Chapter 1

My college life started with a simple rule from my roommate, Mark.

"We split everything fifty-fifty, Alex. It' s the only fair way."

He said this on the first day, standing in the middle of our cramped dorm room, a space that suddenly felt much smaller. I just nodded. It sounded reasonable. I' m not a confrontational person, and sharing costs seemed like a basic part of being roommates.

I didn't realize his definition of "fair" was a twisted, one-way street designed for his benefit.

The first sign came a week later. I bought a twelve-pack of Dr. Pepper and put it in our shared mini-fridge. I came back from my afternoon class and found two cans missing. Later that evening, I saw Mark drinking a third one.

"Hey Mark," I said, trying to keep my tone light. "Looks like you like the soda."

He wiped his mouth and gave me a wide, friendly smile. "Yeah, man, it' s great. So, there are nine cans left. I figure we can just split the cost of these. Your half is five bucks."

I stopped. I stared at him, trying to process the logic. It felt like my brain was short-circuiting.

"What? I bought the whole pack, Mark. You drank three of them."

"Right," he said, completely serious. "So we' re sharing the rest. We split the cost of what' s left. Fifty-fifty. It' s only fair."

The sheer absurdity of it stunned me into silence for a moment. He wanted me to pay for half of the soda I had already paid for in full.

"No," I said, my voice flat. "That makes no sense. I bought them. You can have some, I don't care, but I'm not paying for them twice."

Mark's friendly expression vanished. It was replaced by a look of deep, personal injury, as if I had just insulted his entire family.

"Wow," he breathed, shaking his head. "I thought you were a reasonable guy, Alex. I' m just trying to be fair here. It' s about the principle of sharing."

The conversation ended there, but it was a declaration of war. A very, very stupid war.

A few days later, the absurdity escalated. I came back to the room to find Mark holding my laptop. It was a brand new MacBook my parents had bought me for graduation. He was turning it over in his hands, examining it with a critical eye.

"What are you doing with my laptop?" I asked, my voice sharper than I intended.

"I was just thinking," he said, setting it down carefully. "This is a really nice machine. Way better than my old one. Since we share a desk, and we both use the space, it' s only fair we split the cost of the main computer we'll be using in here."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was so ridiculous it felt like a scene from a bad comedy.

"Mark, this is my personal laptop. My parents bought it for me. We are not splitting the cost."

"But we share the room, Alex! Everything in the shared space should be shared property. We can AA it. You paid, what, two thousand for this? Just give me a thousand, and we can call it even. I' ll pay you back over time, of course."

He said "AA it" like it was some sacred law of the universe. It was the term he used for splitting costs, a term I was beginning to hate with every fiber of my being.

I walked over, picked up my laptop, and took it to my bed. I turned to face him. I' ve practiced taekwondo since I was a kid, not to fight, but for the discipline. It teaches you control. I was using all of that control right now.

"Mark," I said, my voice dangerously quiet. "You will not touch my laptop again. You will not talk about splitting the cost of my personal property again. Do you understand me?"

He flinched, genuinely surprised by my tone. He saw something in my eyes that finally shut him up. For a moment, anyway. He backed down, muttering about how I was being selfish.

The next battle was fought over toilet paper. Our dorm had a shared bathroom down the hall, but I kept a small supply of better-quality toilet paper in our room for emergencies. One morning, Mark came to me with a completely straight face.

"Hey, I used about a quarter of that toilet paper roll last night. It' s good stuff. The roll costs, what, two dollars? So you owe me fifty cents."

I just stared at him. The sheer, unadulterated nerve was almost impressive. He wanted me to pay him for using the toilet paper I had bought.

"Let me get this straight," I said slowly, making sure I was mapping out the insanity correctly. "I bought the roll. You used some of it. And now you believe I owe you money?"

"Yeah," he said, nodding earnestly. "We' re splitting it. I used my portion. You still have your portion left. It' s only fair you pay me for the part I' m giving you."

"Mark, that's not how it works," I said, my patience worn down to a single, frayed thread. "That's not how any of this works. You don't get to use my things and then charge me for them. The answer is no. The answer will always be no."

I saw the gears turning in his head. He wasn't embarrassed. He was recalibrating, searching for a new angle, a new item, a new twisted piece of logic to justify his next attempt to leech off of me. Living with him wasn't just annoying, it was mentally exhausting. It was like being locked in a room with a broken calculator that constantly spit out the wrong answers and insisted it was right. And I knew, with a sinking feeling in my gut, that this was only the beginning.