Dumped As Ugly Now Campus Queen

When my long-distance boyfriend’s cute little gaming sidekick dropped a selfie into our Discord group chat, the entire server lost its mind. In the photo, she had soft eyes, an innocent smile, and the kind of sweet, unthreatening glow that male gamers go crazy for. After that day, Brady drifted away from me. Slow at first, then all at once. Until the night before we were supposed to finally meet in person, when I saw he had linked his profile relationship status with hers. Then came his text: "I’m sorry, Talia. I just don’t think we’re compatible." A few minutes later, my friend sent me a screenshot of what Brady was telling his buddies in their private chat: "She refused to send a single photo for a whole year. She’s definitely a swamp monster. I’m a visual guy, man." "Lola’s the prettiest girl in our major. She’s absolute perfection. Of course I’m picking her." I stared at my phone, the screen casting a pale light over my face. Another notification popped up. It was a link from my friend, followed by a frantic message: "Holy shit, Talia. That candid photo someone took of you during move-in day just went viral." "You’re literally number one on the campus beauty poll right now!" 01 I tapped the link. The photo was a side-profile shot taken secretly while I was carrying a box of dorm supplies across the quad. The comment section below it was spiraling out of control: "Jesus Christ, is she real? She looks like a custom video game character render!" "Those bone structures are insane. She could literally walk down a runway tomorrow. Someone tag her!" "Imagine waking up looking like this. What problems could you possibly have in life?" "What department is she in? I’ll Venmo fifty bucks to anyone who gets me her Instagram." Some bored upperclassmen had even built a mini polling site for the freshman class beauty rankings. I scrolled down to second place and saw Lola. It was the same selfie she’d dropped in the Discord group—wearing a pleated tennis skirt, slinging a designer plush keychain over her shoulder. To give credit where it’s due, she was genuinely cute. Pale skin, petite frame, a textbook soft-girl aesthetic. She had 198 votes. I scrolled back up to the top. First place: my candid move-in photo. Total votes: 766. I stared at the screen for a long beat, then opened my closet and pushed a white silk dress back into the corner. I had bought it specifically for the day I was supposed to meet Brady in person. 02 Brady and I met a year and a half ago. It started in a high-stakes ranked match on League of Legends. I was playing support; he was playing attack-damage carry. After dying three times in a row, we started tearing into each other over open mic. "If you're going to play like an AFK bot, just leave," he had snapped. "My dog could aim better than you!" "If you're going to miss every single skill shot, go scrub a toilet!" I shot back, blood boiling. "You're useless!" We raged at each other until the match ended, then set up a 1v1 custom game to settle it. We went back and forth, trading wins for hours until the sun came up. Somewhere between the trash talk and the adrenaline, an odd kind of mutual respect kicked in. Later, when his usual squad needed a fifth player, he pulled me into his lobby. Whenever I logged on, I’d invite him to duo. Over time, banter turned into something warmer. The day he confessed his feelings, he spent fifty dollars dropping digital gift codes in the server chat, getting everyone to chant: "Say yes! Say yes!" I laughed into my headset and said yes. For the next year, we were inseparable. High school senior year was brutal, but whenever we had a spare hour, we were in a lobby together. At night, I’d pull the blanket over my head and whisper into the phone until my eyes grew heavy. He refused to hang up even when he was exhausted, leaving the call active until my phone was boiling hot against my pillow in the morning. We promised we’d get into the same college in Boston, that we’d finally be together for real. And yet… I launched the game on my laptop. A notification banner flashed across the screen: "[Xyyyy] has broken the Relationship Bond with you." I clicked onto his profile page. Beneath his username, linked in a pink heart icon, was a pastel strawberry bear avatar. Lola. 03 In the beginning, I never imagined Brady would care about someone like Lola. She was just a friend of a friend who got pulled into our five-stack for one game. When the match ended, she typed in the team chat: "The jungler played so well! I’m only two stars away from ranking up to Diamond, can anyone carry me?" Brady had actually messaged me privately to talk trash back then: "Look at her avatar and her handle. Classic pick-me energy." "Babe, don't even reply to her." Lola didn't mind being ignored. A week later, another friend brought her back into our lobby. This time, she turned on her microphone. Her voice was sugary sweet: "You’re so amazing, carry! Total carry!" Brady hadn't responded that time either. I didn't think twice about it. We kept playing our casual games, drifting through the summer after graduation. Until one evening, after a long winning streak, Lola dropped her selfie into the Discord chat. The pleated skirt photo. A minute after posting it, she quickly deleted it. "OMG so sorry! Wrong chat! That was such an ugly photo, please