was another hundred after 5 days, and then eviction proceedings would start. My credit would be ruined for 7 years if that happened.

The apartment portal loaded slowly on my phone, but finally showed the payment screen. Rent is due in 4 days with a 5-day grace period before they can file an eviction. I screenshotted everything, including the lease terms and tenant rights section. At least I knew exactly how much time I had to figure this out. Nine days total before they could legally kick me out.

I called my old manager at the coffee shop and left a voicemail trying to sound calm and professional.

“Hi Mark, it’s me. There’s been a huge misunderstanding about what happened. I really need this job and I can explain everything if you just give me 5 minutes.”

I hung up and called again 20 minutes later, this time sounding more desperate.

“Mark, please. I’m about to lose my apartment and this is all based on lies. Just call me back.”

The third call, I was basically crying into the phone.

“I know you probably hate me, but I swear I didn’t do anything wrong, and I have proof now. Please.”

I texted him the basic facts about the setup, but the message just sat there undelivered, not even read.

I opened Instagram and started typing out this long post with all the screenshots and timestamps of what really happened, how Mia tested me with that stupid question, how she made up lies about me, how Brad admitted to the group chat, but then I stopped and deleted everything. They’d just twist whatever I said and make it worse. Plus, if I were going to use that recording legally, I probably shouldn’t post it online first.

I found Jake’s number and sent him a text asking if we could talk about what really happened with him and Mia. Within seconds, he replied:

“Leave me alone, you psycho.”

And then I couldn’t send any more messages. He’d blocked me just like everyone else.

So much for getting his side of the story or finding out what Mia was really mad about.

I Googled “free legal help” in my area and found a legal aid clinic that did consultations for students. The website said they helped with harassment and defamation cases. I filled out their online form and picked the earliest appointment slot, which was tomorrow morning at 9:00 with someone named Orly Ferrara.

Having an actual lawyer’s appointment made me feel slightly less helpless, even though I had no idea if they could actually help.

Then I remembered Paige Swift from the campus newspaper, who always wrote about controversial stuff and scandals. She’d covered that whole thing with the professor last year. I found her email on the newspaper website and sent her a message from a throwaway Gmail account.

“There’s a story about TikTok relationship tests being used to destroy innocent people’s lives at our school. Multiple victims, coordinated harassment campaigns. I have evidence, but need to stay anonymous for now.”

I didn’t mention the recording or any names, but hopefully she’d be interested enough to investigate.

I texted Sarah asking when she was getting the rest of her stuff from the apartment and whether she could at least pay her half of this month’s rent since she’d lived here for most of it. The message was delivered right away, and then a few seconds later, it changed to “read.”

She was seeing my messages but not responding. That little read receipt felt worse than being blocked because it meant she was actively choosing to ignore me while I was desperate.

I sat there on my bed staring at my phone and trying not to panic about everything falling apart.

My phone kept buzzing with more gross messages from random guys I’d never met. Each notification made my stomach turn as I read things like, “Heard you’re easy,” and worse stuff I can’t even repeat.

I grabbed my backpack and walked straight to the campus police station near the student center. The officer at the front desk looked bored as I explained what was happening. He typed slowly on his computer and handed me a case number on a yellow slip of paper.

“We’ll look into it,” he said without even looking up from his screen.

I took the paper and left, feeling like nothing would actually happen.

Back in my apartment that night, I couldn’t sleep at all. I kept staring at the ceiling and thinking about every single conversation I’d had with Mia over the past year. Had there been signs I missed that she didn’t trust me? Every memory felt different now, knowing she’d been testing me.

The screenshots people had sent kept flashing in my mind whenever I closed my eyes. Words like “home wrecker” and worse made me feel sick even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. The shame was eating me up from the inside, even though none of it was true.

At 9:00 the next morning, I walked into the legal aid office for my appointment. Orly turned out to be this young lawyer with sharp eyes who actually listened to my whole story without interrupting. She took notes on a yellow legal pad and asked specific questions about dates and who said what.

“You have potential cases for defamation and harassment,” she explained while pulling out some forms.

She showed me how to save evidence properly on multiple devices and cloud storage. “I’ll send cease and desist letters to both Mia and Brad through the legal aid program at no cost to you.”

