I came home yesterday and found a note from Danielle with a USB stick attached. Her working title was on the drive, a list of ebooks I should use, and the same demand she’d shouted at my door weeks ago while drunk: write my thesis, all fifty pages of it, or I’ll tell everyone about what you did. I thought she was joking when she first showed up drunk at my place. I figured she was just wasted and looking for a fight.
But this note was sober. The USB was proof she was serious. Danielle and I used to be friends. We started college together, both of us working toward our bachelor’s degrees.
But somewhere along the way she turned into someone who screamed at me like I owed her something. Partying with her meant walking on eggshells. After two years of that, I stopped spending time with her around Christmas. We hadn’t talked in months, but she still knew things about me.
Things that could ruin my life. I wanted to throw the whole thing in the trash and pretend she never came by. But she has proof. She knows about the email I sent her a while back.
The one with the exam sheets attached. Here’s what happened, and I know I look like an idiot saying this out loud. I met a guy named Tom at the place where I work part-time. He asked me out.
We went on three dates. He told me he was a researcher, which I now realize was his way of saying professor without scaring me off. He thought I worked at my job full-time. I never corrected him.
The whole thing was complicated. After our third date, I slept over. In the morning, while he was out getting breakfast, I saw some papers on his desk. They were exam sheets, one with an answer key, some already graded student tests.
He was a professor. He was correcting exams. I panicked and texted a friend. She didn’t believe me.
I took a picture of the answer key and emailed it to four friends, including Danielle, with a stupid caption like “this is how you get through college. ” I thought it was funny. Now I want to disappear every time I think about it. Tom came back and I told him I had classes.
He looked shocked. I said I only worked part-time and that I was also a student. He just said goodbye. I never saw or heard from him again.
Danielle’s threat is that she’ll go to the police and the university with that email as proof that I slept with a professor and stole exam answers. But I’ve been reading everything I can find online, and most people seem to think she has nothing. The IP address stuff doesn’t work the way I thought it did. The email provider wouldn’t just hand that data over without a warrant.
And the professor wasn’t even in my department. He taught a completely different course. There was no cheating, no stolen exam for my own benefit. Just a stupid picture I sent as a joke.
Still, her note accused me by name with the course and the date. She knows how to make it sound damning. I spoke to one friend who told me to write the thesis and write it badly. I almost considered it.
But blackmail is illegal too, and she was asking me to commit academic fraud. Two wrongs don’t make a right. And even if I did write it, there’s no guarantee she’d leave me alone afterward. I called the other three friends who got that email.
They all deleted it. None of them are in contact with Danielle. So really, the only person holding this over my head is her. I thought about ignoring her, but I also thought about what it would mean if she actually went to the school.
Even without evidence, a rumor about a professor sleeping with a student could start an investigation. I didn’t want Tom dragged into this. He’s a genuinely nice guy. I was still hoping I could contact him again after I finished my degree.
So I made a decision. I wasn’t going to write her thesis, and I wasn’t going to let her ruin my life over a mistake. I got the address of Danielle’s thesis adviser and went to see him. I told him I was being blackmailed by Danielle to write her thesis because of a short relationship with a professor from another department.
He said something that stopped me cold. “That’s interesting, because she already missed the first deadline. ”
He didn’t even seem surprised. Then he took me to the department head and explained the situation.
He told the department head that Danielle had tried to get another student to write her thesis for her. The department head asked me why she would think I’d do that, and I told him the truth about the blackmail. He asked who the professor was. I said I wasn’t comfortable telling him, but that he was from another department entirely.
They took the USB stick as evidence. I left it with them. I asked if I should go to the police. They said no, that they would take matters into their own hands.
I shouldn’t worry about it anymore. After I left their office, I walked to Tom’s office. I was nervous, but I felt like he deserved to know. If Danielle said anything crazy, I wanted him to be prepared.
He was surprised to see me. I told him the whole story, leaving out the part about the pictures. He took it better than I expected. He told me he was sorry he’d never called again.
When I told him I was a student, he panicked. He deleted our texts and my number. Then he talked to his own head of department, who told him it wasn’t a big deal. But by then he’d already deleted my number.
I asked if he wanted it again. He said he has a girlfriend now. It was a little embarrassing, so I laughed it off. I blocked Danielle.
I never replied to her note, never acknowledged her blackmail. The school has her USB, and she’s already missed her deadline. I don’t know what happened to her after that, whether they kicked her out or just let her fail, but it’s not my problem anymore. I spent weeks terrified that I’d lose my degree, possibly face the police, over one stupid joke.
Turns out, the only person who was ever in real trouble was Danielle.
