My Best Friend Made Me Dress In Plain Clothes For The Ball Selection

Clarity, Conflict, and Choosing Freedom

They walked into the union, and I stood there feeling sick. Colin touched my arm gently.

“It’s going to come out eventually,” he said. “You know that, right?”

“I knew; I just wasn’t ready for it yet.” Two days later, I was sitting in my biology lecture, trying to focus on cellular respiration when my phone started buzzing in my bag.

I ignored it at first, but it kept going—buzz after buzz after buzz. I pulled it out under my desk and saw 12 texts from Alexis.

My hands started shaking as I opened them. The first one just said, “What the fuck?”

The second one was a screenshot of an Instagram post from someone at the ball. It was a group photo, and I was visible in the background in my navy dress, Colin’s arm around my waist.

We were both smiling. The photo was tagged with both our names.

The next 10 messages got progressively angrier. She asked why I lied, called me a snake, and said she couldn’t believe I’d betrayed her like this.

The last one just said we needed to talk immediately. I couldn’t focus for the rest of class.

The professor’s voice became background noise while I stared at my phone, watching the messages keep coming. By the time class ended, there were 20 texts.

I walked back to the apartment slowly, taking the long way, knowing what was waiting for me. Alexis was standing in the living room with her arms crossed when I opened the door.

Her face was red and her eyes looked wild. “Why did you lie to me?” She didn’t even say hello.

“You went to the ball. You went with Colin, and you let me think you stayed home feeling sorry for yourself.”

I tried to explain. I told her about finding out she’d texted him from my phone, about fixing things with him, and about being scared of how she’d react.

But she talked over me before I could get three sentences out. “You deliberately humiliated me. You snuck around behind my back and made me look stupid to everyone who knew the real story.”

“Do you know how many people must have seen you there and then watched me talk about how Colin didn’t want you?” “You’re the one who texted him from my phone,” my voice got louder.

“You sabotaged me first!” “Because you stole my moment!” she was yelling now.

“You knew how much that ball meant to me. You knew I’d been planning for it for three years and you just took it!”

“I didn’t take anything. Colin chose me; that’s not something you can steal.” The argument went on for 20 minutes.

She kept saying I’d been plotting against her since the beginning, that I must have contacted Colin beforehand to arrange the whole thing. She called me a snake and a fake friend.

She said I’d been pretending to be supportive while stabbing her in the back. I tried to stay calm, but finally, I lost it.

“You sabotaged me first,” I said again.

“You texted Colin from my phone and told him I didn’t want to go. You deleted the messages so I wouldn’t know, and you’ve been undermining my confidence for three years by calling me the supportive friend type and acting like I should be grateful you even hang out with me.”

Alexis went completely silent for about 10 seconds. She just stared at me.

Then her expression changed into something cold. “You’re delusional if you think Colin actually likes you. He probably felt sorry for the sad girl in plain clothes, or maybe it was a dare: pick the ugliest girl you can find. That’s probably what happened.”

Something inside me broke, but not the way it usually did when she said things like that. This time, instead of hurt, I felt clarity.

I could see the pattern so clearly: years of little comments designed to keep me small, years of positioning herself as the pretty one, the chosen one, while I was supposed to accept being the backup friend. “I’m done,” I said.

“I’m done listening to you tear me down. I’m done pretending this is a normal friendship. You don’t treat people you care about like this.”

She laughed. “You’ll come crawling back. You always do, because without me, you’re nobody.”

I walked to my room and closed the door. I could hear her moving around in the living room, slamming things.

Then my phone started buzzing again. I looked at it and saw she was posting on social media.

I opened Instagram and there it was: a long, detailed thread about how I’d betrayed her by secretly going to the ball after she’d been so gracious about Colin choosing me. She made it sound like she’d been totally supportive and I’d snuck around behind her back for no reason.

She carefully edited out the part where she sabotaged me, making herself look like the victim of my cruel deception. My phone exploded with messages.

Mutual friends were asking what happened, and people were taking sides. Some believed her version; some asked for mine.

I sat on my bed watching the notifications pile up and realized she was forcing my hand. I could either publicly defend myself or let everyone believe I was the villain in her carefully crafted story.

I sat on my bed staring at my phone until 3:00 in the morning. The notifications kept coming in waves, and every time I thought they’d stopped, another round would start.

I opened a blank post and started typing. My hands shook as I tried to find the right words to explain everything without sounding cruel or defensive.

I deleted entire paragraphs and rewrote them. I wanted people to understand what really happened, but I didn’t want to destroy Alexis publicly, even though she’d tried to destroy me.

Around 4:00 a.m., I finally had something that felt honest. I explained how she’d texted Colin from my phone while I was in the shower and deleted the conversation.

I attached screenshots showing the message she’d sent pretending to be me and the timestamp proving I was showering when it was sent. I wrote about how she’d spent three years telling me I was the supportive friend type and not the chosen type.

I kept it factual and tried not to make it sound like I was attacking her. I read it 12 times before finally hitting post at 5:00 in the morning.

Then I turned off my phone and tried to sleep, but my brain wouldn’t shut down. When I woke up three hours later, my phone had exploded with responses.

Some people were shocked about the text message sabotage and said they couldn’t believe Alexis would do something like that. Others commented that I still shouldn’t have lied about going to the ball and that deceiving her made me just as bad.