We spent the next 2 hours going through every detail and drafting the legal notices. The letters demanded that they stop spreading false information immediately and preserve all evidence for potential litigation. Orly typed fast while explaining that even if we didn’t actually sue them, the letters might scare them enough to stop.

She printed everything on official letterhead, which made it look serious and real. Having actual legal documents with case law citations made me feel less helpless for the first time in days.

After leaving the legal office, I texted Samuel from my computer science class, who’d always been nice to me. I asked if he could help verify that my audio recording was real since he knew about tech stuff.

He texted back right away saying he’d help and seemed genuinely upset about what was happening to me.

We met at the computer lab, where he ran the file through different programs, checking for edits or tampering. He created what he called a “forensic copy” that would hold up in court if needed.

The next day, Paige messaged saying she wanted to meet about my anonymous tip. We sat in a corner booth at the campus coffee shop where she asked detailed questions and took notes on her laptop. She showed me screenshots from three other girls at different schools who’d been targeted with the same stupid test.

“This is way bigger than just you and Mia,” she said while scrolling through her research.

I gave her some evidence, but held back the full recording for now, like Orly had advised.

My phone rang while I was walking home, and it was Javier from the property management company.

“We need to discuss your rent situation,” he said in a business voice.

I explained that I’d lost my job due to false rumors, but didn’t go into all the messy details. After some back and forth, they agreed to give me a one-week extension with a late fee added on.

It wasn’t great, but it bought me some time, which felt like a small victory.

The next morning, I went to the Title IX office and filed formal complaints against both Mia and Brad. I attached the police report number and printed out some of the initial evidence I’d collected. The woman behind the desk said they’d investigate, but warned it could take several weeks to resolve.

“Both parties will be notified within 48 hours,” she explained while stamping my paperwork.

At least now it was officially on record with the university.

Samuel texted me later that day with good news about the audio file. He’d confirmed it was completely authentic with no edits or alterations anywhere in the recording. Even better, he’d found metadata showing exactly when the easy target screenshots were first created and shared. The digital trail proved this was coordinated harassment starting right after I’d answered that stupid love language question.

Finally, I had real proof that I wasn’t making this up or being paranoid.

That night, I created a throwaway email account and sent a message to the sorority standards board. I attached just the part of the audio where Brad specifically mentioned Mia organizing everything and creating the group chat. I didn’t include my name, but suggested they should investigate their member’s conduct since it reflected badly on their organization.

Let them deal with their own mess internally while I focus on clearing my name everywhere else.

My phone buzzed with a Twitter notification, and I saw Brad had posted something vague about girls who can’t take jokes trying to ruin lives with fake recordings. Within minutes, his frat brothers were commenting with support and making threats about what happens to snitches who try to destroy “good guys.”

I screenshotted every single comment and reply before they could delete anything. The threats kept getting worse, with guys saying they knew where I lived and what classes I took.

My hands shook as I opened my main Instagram account for the first time in days. I typed out a short statement saying I was aware false information was being spread about me and that I’d filed police reports and was working with legal counsel. I added that any harassment would be prosecuted, but didn’t mention any names or give details, just setting boundaries like Orly taught me.

The likes and comments started pouring in immediately, with some people supporting me and others calling me dramatic.

At 2 in the morning, my phone lit up with a DM from Jake saying he needed to meet tomorrow because he had to protect himself from whatever I was planning.

I stared at the message for a long time before typing back that I’d meet him, but only in a public place like the campus coffee shop. He agreed right away, which made me think he was really scared about something.

The next afternoon, Jake showed up at the coffee shop looking like he hadn’t slept in days, with dark circles under his eyes. He sat down across from me and immediately pulled out his phone to show me text messages between him and some girl from his economics class. The messages went back months, with hearts and dirty talk and plans to meet up when Mia was busy.

Jake explained that Mia had suspected he was cheating, but thought it was with me since I’d said that thing about physical touch being my love language. He swore he had no idea about the harassment campaign until Brad told him yesterday, and now he was worried I’d expose him.

I recorded our whole conversation on my phone while he talked and showed me more proof of his actual cheating.

Later that day, I met with Orly at her office and showed her the screenshots Jake had given me. She looked them over carefully and told me not to post them publicly since it could backfire legally if Jake claimed I was harassing him.

“You can share them with Paige for her article and with the university investigators, but we need to be strategic about it,” she said.

