She Stole My Name to Shop for Free

"How is a seller ever going to track me down at school over thirty bucks?" My roommate said it wearing a dress she had never paid a cent for, and she laughed at me for being a coward.

She never paid for anything she bought. From $4 succulents to $300 coats, she would take delivery, claim the quality was bad, and file a refundonly.

She kept the thing, and the money came back to her. Later she started using the same trick on phones and tablets.

Until the demand letters started arriving at the school, one after another. Tessa panicked and called the sellers, crying, begging them to drop it.

And of all the phones those calls could have rung on, one of them rang on mine. Chapter 1 "My new clothes.

Cute, right?" Tessa stood in front of the mirror, showing the rest of us clothes she hadn't paid for.

She hadn't paid for a single thing she owned since the first day of freshman year. All of it freeloaded.

From $4 succulents to $300 coats, the package would come, and then she'd file a refundonly over a quality problem.

When nobody answered her, Tessa hummed to herself, snipped the tags off, pulled up her Kartway orders, and filed the refund like it was routine. "This dress I'm wearing was twentynine ninetynine.

No seller is driving all the way out to campus over that kind of money, and going the legal route costs him even more.

He'll just swallow it." I rolled my eyes at her. "One of these days you'll hit a seller who takes it seriously, and then you've got a record.

Just like that." Tessa made a face like none of that was worth thinking about, waved the screenshot of the refund hitting her account in my face, and said, "The bold ones eat till they're stuffed and the scared ones starve.

That's how the world works. My mom has never given me a cent, and I live better than you do." I was looking at a notification that had just popped up on Reloop.

It was about the wireless earbuds Tessa had bought from me for $65 the day before. [Buyer has filed a refundonly.

Reason: item not as described.] The response page had exactly one button on it, Approve Refund. There was no Decline.

I took a breath and held the screen up for her. "You filed a refundonly on my earbuds too?" Tessa nodded, like the answer was obvious. "The noise canceling on those is bad.

Of course I filed." I put my hand out. "I'll give you your money back.

You give me the earbuds back." Tessa laughed at me. "I already resold them to somebody else, so that's not happening. The platform sends the refund back on its own anyway.

You can take me to small claims if you want.

Take a day off, pay the filing fee, sit there all morning, and then see what you can actually squeeze out of me." She looked so pleased with herself.

She was certain I wouldn't burn an entire day over sixtyfive dollars. Gwen came storming down off the top bunk. "Tessa!

Those storage bins I sold you for eight bucks got refundonlied too.

What, you can't afford to live?!" Tessa lay back down and pulled the blanket up over herself, in no hurry at all. "Those things were beat to hell.

I can't believe you had the nerve to put them up for sale." That landed hard on Gwen. "Three bins for eight dollars.

You looked them over before we ever went through the app, and now you pull a refundonly?" All she got back was silence.

Gwen stood there with it stuck in her chest and nowhere to put it. At midnight one of the sellers Tessa had refundonlied called her, and the two of them started going at it.

Loud enough that nobody in the room was going to get any rest. I opened my eyes and listened to Tessa lie. "There's a quality problem with your dress.

I wore it and broke out in a rash all over." "You say rash and that makes it a rash? Did you send me one shred of proof?" Tessa's voice went up. "Why would I have to give you proof?

You're lucky I'm not billing you for the doctor. Call me in the middle of the night again and I'll report you for harassment." The seller didn't budge.

Chapter 2 "If that money is not back in my account by ten tomorrow morning, I'm coming to your school, and I'll stand there and tell every single person exactly what you did!" Tessa went off on him. "You come out here and I'll have my friends order from your store and file a claim on every one of them.

The platform sides with the buyer, always, and you'll eat a dispute fee on top of every single order!" I ripped my bed curtain open. "Keep it down!

Just because you're not sleeping doesn't mean nobody else is." Tessa rolled her eyes. "Am I stopping you?" She had a punchable face, and right then it was extremely punchable.

I got out of bed, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and handed her back her own words from that afternoon. "So call the cops.

Take a day off, sit in the station, and explain to them why your roommate is pulling your hair." Tessa's eyes went red with it. "Nora Kessler! Are you fucking insane? Let go!

