I fixed the problem and tried to move on. I told myself it was bad luck. Identity fraud happens. Strange things happen online.
Then it became personal.
I had a meeting scheduled with Professor Arias to review a major history paper. He was the professor who had encouraged me to think about graduate school. I respected him deeply. I knocked on his office door at two o’clock sharp with my notebook in my hand.
He opened the door already looking annoyed.
“Nora, what are you doing here?”
“I’m here for our meeting.”
He sighed. “You canceled two hours ago. You said you were sick and didn’t want to waste my time.”
The blood drained from my face. “I didn’t cancel. I’ve been in the library all morning.”
He looked at me over his glasses. “I got a call from a young woman who said she was you. She sounded upset.”
“That wasn’t me,” I whispered.
He checked his watch. “I gave your slot to another student. Please get your schedule under control.”
He closed the door.
I stood in the hallway staring at the wood grain, feeling sick. Someone had called him. Someone who knew enough to imitate me. Someone who wanted me to look careless and unprofessional in front of the one professor whose respect mattered most to me.
When I got back to the dorm, Sarah looked up from her laptop, took one glance at my face, and closed it.
“What happened?”
I told her everything. The money. The canceled meeting. The strange details that no longer felt random.
“That’s creepy,” she said. “Who hates you that much?”
“I don’t know.”
But deep inside, a tiny voice had already started whispering a name. I pushed it away.
No, I told myself. She’s jealous, but she wouldn’t go this far. She’s my sister.
The incidents kept coming. Food deliveries I never canceled were suddenly canceled. Library books I had returned somehow showed up in the system as missing, along with expensive fines. Then the rumors began.
I would walk into a lecture hall and conversations would stop. A few students would glance at me and lower their voices. One day a guy from biology leaned over and asked, almost casually, “Hey, is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“That you buy your essays online.”
I dropped my pen.
“What? Who said that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just heard there’s some post about it.”
The walls of the campus started to feel as if they were closing in. I was pulling all-nighters. I was earning every grade honestly. And somewhere, someone was building a version of me that was false and poisonous and easy to spread.
I changed my passwords. I covered my laptop camera. I started looking over my shoulder while crossing campus. I called home again.
“Mom, weird things are happening,” I said. “People are spreading stories about me.”
“Nora, you’re stressed,” she said in the dismissive tone she used when she wanted reality to become smaller. “You always get anxious around exams. Ariana says you’ve always been high-strung.”
“I am not high-strung,” I snapped. “Someone is targeting me.”
“Don’t raise your voice at me,” she said sharply. “We have enough going on. Ariana just went through a breakup, and she’s devastated. I need to focus on her.”
Then she hung up.