Orly was already thinking three steps ahead about how Mia’s team would respond to any move we made. Strategic patience was hard when I wanted to blast everything online immediately, but I trusted her advice.

My email dinged with a message from the sorority standards chair asking for an informal chat about my concerns regarding their member. I forwarded it to Orly, who helped me write back, insisting that any meeting be formal and recorded with a witness present.

She taught me not to give them any chance to twist my words or intimidate me privately since everything needed to be documented.

The standards chair replied that she understood, and we could schedule something official through the Greek life office.

That same evening, someone posted screenshots in a campus Facebook group showing the easy target chat Brad had created. The messages were even worse than Brad had described, with guys rating my photos on a scale and sharing detailed fantasies about what they wanted to do to me. Some of them had even been following me around campus and taking pictures without me knowing.

I felt sick reading through everything, but also vindicated that other people were finally seeing what had been happening.

The person who leaked it said they were disgusted by their fraternity brothers and wanted to distance the organization from Brad’s actions.

Paige texted me excitedly because she’d been digging into that stupid 73% statistic about physical touch and stealing men. She discovered it came from a parody account that made fun of bad relationship advice and had never been real.

She was writing a whole article debunking the entire test trend and exposing how it was weaponized against women. Real journalism might actually save me when social media wouldn’t listen to the truth. She interviewed experts who explained how these fake statistics spread and hurt real people.

The next morning, I tried to pay for groceries, but my card got declined even though I knew I had money. I logged into my banking app and saw that several payment app transfers had been flagged as suspicious, with a 24-hour hold on my entire account.

The timing felt way too convenient to be random, and I wondered if someone had reported my accounts as fraudulent.

I called the bank, but they said I had to wait for the security review to complete. Now I couldn’t even access the little money I did have for rent or food.

Everything kept piling up, and I felt my chest getting tight like I couldn’t breathe properly. My vision started going fuzzy and my hands went numb as I sat on my bathroom floor trying not to pass out.

I managed to dial the campus crisis hotline while sobbing and gasping for air. The counselor on the phone was really calm and taught me a grounding technique where I had to name five things I could see and four things I could touch. She stayed on the line for almost an hour until I could breathe normally again and helped me schedule an emergency counseling appointment for the next day.

The next morning, my phone buzzed with a notification from Instagram, and I saw Mia had posted a story with a quote about learning from mistakes and not believing everything you see online.

I clicked through and watched her type out this whole thing about how social media can be dangerous and we should all be more careful about what we believe. Not one word about what she actually did to me.

The comments were flooding in from her sorority sisters with heart emojis and messages about how brave she was for speaking out.

I screenshotted everything before it disappeared and sent it to Orly, who was meeting with my old manager’s HR department that afternoon.

She texted back that the company was hiding behind at-will employment laws and basically said they could fire me for any reason or no reason at all.

They told her I could reapply in a month but made zero promises about actually hiring me back.

I threw my phone across the room, and it bounced off my mattress while I started pulling clothes out of my closet—my favorite jeans, the dress I wore to my birthday dinner, and a leather jacket Ashley got me for Christmas.

I took photos of everything and posted them on three different selling apps because I needed money now.

Within an hour, I had offers on half my stuff, and some event staffing company emailed about a weekend gig serving food at some alumni thing. The pay was decent, but the thought of smiling at drunk old people while my life fell apart made me want to scream.

Orly called, and we talked for almost 2 hours about what to do with Brad’s recording. She kept saying that posting it publicly could backfire hard because his frat brothers might dox me or make things worse.

She wanted me to only share it with the investigators and Paige for her article. My fingers kept hovering over the upload button on TikTok, but I knew she was right about being strategic.

The bank finally released the hold on my account, but it was too late because the rent was already past due, even with Javier’s extension.

I stared at my laptop screen showing negative $300 in late fees on top of the regular rent I couldn’t afford anyway.

I called Javier and told him I’d be out by tomorrow if he could return most of my deposit. He actually sounded sorry for me and said if I left the place clean, he’d give back everything except the carpet cleaning fee.

I started throwing everything I owned into garbage bags and boxes from the liquor store down the street.

The next morning, Javier showed up for the inspection and immediately started pointing at this stain on the bathroom wall that had been there since I moved in. I pulled up photos from my move-in day two years ago showing the same stain, and he backed down real quick.

