This Time, I Let My Roommate Ruin Herself

Three in the morning, and my roommate was up again, washing her hair, showering, putting on a full face of makeup.

In my last life, I heard all that and decided to speak up on behalf of the whole suite.

She led the bullying that came after, and the two girls I'd stuck my neck out for stood right there and pretended not to see.

I was worn down until I couldn't think straight, and I fell down a stairwell and broke my neck.

This time, when I opened my eyes, I didn't get up, and I didn't say a word to stop her.

I just felt around for the noisecanceling headphones by my bed, put them on, and went back to sleep. Chapter 1 I slept like a rock.

When I opened my eyes, the other two roommates were watching me with the most wounded looks on their faces. "Jordyn, you sleep so well.

Not even that woke you." Erica was gone, so the two of them started complaining to me at once, talking over each other.

I smiled and slipped my headphones down under the covers without missing a beat. I've been a light sleeper my whole life.

My parents spent a fortune having this pair of noisecanceling headphones custom made for me. With them on, the world could blow up and I wouldn't hear it.

In my last life I was afraid of oversleeping, so I didn't wear them.

Who could have guessed I'd end up with a roommate that dedicated, up at three every single morning to do her makeup? I sighed and reached for the headphones.

Destiny, in the bed next to mine, gave me a pitiful look. "Jordy, could you say something to Erica?

Ask her to keep it down?" The first day we met, I could already tell the other two were shy. They turned red just getting a sentence out.

So my sense of justice went through the roof, and I stuck my neck out. I was the one who ended up paying for it.

In my last life, after Erica's makeup got confiscated, she sat in the room with a face like a storm and asked who had gone to the residence director. They were timid.

They didn't dare admit they'd gone to the residence director with me, and I could understand that. But then they looked straight past the fact that I was being bullied.

And when the dean of students pulled them out into the hall and asked what had really happened, they answered every question with "I don't know." Destiny went further.

With Erica's eyes on her, she looked the dean in the face and said none of it had happened.

The dean believed her, then turned around and told me to settle down and take a good hard look at what I was doing to bring this on myself. This time… "Jordy.

Jordy…" Destiny called to me softly. I didn't move a muscle. And since they didn't dare cross Erica either, they lay there with their eyes open until the sun came up.

All four of us were new Army ROTC cadets. First day of orientation training, six o'clock sharp, the whistle for formation went off across the training field.

My other two roommates were all sighs and groans. Erica had been working on her face from three until six. The base layer alone took an hour, filling in every last pore.

On the way to the field she walked along sizing up every girl who passed us. "Tsk, tsk, tsk. So tacky," she murmured, beaming with confidence. I'd planned to walk over alone.

Destiny and Heidi caught me by the arms instead, one on each side. "Erica is unbelievable!" "Right?

Who does she think she is, getting up that early every day to do her face." "And it doesn't even look good.

She looks like a ghost." Chapter 2 I listened to them complain, slid my hand into my pocket, and quietly started the voice recorder on my phone.

In my last life I'd been standing just outside the door when I heard Destiny say to Erica, "Rica, it was Jordyn.

She's jealous that you're pretty, so she went and reported you to the residence director." Heidi backed her up. "Right, right.

We don't have a problem with you at all." The truth was that they had a much bigger problem with Erica than I did. I'd already worked it out with my family.

I was going to apply to live off campus, and I was only waiting for housing to approve it. And I had the headphones. But Destiny's and Heidi's families didn't have money.

Their parents were never going to agree to let them move out. So they begged me, and I went soft, and I spoke up for them again and again, and reminded Erica to keep it down.

By the time the person handling my file in the housing office came back from vacation and said my application was going through, I was already dead.

This time, no matter how many hints Destiny and Heidi dropped from the sidelines, I acted like I couldn't hear a thing.

That said, if they turned it around on me the way they had last time and pinned the whole thing on me, I wouldn't mind letting Erica hear how they'd been complaining. "That's formation.

