The Colleague Who Called Me Sister

My coworker was heading overseas for a vacation and asked me to book her flight. “I’ll transfer you the money in a bit,” she said casually. I booked the ticket. It cost me two thousand dollars. I waited all day. No transfer came through. I nudged her about it. She replied, “I already sent it. Check again.” I checked my Venmo, my PayPal, my bank accounts. I even counted the change in my digital wallet. Nothing. An hour before her flight was scheduled to take off, I canceled the ticket. She called me from the airport, screaming, “Are you insane?!” I replied calmly, “No money, no ticket.” The next day, she blasted me on social media for being heartless. My only response was a single screenshot: the cancellation confirmation next to our chat history.

01 I posted the screenshot—the one showing both the successful ticket cancellation and my unanswered requests for payment—to my own social media feed. I didn’t add a single word of commentary. Afterward, I placed my phone face down on the desk, trying to detach myself from the whole messy affair. But the quiet didn’t last long. My phone began to vibrate violently, like a bomb about to detonate. I knew what had happened. Someone had dropped the screenshot into our 300-person company-wide group chat. Sure enough, when I tapped the blinking icon, the message count was already at 99+. “Whoa, is Mindy really that savage?” “Two thousand dollars is no small amount. I’d have canceled it too.” “Seriously, what’s wrong with Phoebe? Saying she paid when she didn’t? Is she playing people for fools?” The support lasted for all of three messages before the tide turned. A woman named Sienna, a core member of Phoebe’s office clique, fired the first shot. “Mindy, aren’t you overreacting a little? So Phoebe was a bit late with the money. For two grand, you’re just going to leave her stranded at the airport? You’ve ruined her entire vacation!” Another one quickly followed. “Exactly! Phoebe is in tears. She said the signal at the airport was terrible and the transfer was delayed. Couldn’t you have just waited a little longer?” And then, the main actress made her entrance. A sixty-second voice memo popped up. I pressed play, and Phoebe’s choked, tear-filled voice filled the air. “Mindy… I really… I really did send it… I was looking for a signal for ages, the Wi-Fi was just so bad… I tried calling you but you didn’t pick up… How could you… how could you just cancel the ticket… sob…” She wailed as if she’d suffered the world’s greatest injustice. She followed up with a few more fragmented voice notes, each one perfectly crafted to fit her “innocent victim” narrative. “I just assumed you’d received it… I trusted you so much…” “Did you do this on purpose… were you just waiting to see me humiliated…” “I’m all alone at the airport now, my luggage is already checked in, what am I supposed to do…” The group chat began to waver. Even Mark, a colleague I was usually on good terms with, sent a message: “Mindy, I think you went a bit too far this time. Phoebe’s all by herself at the airport, imagine how helpless she must feel.” Mark’s words felt like an icy hand squeezing my heart. See? This is the corporate world. No one cares about the truth. They only care about who seems more pitiful. Just then, a red exclamation point appeared on my screen. It was from my direct supervisor, Sarah, the administrative manager. “This is a work channel. Keep personal matters out of it!” The moment her profile picture appeared, the noisy chat fell silent. But before I could even breathe a sigh of relief, a private message from Sarah popped up. “Mindy, come to my office.” Her tone was cold, sharp, and displeased. I took a deep breath, pushed back my chair, and stood up. When I walked into her office, she was leaning back in her chair, arms crossed, her eyes a mixture of judgment and disapproval. “Mindy, how long have you been with the company?” she asked. “A year and a half, Sarah.” “A year and a half, and still so impulsive.” Her fingertips tapped lightly on the desk, each tap a hammer blow to my nerves. “I know you feel wronged, but you need to be more tactful. Phoebe was being immature by escalating this, but when you followed suit, it became your problem too.” “Is it worth destroying a professional relationship over a few thousand dollars? How are you supposed to work with her now? What do you think this makes the rest of the department think of you?” Her words were like a thousand tiny cuts, shredding my already frayed nerves. Wronged? No. What I felt was a bone-deep chill and a profound sense of disgust. I listened to her “rules for corporate survival” in silence, not uttering a single word of protest. Only when she said, “Alright, go back to your desk and think about this,” did I turn and leave. Back at my desk, my phone screen was lit up with a private message from Phoebe. “Mindy, I know you didn’t do it on purpose. I don’t blame you. We’re still best friends.” It was followed by a “hugging” emoji. Reading those words, a wave of nausea churned in my stomach. I laughed, my shoulders shaking. Best friends? Fine. Let’s make this storm a hurricane.