He tried the same thing with a crack in the bedroom window, but I had documentation for that, too. After 20 minutes of him trying to find damage that didn’t exist, he signed off on the full deposit return, minus that carpet fee.

My phone started blowing up with DMs from some account with zero followers and a default profile pic. The messages said I was going to regret everything and that he knew where I’d be staying.

The writing style was obviously Brad trying to sound tough behind a fake account.

I screenshotted everything and forwarded it to both Orly and campus security within seconds. The security officer called me back and said they’d add it to my file and increase patrols near where I was staying.

Jake texted out of nowhere saying he’d write a statement for the university about what really happened with him and Mia. He made it super clear he wasn’t doing this to help me, but because he was worried Mia would try to destroy him next.

I didn’t care about his reasons as long as he told the truth about her being paranoid and controlling.

He sent over three pages describing how she’d test all her friends and how she’d been convinced someone was after him for months before they broke up.

My Venmo dinged with a $200 payment from Ashley with a note that just said “for food and stuff.” No apology, no explanation, no admission that she’d been wrong about me, but I knew this was her way of saying she cared without actually having to say it.

The money went straight toward the storage unit I’d have to rent for all my stuff that wouldn’t fit wherever I ended up.

Paige messaged that she’d reached out to the platform where that stupid love language test video went viral. They sent back some corporate nonsense about not being responsible for how users interpret content and refused to comment on their role in spreading false information.

She said she was including their silence in her article and calling them out for letting dangerous misinformation spread unchecked.

Her article was supposed to drop tomorrow, and she promised it would help change the narrative about what happened to me.

I finished packing the last box and looked around my empty apartment one more time before heading to that alumni event where I’d spend 8 hours pretending everything was fine while serving tiny foods to rich people who had no idea their server’s entire life had been destroyed by a TikTok video.

The event dragged on for hours with me balancing trays of tiny quiche and pretending my hands weren’t shaking every time someone looked at me too long.

Between refilling the champagne glasses, Orly texted that she’d filed the criminal complaint with the actual police, not just campus security, and included all of Brad’s threats, plus screenshots of that group chat.

She said it would take months, but at least there’d be real consequences eventually.

I kept serving and smiling while rich alumni complained about the temperature of their shrimp cocktail. Eight hours of this earned me just enough for groceries, but my feet were killing me and my face hurt from fake smiling.

When I finally got back to the apartment, Sarah was there with her dad, loading boxes into his truck. She wouldn’t even look at me while her dad muttered something about “bad influences” loud enough for me to hear.

I just stood there watching them take everything without saying a word because some fights weren’t worth having.

My phone buzzed with an email from the university, and my hands shook opening it. They’d announced interim sanctions with Brad banned from all campus events and Mia on social probation with her sorority.

Not expulsion, but at least everyone would know they did something wrong.

Another email came through from my old manager saying I could reapply next month and they’d consider it fairly, which was corporate speak for “maybe,” but at least he was finally responding.

I sat down at my laptop and started typing everything that happened from the salon to now, including all the screenshots and timestamps I’d been collecting. The blog post took 3 hours to write, and I uploaded every single receipt showing how a fake TikTok test destroyed my life in less than a week.

Within hours, it had thousands of shares from women with similar stories, commenting about their own experiences with toxic friend tests.

My old phone wouldn’t stop buzzing with more harassment, so I drove to the phone store and got a new number. Then spent the next two hours locking down all my social media and blocking every single person who’d harassed me.

Setting these boundaries felt like building walls around what was left of my sanity.

I packed the last of my stuff and drove to the address Paige’s source had given me, some tiny apartment on the other side of town. The couch wasn’t comfortable, and the place smelled weird, but I had a roof over my head, and my deposit money meant I could eat for the next few weeks.

My new phone lit up with texts from only the people who had my new number. Paige wanted a follow-up interview about the viral blog post.

The case manager had updates about the investigation.

And Ashley just sent two words: “You okay?”

I texted back that I was getting there, which wasn’t exactly true, but it was better than admitting I was sleeping on a stranger’s couch while my whole life burned down around me.

Makes you think, right? Were those heart emojis real support or just people going through the motions? Hard to say.

Anyway, I’ll see you in the next one. Subscribe for more content like.