I'm heading over." I waved them off and jogged ahead to the line. Erica caused a stir, exactly as expected.

One guy couldn't tell she was wearing makeup at all. "Erica, your skin is amazing.

What do you use on it?" Erica ducked her head, shy. "Aw, I don't even wash my face, actually." Another guy laughed. "Is this what natural beauty looks like?" Destiny muttered beside me, "These guys are unreal.

Her mouth is that red and they still can't see it." Then the drill sergeant arrived. The first thing he did was announce that no one was to wear makeup during training.

He said it looking straight at Erica. "Cadet.

Are you wearing makeup?" Erica clapped a hand over her mouth, astonished. "Sergeant, I'm not wearing any makeup." While she said it she pulled out a tissue and wiped it down her face.

The tissue came away clean. Nothing on it at all. He looked doubtful, but he let it go. I couldn't help smiling. Poor man.

He had no idea she'd emptied an entire bottle of setting spray that morning. "People are always telling me I look like I have makeup on. Now even the sergeant got it wrong.

It's such a pain, really." She said it in that soft, syrupy little voice of hers. Every girl within earshot was looking at her differently now.

While they had their heads down, whispering, I stood there staring at the training field I knew so well. I could still remember it.

Last time, after Erica's makeup was confiscated, she came to the field the next day with a bare face. She wore a mask and said she had a cold. The sergeant wouldn't allow it.

He walked over and took the mask off her. The second it came off, he stopped short. "Cadet, you're not in my platoon, are you?" Laughter went up around us. Erica cried.

She put every bit of the blame on me. During the run, she stuck her leg out and tripped me. I went down hard and left a streak of blood on the ground.

I fell that badly, and the two roommates I was closest to looked right past it. They didn't even reach down to help me up. They just slipped away.

I got up off the ground slowly, and slowly put my hand to my face, and my hand came away covered in blood. It was the sergeant who came running.

He carried me on his back to the campus health center. That's where the rumors about me and the drill sergeant came from. Day one was standing at attention and marching drill.

Chapter 3 Out under the sun, Erica's setting spray started to give. White sweat ran down her cheeks and dripped onto her collar.

The sergeant frowned as he passed her. "Why is somebody's sweat that color?" But he didn't push her on it.

He only told us that if we held for one more minute without anybody moving, we could go rest in the shade. The cadets' eyes lit up.

They locked into position and waited for the break. Only Erica had her eyes darting around, plotting something I couldn't see.

Then she yelped. "Whoops!" And fell into the guy on her right. He didn't catch her. She hit him hard enough that he went over sideways himself.

So a platoon that had been standing in perfect lines went down like dominoes, one after another after another. In a matter of seconds, only a scattered few were still on their feet.

The sergeant's face turned thunderous. The lieutenant colonel saw the whole thing and got even angrier, and our entire platoon had to stay through lunch for extra PT.

Erica had wanted to look delicate. Instead she had every eye in the platoon on her, and not one of them was friendly.

She kept pinching her voice thin and saying she wasn't feeling well, and nobody believed a word of it anymore. "You're not feeling well?

I'm not feeling well either!" the guy beside her snapped. Then somebody pointed at his uniform. "Trevor, why is there a face on your shirt?" A face.

He nearly jumped out of his skin and threw his hand up. "Sergeant! It's haunted!" The girls started laughing under their breath.

The sergeant looked at the liquid foundation printed on the guy's shirt, then looked at Erica.

His jaw tightened. "I thought you said you weren't wearing makeup." Erica turned her head away and played dumb. "Sergeant, I'm not wearing makeup." "Then what is that?" "That's… probably the shape this cadet's sweat dried in." I think the sergeant had gone numb.

All he could do was warn her again. "What you do on your own time is not my business, but this is training." "If the colonel catches you, you get a written reprimand and the whole platoon loses its Honor Cadet recognition." But no matter what he said, Erica kept saying she wasn't wearing makeup.