tell me nobody saw it, forget it right now!" The guys in the server immediately started typing: "Whoa, we have a total babe in the server?" "Soft girl alert! I didn't catch it, post it again!" "Hey mini, play a game with me, I’ll boost your rank!" Lola replied: "I don't need you guys to carry me! I have my main carry right here!" She dropped an image—a screenshot of her character standing next to Brady’s in-game avatar. "This is only for cute girls to see, stink boys aren't allowed to look!" The chat blew up with memes and emojis. "I downloaded it already, too late!" "Cute girls in skirts are my weakness!" "More! We need more!" Brady was the only one who didn't say a word. I smiled to myself back then. Of course he was different from the rest of them. 04 Except, starting that night, Brady’s tone shifted. He messaged me less and less. When I called him at night, he’d wrap up the conversation after two minutes. "I’m playing basketball tonight." "Dinner with my guys." "Exhausted, going to sleep early." The excuses piled up. Yet I could clearly see his status showed he was online in game, hours into the midnight line. His match history was hidden. When I asked, he claimed he was just solo-queuing to climb the ladder. I believed him. Until my promo series into the top rank, when Lola ended up in our five-stack again. I locked in my main support champion out of habit, wanting to lane with Brady. Lola suddenly spoke up over the voice channel, her tone small and pleading: "Can I please play support? It's the only role I'm good at. I don't want to drag the team down." I frowned slightly. "Didn't you play mid lane yesterday?" Before Lola could answer, Brady cut in. His voice carried an edge of annoyance I hadn't heard before. "She plays support better than you anyway. Just let her have it. We don't need everyone throwing a fit if we lose." The other teammates chimed in: "Yeah, Lola always plays support." I froze, the headset heavy against my ears. Throughout the entire thirty-minute game, Lola glued herself to Brady’s character, never once moving down to help my lane. After I got ganked for the third time by the enemy team, I tried to recover my farm by taking a jungle creep. Lola wandered over and snagged the last hit right in front of me. My patience snapped. "What are you doing?!" I typed. To my horror, Lola started sobbing directly into her microphone. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I was just trying to help you hit it! I didn't mean to take it!" Then, she disconnected. Brady instantly turned on his mic, his tone harsh. "She didn't do it on purpose, why are you screaming at her?" The other teammates typed into the chat: "It's just a game, man. No need to be so dramatic." One by one, the guys went AFK to message Lola and comfort her. I was left alone in a ranked promo match. Naturally, I lost. Half an hour later, Brady called my phone. I thought he was calling to apologize. Instead, his voice was cold and accusatory: "Was it really necessary to hold such a grudge? Lola's been crying for thirty minutes straight!" "How do you know she’s been crying for thirty minutes?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm. "Have you been on the phone with her this whole time?" Brady let out an impatient sigh. "You made her cry, somebody had to calm her down! Talia, I didn't realize you were this toxic. Lola was right about you—you just can't stand her." We had our worst fight ever that night. It was our first real silent treatment. He didn't reach out to fix it like he used to. Hoping we just needed a cool-off period, I finally took the initiative a week later. I took a screenshot of our broken relationship status in game and sent it to him. "What is this supposed to mean?" The "typing..." indicator appeared at the top of the screen. It lingered, vanished, and reappeared. Finally, a short message came through: "I'm sorry." "Talia, I just don't think we're compatible." Just like that. I got dumped. 05 It was past midnight when I stumbled upon Lola’s public post. It was a photo of two hands intertwined, the backdrop featuring the iconic fairy-tale castle at Disney. The caption read: "Zero distance. Love, finally landed." On the guy's wrist was a black Vacheron Constantin watch—a seventy-thousand-dollar timepiece I had seen Brady wearing in his own photos months ago. My heart stuttered, missing a beat in my chest. A moment later, a friend sent me screenshots from the freshman group chat. I had left the server right after the promo incident, but this friend had stayed and defended me back then. Someone in the server had asked: "Holy crap, Brady, are you and Lola actually together now?" Brady: "Yeah. Met up in person yesterday." Then he started dropping digital cash vouchers into the chat. His family had money, and he was generous when he wanted to flex. He dropped twenty fifty-dollar claims in a row. The group chat exploded: "Bro is legendary! Thanks for the cash!" "Look at them! Brady and Lola look so damn good together. Congrats!" Only my friend typed out a message: YourDadIsTired: "What about Talia? Weren't you two together for over a year?" Brady: "Broke up." YourDadIsTired: "Why? You guys were fine." Brady typed back casually: "I was with her for a year and a half and she never sent me a single photo. She’s obviously a catfish who’d ruin your appetite in real