That hurts!" Gwen, whose storage bins she'd freeloaded, climbed down too. Two on one. Tessa ended up on the floor with her hair everywhere and both hands up over her face.

The next morning at eleven my phone rang. It was my hall director. "Nora, there's a man out on the sidewalk by the main entrance yelling for you to pay him back.

What is going on?" I got down to the main entrance. That stretch of sidewalk runs along the main road at the front of campus, and every student coming or going has to walk past it.

A man I had never seen before was standing there holding up a banner. [EASTON STATE FRESHMAN NORA KESSLER — SHE FREELOADS WITH A GRIN, WANTS IT ALL FOR FREE AND NEVER PAYS A NICKEL IN, SKIN AS THICK AS CINDER BLOCK AND SHAME AS THIN AS TIN, DRIVES AN HONEST MAN CRAZY — WHERE DO I EVEN BEGIN?] A good crowd had stopped to watch. "She's the one who filed the refundonly.

What an embarrassment. Thirty dollars and she has to freeload it." "She really can't afford to live. Getting tracked down at school by a seller.

I'd never show my face again." The seller frowned when he saw me coming. "You're Nora Kessler? I thought a dress from my store gave you a rash all over.

One day and it's healed up without a mark on you?" I let the sarcasm go by and kept my voice level. "I'm Nora Kessler.

But I have never freeloaded anything of yours." He gave me the look of a man who already knew I'd deny it with my last breath.

He opened his seller dashboard and found the order. "This Kartway account is yours, isn't it?" Seeing that account startled me, because I hadn't been able to log into it in a long time.

I'd tried everything to recover it and nothing worked, so eventually I registered a new one. "The account is mine.

But I'm not the one using it." Once they heard me admit that, the jeering got louder. "She just said the account's hers. What's she still arguing about?

Apologize to the man and give him his money back." "Seriously." I opened the photo of the refunded item.

It was the same dress Tessa had been wearing the day before, down to the last detail.

The seller threw an arm out and shouted at the students streaming past, "If you don't send me what you owe for that dress and my gas out here and back, today, I'll stand right here for as long as it takes!" He'd brought a portable speaker too, playing the lines off the banner on a loop.

That sidewalk belongs to the city, not the school. Campus police could come out and ask him to move along, and asking was as far as it went.

My face didn't move. "My roommate stole that account. She's the one who filed the refundonly." I turned to go get Tessa and make her handle it.

The students around me surged in and closed off every direction I could have walked. It was a muggy summer day without a breath of wind.

Being boxed into the middle of them was like standing in a steam room, everybody's breath braided together, and my shirt was soaked through in no time. "Pay the man back!" "What a disgrace to your parents!" "And now she's pinning it on her roommate.

Imagine being that roommate, eating this for nothing." I laughed at all of it, and then I took out my phone and sent him the money, because there was nothing else left to do. "Send me a copy of everything you've got." I went back to the dorm.

Chapter 3 Tessa was lying in bed, scrolling through the newest phones.

I pulled her curtain open. "How is it that you can log into my Kartway account?" Tessa jumped, sat bolt upright, and once the question landed something guilty went across her eyes. "What do you mean, your account?" I looked at how uneasy she was and scoffed. "My name on the deliveries.

My account for the refundonlys!

You ran the whole illegal side of it, and the only thing on that account that's actually yours is your phone number, so if it ever came apart, no seller would ever come looking for you." Caught with it in her hands, Tessa made a face and admitted it. "Start of the year, when I borrowed your phone to make a call, I had a verification code sent to it while I had it.

Then I changed the password on your account." She rolled her eyes. "I borrowed your account to buy a few things. You're really going to nickelanddime me over that? The guy left.

It's handled." She clearly could not have cared less. I took a breath and opened Venmo. "His dress and his gas out here and back came to two hundred sixty. Send it to me. Now.

And give me my account back." Tessa's family didn't give her a cent, but she'd put away a good pile of money reselling what she freeloaded at cut rates.

Tessa flicked a look at me like I was the one who'd done something. "Nobody told you to go pay him off on your own. It's boiling out there.

Did you honestly think he'd stand there all day? And I can't give you the account. I'm using it." Then she reached up and pulled the curtain shut.

A second later I watched her start on me in the class GroupMe. [Tessa: She obviously filed the refundonly herself.