And when he pushed hard enough, she started acting wounded. There was nothing left for him to do. He walked off with one line. "That's on you." And he left her alone after that.

Destiny and Heidi were actually excited about it. The sergeant had warned her, so surely she'd stop wearing makeup. But the next day, Erica got up even earlier.

When the banging and clattering started, it was only two thirty. They were past crying. They came to me again. "Jordy. Jordy. Please, just say something to Erica.

We really don't dare…" What they got back was the sound of my breathing, slow and even. I couldn't be woken.

So there was nothing they could do but look at each other. "You say something," Destiny said.

Heidi shook her head, her voice barely audible. "I can't…" So Destiny spent half an hour talking herself into it, and when Erica came out of the shower, Destiny worked up the nerve. "Um… Rica." "Hm?" "It's only three…" "Mhm, I know." "It's three, and we're all trying to sleep." "Okay, so sleep." "Could you, could you keep it down a little?

And your light is really bright.

Would you mind turning it down?" Before she could finish, Erica slammed her comb onto the desk. "If I turn the light down, how am I supposed to do my makeup?" Chapter 4 "I'm already doing you a favor by not turning the overhead on." "But the sergeant said no makeup." Erica rolled her eyes. "He can't even tell." Destiny had gotten nowhere, and she looked over at Heidi, swallowing it.

Heidi quietly started a group chat and posted in it. [Maybe we should just go to the residence director.] By the time I woke up, there were ninetynine messages in that chat.

They had it all worked out.

They'd go to the residence director and have her talk to Erica. "Come on, Jordy." They had hold of me, trying to bring me along. "I never said I was going." "What?

Aren't we in this together?" Destiny and Heidi looked ready to cry. They each took an arm and tried to haul me up. "I'm taking a nap at lunch.

I don't have time." "You want to go to the director, go by yourselves." I shook their hands off and climbed into bed. Without me they didn't dare go.

They hovered by the door, glancing back at me every so often. "What if… what if we go this afternoon?" They still wanted to pull me in with them.

I smiled. "Why does anybody have to go to the director?" "Erica is unbearably loud," Destiny said.

I scratched my head, all innocence. "I've been sleeping fine, though." The words were barely out of my mouth when the door slammed open. "Destiny!

You're going to the residence director?" Erica had come back, of all moments. She'd found out Destiny was going to the director, and she was staring at her, furious.

Destiny panicked on the spot and shrank into herself. "I'm not, it was Jordyn, she wanted to—" "I heard all of it. Jordyn over there says she sleeps just fine.

So it's only you making a thing of it?" Destiny looked to Heidi for help, and Heidi did exactly what she'd done in my last life.

She put her headphones on and pretended to play a game. Destiny had nothing left. She dropped her head and begged. "Rica, I'm sorry…" Tsk. Picks on whoever won't fight back.

I pulled my bed curtain shut, put my earplugs in, and shut the world out. What I hadn't expected was that Erica wouldn't be the one who turned on me. Destiny got there first.

Fifth day of training.

Destiny looked at me with two black circles under her eyes. "I figured out why you can sleep." She had a nasty little smile on her face, and I scrambled up onto my bed and found my headphones dug out and snapped in two. "You did this?" "Jordy, the first day we met, didn't we say we'd be good friends?" "Why should Heidi and I be tortured all night while you sleep like a baby?" "Destiny, you're insane.

Do you have any idea what those cost?" My eyes were burning and my hands were shaking as I photographed the evidence.

Destiny grabbed my hand. "Jordy, now we're on the same side." "If we go to the residence director together, she'll have to do something about it." I looked at her face, and all at once I smiled. "Sure." We went to the residence director.

They nudged me and left the talking to me. So I talked. "Ma'am, Destiny deliberately destroyed my noisecanceling headphones." "They're five thousand dollars.

That's felony territory