life. I’m a visual guy. I don’t do ugly." Sitting on my bed, I remembered why I had never sent him photos. Back in high school, I used to post pictures online like any other teenager. But every time I did, my inbox flooded with unwanted attention. Guys would hang around my classroom door after school; when pictures circulated online, students from neighboring schools started showing up. My desk was so crammed with love letters and unrequested breakfasts that I could barely fit my textbooks inside. It reached a breaking point when someone stole my photos, created a fake profile, and scammed thousands of dollars out of people. When the victims reported it to the police, the guys didn't even care about getting their money back—they insisted on meeting "me", demanding I go on dates with them to make up for it. The entire experience disgusted me. I deleted my accounts and stopped sharing my face entirely. When I started dating Brady, I wanted to know he liked me for my mind, my personality, my humor—not just a face. So I kept my photos to myself. YourDadIsTired: "She really cared about you, man. You don't think this is going to crush her?" Brady: "Blame her for being ugly. What am I supposed to do?" Others chimed in: "Honestly, the real world is brutal to ugly people. You can't force a guy to date someone who looks like a wreck." "Being ugly isn't a crime, but coming online to catfish guys definitely is." "If it weren't for e-dating, a girl like that probably couldn't even get a text back in real life. How else could she hold onto Brady for a whole year?" Lola added a giggling voice note: "Oh guys, don't be so mean to her! Being ugly isn't her fault, I'm sure she wishes she was pretty too." Brady replied: "Not everyone is as sweet and forgiving as you, Lola. She treated you like garbage, and you're still defending her." Another guy typed: "That's because pretty girls experience sweetness from the world, so they're naturally sweeter! By the way, Lola's already second on the campus beauty poll! That's insane!" "Lola's beauty is unmatched." "Only a top-tier girl like her deserves Brady." "Wait... second place? Who the hell is number one?" Someone dropped the candid photo of me into the chat. "First place is her." The chat went completely silent for a long moment. Then, messages flooded the screen like a broken dam: "Did a professional model just transfer into our school? People actually look like this in real life???" "She's literally on a different dimension compared to everyone else in that frame. No wonder she's number one." "Look at her posture and facial proportions! Is she a print model?" "What major is she in? Is she a freshman? Can we bump into her tomorrow?" The same people who had just been showering Lola with compliments completely forgot she existed. After a long pause, Lola dropped another voice note. Her usual exaggeratedly high-pitched tone sounded distinctly strained this time: "She's so pretty! Her nose job looks so refined, her surgeon must have been amazing." One of her close friends quickly added: "No way a face like that is natural. She must have spent months recovering on an operating table. Unlike our Lola, who's 100% natural." "Whether she's natural or not, we'll see tomorrow. Tomorrow is the freshman general lecture. If she's in our department, she'll be there." "Oh right, didn't Talia say she was in our major too? They're going to see each other in person!" "That's going to be so embarrassing. Imagine being the ugly ex meeting the gorgeous new girlfriend. I'd literally die of shame." The thread ended there. I stared at my phone screen, frozen in place. My mind suddenly drifted back to last winter. My divorced parents had both started new families, leaving me alone in a quiet, cold apartment during the holidays. Brady had gone to Europe with his mother. Calling him late at night, I couldn't stop the tears from falling. He hadn't said much on the phone that night. But the next evening, the massive LED display on the skyscraper nearest my apartment lit up with a custom light show. My name scrolled across the skyline in brilliant colors: "Talia, I love you. Let's stay together forever." Fireworks burst across the dark sky, painting the night with gold. I had stood on my balcony, speechless. Brady's warm laugh had come through the speaker: "Do you like it?" "How did you do that?" I whispered, wiping away my tears. "Just spent some money," he had answered casually. "I can't be there with you tonight, babe, but trust me—once we get into college together, I'm going to be by your side every single day. I'll never leave you. Wait for me." I couldn't reconcile that boy—the one who had poured his heart into making me feel loved—with the person in the group chat tearing me down to make another girl laugh. For a moment, he felt like a complete stranger. My phone buzzed again. YourDadIsTired had sent another private message: "I tried talking to him, Talia. He's not listening." He attached a screenshot of his private log with Brady. YourDadIsTired: "Don't tell me you actually can't see that Lola is a master-class pick-me. Stealing the support role back then was a clear setup to make Talia look bad." Brady: "Of course I know." "So what? She's hot. I like watching the show." So that was it. In his eyes, a pretty face was all that mattered. Everything we had shared over a year and a half meant nothing compared to an aesthetic photo in a group chat. YourDadIsTired sent a final message: "I was just worried you were still hung up on him. He's an idiot, Talia. You deserve way better. Are you really coming to the lecture tomorrow? Honestly, you could just skip it. Don't waste your energy on these losers." A warm feeling spread through my chest. My fingers hovered over the keyboard before typing a single word: "I'm going." Why wouldn't I? I really wanted to see the look on their faces. 