Otherwise why would she get all guilty and hand the guy money?] [Tessa: Would any of you just hand a seller cash for no reason?] Somebody had uploaded a video of me out by the main entrance into the group.

The moment she posted, people piled on underneath her. [Obviously not. Nobody here is stupid.] [And her story is that her roommate stole the account.

Pity whoever has to share a room with her. Does anybody have info on Miss RefundOnly?] [Found her, found her!

Freshman, journalism major, Nora Kessler.] [People like that get scholarships and make the honors list?

Somebody's pulling strings and nobody will convince me otherwise.] Tessa kept throwing fuel on it. [Somebody should email the president and get her scholarship and her honors nomination pulled.] I was angry enough that I yanked her curtain open.

Tessa looked at me like I wasn't worth the trouble. "Am I wrong? The account the refundonlys came from is yours.

You wired that man money because you felt guilty, so he'd get out of Easton fast." I gave her a cold smile. "Who told you he left? He's still in Easton.

He's asking a lawyer what it takes to sue somebody over a refundonly." The expression on Tessa's face locked up.

She said something about me being sick in the head and snapped the curtain closed. That afternoon my hall director messaged me to come down to her office.

On her phone she pulled up an email the dean's office had sent her three minutes earlier. "A seller ran you down for money outside the main entrance, and it's gotten loud enough that the president knows.

Take a look at what's landing in his inbox." [President, I hear freeloading off sellers is how you get a scholarship around here.

Is that true?] [People who file refundonlys make the honors list?

If this gets out, what's left of this school's name?] [President, is it too late for me to start filing refundonlys?] [So if you're above freeloading, that's it, no scholarship for you in this lifetime?] I set the phone back down. "Tessa stole that account.

She's the one who filed the refunds. Gwen can testify to it." Chapter 4 My hall director called both Tessa and Gwen down to the office.

Five minutes later the two of them knocked, and they said it at the same time. "You wanted to see us." There was nothing but anger on the hall director's face. "Tessa.

Did you steal Nora's account, buy things online with it, and then file refundonlys once the packages came?" Tessa shot me a look and denied it. "Of course not.

Why would I ever do something like that?" The hall director turned and put the same question to Gwen. "Tessa filed them.

She bought three storage bins off me for eight dollars and filed a refund on those too, plus the earbuds she bought from Nora.

Tessa is a repeat freeloader at this point." Tessa's eyes went red and she started in on us. "That's a lie!

The two of you said my family didn't have any money and you wanted me to have the stuff, that's why you told me to file the refundonlys.

So why are you framing me now?" Gwen pointed right in her face. "What an act! Three storage bins for eight dollars, and you still had to freeload them off me! Trash!

You can't afford to live!" Tessa's mouth pulled down. She stopped talking and started crying.

The hall director's hand came down flat on the desk. "Enough!" She looked over at me. "Nora, the dean's office already checked.

The account those refundonlys came from is registered in your name.

If you can't produce proof that Tessa did it, the office has decided to suspend your scholarship and pull your honors nomination in the meantime." I was angry enough to laugh. "Tessa is freeloading off her own roommates.

There's a witness and there are records. That isn't proof?" The hall director's brows came together. "The two of you tell it two different ways.

How am I supposed to know which one is true and which one is a lie?

If you don't accept it, you can file an appeal with the dean's office." Outside the office Tessa stepped into my path, pleased with herself. "Nora.

Even if I did steal your account and file all of it, you can't prove a thing.

You still take the fall for me." I looked her up and down and scoffed. "So you're scum, and you've got the nerve to act like you're the one in the right?!" That set her off. "You—" She didn't finish.

Her phone rang. Tessa swiped at the screen four or five times and the phone did nothing at all.

Gwen watched it happen and laughed at her. "All that stuff you freeload and you never freeloaded yourself a phone?

Do everybody a favor and throw that brick out." Tessa had told us before that she'd had that phone eight years and the touchscreen barely registered anything anymore.

Tessa glared at her with red eyes. She got out one line, "How can you humiliate me like this," and then she turned and ran.

I watched her go, and I knew exactly what I was going to do. Back at the dorm, Tessa was on the phone with her family, trying to get a new phone