Beware The Sob Story

This is a tale not so much about a roommate, but of a house guest my roommate and I had to endure. It was towards the end of my sophomore year of college and a friend of ours came to us with a sob story about having to move out of her dorm room because she was being stalked by her violent ex-boyfriend. She was scared and needed a place to stay for the last month of the term. As we lived off campus, it was ideal as the ex-boyfriend did not have a car nor did he know where we lived. If we let her move her stuff in and crash on the couch, she promised to pay part of the rent and her split of the utilities. She gave us $100 goodwill money and moved in. Things went along just fine for about two weeks, we had no reason to doubt that she was hiding from someone as she was amazingly careful about her comings and goings. Then my roommate and I came home to find our house guest romantically entwined on the couch with her supposed ex-boyfriend. After he left we had a few questions.
"Oh, it was all a misunderstanding. We're back together now."
"So..... you'll be moving back to your dorm room?"
"Oh no."
"No?"
"No, I'm failing out and no matter how good I do on my finals, it wont help. My brother is coming this weekend to help me move back home."
"'kay."
This sudden turn seemed a bit shady but as long as she was leaving, what did I care? My roommate and I were both going home for the weekend, getting a jump on cramming with fewer distractions. When we left Friday evening, our soon to be departing house guest was preparing a spaghetti dinner for her soon to be arriving brother.
When we returned Sunday evening she was gone as promised, her key left on the kitchen counter. But, oddly, about half her stuff was still there. The dishes she used to make a spaghetti dinner were rinsed but not washed, the plates stacked on top of the pasta bowl in the sink. This didn't break any house rules however, it was agreed upon that if you didn't wash a dish right away, that was ok as long as you rinsed it. Cluttered was ok, filthy was not. Any mysteries were soon out of our minds with impending finals.
We studied like mad, slept very little and survived on caffeine and carry-out for the next two weeks. When the final exam was done, we met up with our circle of friends at a local greasy spoon for celebration, fried food and gossip. Everyone had a small piece of the puzzle and we soon put it together. Apparently, our dear house guest had misled us on a few accounts. We would have discovered the truth sooner if it wasn't for the frantic mostly solo activities that take place during exam time. To begin with, she wasn't fleeing a stalking ex-boyfriend, she had been kicked out of her dorm because of drug possession. And she was hiding from someone though it was not her "ex-boyfriend". She had been in trouble with the local police, also drug related, and had given the police much information about one of the biggest local drug dealers to escape any charges herself. OK.
We had been been lied to, but on the lighter side she was gone and a scary drug dealer didn't show up to curb us. A week later her scary rich lawyer daddy showed up for the rest of her possessions. Not that he moved the stuff himself, he brought helpers for that. He was just there to make sure there was no trouble. He looked at us as we were dangerous criminals instead of arts students whose worst crimes were library fines. It was pretty creepy. At the time, I was too naive to realize that whatever bullshit she had fed us to make us sympathetic to her was nothing compared to what she fed to daddy dear. The only possessions of hers they left behind were her school books. Interesting.
We had two more unpleasant discoveries to make. She had run up $250 on our phone bill talking to the Psychic Network and those nicely rinsed dishes sitting atop the pasta bowl covered a nasty secret.
Exams were over and we begin straitening up and cleaning the apartment. I got around to washing the pre-rinsed dishes in the sink. She had rinsed the plates, but she had not emptied the pasta bowl somewhat sealed beneath them. Rotting meat sauce! Oh joy!
Beware the sob story!