06 The next morning, I threw on a fitted white tee, a pair of dark jeans, and grabbed my tote bag. Nothing fancy. Walking across campus toward the main lecture hall, I felt eyes tracking me. Whispers trailed in my wake as people turned their heads. As I reached the back doors of the auditorium, laughter floated out from inside. "So, do you guys think Talia's even going to show her face today?" Through the narrow gap in the door, I saw Brady and Lola sitting together near the front row. Brady had his arm slung casually over the back of Lola’s chair, pulling her half-against his shoulder. He had dyed his hair a striking ash brown and wore a simple black Balenciaga tee. Sharp features, bedroom eyes—the quintessential playboy look. A guy sitting nearby laughed out loud. "What do you think she looks like in real life?" A girl next to him sneered, "She didn't even dare to post a heavily edited picture. She's probably a solid 2 out of 10 that no filter could fix. I can already picture it: two hundred pounds, greasy, covered in acne, hiding behind a screen because nobody looks at her in real life." She pinched her nose dramatically, prompting bursts of laughter from the group. "Imagine how insecure she's going to feel when she sees Lola! Lola is literally everything she wishes she could be." Lola hid a smile behind her hand. "Guys, stop saying that. What if she hears you?" A few seats over, a guy in a dark grey hoodie, his dark hair falling over his forehead, scowled in disgust. "Seriously repulsive," he muttered, packing his notebook and sliding out of the row to sit by himself near the back. It was clear from the shift in atmosphere that he held real standing in their circle; the moment he moved, the group quieted down, looking at each other awkwardly. Brady frowned slightly, about to say something. That was when I pushed the heavy wooden doors open. ... The auditorium went dead quiet. It was as if someone had hit a global mute button. Every eye in the room snapped to the doorway. I heard someone audibly gasp. The guy who had just called me a "greasy two-hundred-pound monster" was looking down at his phone. His friend slammed an elbow into his ribs. "Holy shit, look!" "What—" he grunted impatiently, looking up. The next second, his mind went blank. His phone slipped out of his fingers and clattered onto the desk. The girl who had been making jokes froze mid-sip; her hand jerked, spilling iced coffee all over her skirt. Lola’s sweet smile froze, fading fast into a pale, rigid mask. Brady had been leaning back comfortably, looking bored. The moment his eyes swept across my face, he sat bolt upright, his whole body tense. "Who is that? Is that the girl from the beauty poll?" "She's in our class?! She looks even better than the photo..." "Jesus... is she even real?" I walked down the sloped aisle, passing Brady’s row. Lola’s eyes flashed with defensive hostility. She frantically adjusted her hair, smoothing down her bow-accented polka-dot dress. She had clearly spent hours getting ready—full makeup, styled hair, designer shoes. She looked cute, but for an 8:30 AM lecture, it looked desperately over-engineered. Brady instinctively pulled his arm back from Lola's chair. His eyes lit up as he stared at me, his voice dropping as I drew near. "Hey... there’s an open seat here. You can sit with us." Lola’s face turned completely white. I walked straight past him, not offering a glance, and stopped beside the guy in the grey hoodie at the back. "Hi," I said softly. "Is this seat taken?" He blinked, caught off guard. The tips of his ears flushed a faint pink. "No. Go ahead." As I sat down, I caught Brady’s expression out of the corner of my eye. It was dark, twisted with disbelief and humiliation. Muttered conversations instantly flooded the rows ahead of us: "I thought Lola was pretty, but standing anywhere near an actual goddess, she looks totally average." "Lola's beauty is all heavy makeup and outfit styling. Look at the queen in the back—she's wearing a basic white T-shirt with zero makeup and still obliterates her." "Shh! Lower your voice, she's going to hear you!" Lola’s hands tightened into white-knuckled fists against her desk. Someone near the middle row suddenly spoke up: "Wait, where’s Talia? Did she not show up?" Another guy snickered, "Probably too scared. Even a catfish knows when it's time to hide." "Alright class, quiet down!" The professor walked in, clutching a stack of syllabi. "We're going to take roll before we begin." "Rachel Adams." "Here." "Timothy Ross." "Here." ... "Brady Ellis." "Here." ... "Lola Palmer." "Here!" "Talia Shaw." Half the room leaned back, ready to enjoy the absence of the "ugly ex." I raised my hand cleanly into the air. "Here." Every single head in the auditorium whipped around toward the back row. Brady’s pupils shrank to tiny pinpricks. "Talia?!"