02 Phoebe didn’t come to work the next day. But her battle had just begun, and her chosen arena was social media. It was a meticulously crafted, thousand-word essay, accompanied by a perfectly lit selfie of her at the airport, a single tear clinging to her eyelash, looking utterly heartbroken. The title: “To Mindy, the Sister I Once Trusted Most.” She used flowery, dramatic language to recount our “deeply moving” friendship. She wrote about how, when I was a new hire, she had “held my hand” and taught me the ropes. In reality, she had dumped all her menial tasks on me while she went for coffee and chatted with other colleagues. She wrote about how she had “stood up for me” when I was criticized by our boss. In reality, she had stolen credit for my project, and when a flaw was discovered, she had thrown me under the bus to take the blame. In her version of events, black was white and white was black. The ticket incident was framed as “a premeditated and malicious act of revenge, born from her jealousy of my overseas vacation.” She tearfully condemned my cold-hearted cruelty. At the end of her post, she casually mentioned, “I just can’t believe our friendship isn’t even worth two thousand dollars. That amount is nothing to me. What truly hurt me was your cold, unfeeling heart.” To support her “I’m too rich to care about the money” persona, she included a few old photos of herself wearing knock-off luxury bracelets and handbags. The post exploded across our shared social circles. The comments were a one-sided massacre. “Mindy is disgusting. So jealous.” “You never really know a person. Poor Phoebe.” “Stay away from people like that. You never know when they’ll stab you in the back.” I even saw that Mark, my “friend,” had liked the post. That tiny red heart was like a white-hot needle piercing my eye. Rage, hot as lava, churned in my chest, threatening to burn away my reason. I gripped my phone, my knuckles white with tension. Calm down. Mindy, you have to stay calm. Anger wouldn’t solve anything. It would just turn me into a raving lunatic, just like her. I forced myself to take deep, slow breaths, pushing the searing fury back down. Then, I started scrolling through two years of my chat history with Phoebe. I opened the file archive on my work computer. One by one, the incidents came back to me. All the moments I had dismissed, all the times I had told myself, “It’s not worth making a fuss over,” were now laid bare before me. And then I found it. The presentation for that major client, the one that won Phoebe the “Employee of the Quarter” award. I checked the file properties. Author: Mindy. Creation time: 3:15 AM. I found the chat log where I sent her the source file. The timestamp was 4:00 AM. My message: “Phoebe, take a look and see if anything else needs changing.” Her reply: “You’re the best, Mindy! It’s perfect! Thanks for your hard work!” My fingertip traced the cold screen, and a cold sense of satisfaction bloomed in my chest. So you like to act, do you, Phoebe? Fine. I’ll build you a bigger stage. Without a word to anyone, I saved these screenshots, along with records of every other time she had taken advantage of me, into a new folder on my desktop. I named the folder: “Judgment.”

03 The moment I stepped into the office the next day, I could feel the suffocating weight of my isolation. The air itself felt thick. Colleagues were clustered in small groups, their conversations halting the second I appeared. They stared at me with a strange mix of contempt and pity. Their whispers buzzed around me like flies. Phoebe was there. She was wearing a new dress and her makeup was flawless. Her eyes were a little puffy, but her face held the smug look of a victor. She didn’t confront me directly. As she passed my desk, she said to the person next to her, just loud enough for me to hear, “Some people just can’t stand to see others happy.” I ignored her, put on my headphones, and started to work. Around ten o’clock, a commotion erupted outside. A flashy red Porsche had pulled up in front of the building, and a man got out. He was dressed in loud, logo-covered streetwear, his hair slicked back with too much gel. He looked like your typical trust-fund kid, hollowed out by booze and late nights. He stormed into our office, with a demure Phoebe trailing behind him like a loyal puppy. “Who’s Mindy?” the man bellowed, his voice dripping with arrogance. Every head in the office turned toward me. He strode over to my desk and pointed a finger in my face, his spittle flying. “You’re Mindy? Some broke, gold-digging nobody, and you dare to bully my Phoebe? What, are you just jealous that she gets to travel the world while you’re stuck here being a corporate slave?” His voice was shrill, each word an insult. The office was dead silent. Everyone had become an audience to this drama. I even saw Mark in the corner, discreetly filming the scene with his phone. The man, seeing I wasn’t reacting, pulled a thick wad of cash from his designer wallet—maybe a few hundred dollars—and threw it contemptuously onto my desk. The bills scattered, each one a mocking sneer. “Take it. That’s for the ticket, and for your troubles. Now, apologize to Phoebe. Immediately.” He ordered me around as if he were bestowing upon me a great favor. A current of pure humiliation shot through me. My body began to tremble, not from fear, but from rage. And in that moment, I smiled. I slowly rose from my chair, my gaze traveling past him to the woman trying to hide behind him. Then, I spoke, my voice low but clear enough to carry across the entire office. “First, she owes me two thousand dollars, not a few hundred.” “Second, I don’t want your dirty money.” “And third, tell her—Phoebe—to talk to me herself.” With that, I bent down and picked up the scattered bills, one by one. Then, I walked calmly to the window. As everyone watched in stunned silence, I pushed it open and flung my arm forward.