It’s a cool but quiet mid-afternoon day, and the few people on the street barely spare me a glance as I move to the next item on my list to rebuild my life. For a girl who spent the first twenty-one years of her life having everything done for her, it took an embarrassingly long time to figure out where to start.
At the hospital, I borrowed a piece of paper and a pen from a nurse, and I wrote a list.
Money
Apartment
Clothes & Groceries
Job
Find River
With my first item mentally crossed off, I move on to the next.
“An apartment,” I mutter to myself.
Days flat on my back in the hospital gave me time to plan if nothing else. I’d suspected my parents wouldn’t exactly be open to letting me move back home after I made the Harrington name the talk of the city, but for all the worst reasons.
The local newspaper had a section advertising downtown apartments for rent. After spending an hour trying and failing to figure out how to take a bus to one of the apartment buildings, I start walking and knocking on doors with a 'for rent' sign outside, hoping no one kills me.
The doorman building apartment I view first is perfect.
I moon over its in-unit washer-dryer, the gym in the basement, the smell of clean lemon and pine. The double oven.
I am not a good baker, but I know how to follow instructions, and when I’m baking, my parents usually leave me alone and don’t crowd me with their expectations. Dad prefers to golf, and Mom never enters the kitchen if she can avoid it. Mom thinks food smells belong in the kitchen and not clinging to the silk dresses she likes to wear.
“Two thousand a month.” The woman in the navy pantsuit tells me while I’m eyeing the oven and picturing all the baking I can do in it.
“Two thousand?” I twist to face her, fighting the urge to pull the money from my pocket and double-check the pawnshop owner didn’t accidentally give me the two thousand dollars I need and not the seven hundred I have. “Do you have something in the building that’s a little… well, a littlelessthan two thousand?”
“We have a studio on the fifth floor. Five hundred square meters. That’s fifteen.”
“Fifteen hundred a month?” I clarify.
Her smile is tight, and it’s clear she thinks I’m wasting her time. “Can I ask what your budget is?”
My midi-length polka dot dress made her think I had money. It’s not designer, but it’s good quality. My brown sandalsaredesigner. While my parents and the staff at Haven Academy thought my wavy hair looked unkempt, the girls at Haven saidit looked beachy and cool. I might look like I come from money, but I don’t anymore.
