I walkedto the admin building after leaving Snyder Hall, where, apparently, I now had a second job.
Ten thousand dollars! It was probably the amount that would be stuffed in most of these Bribury students’ stockings next week, but to me it was a fortune.
I started calculating how much it would take for me to get a place here for the summer and take some classes. Maybe Lily would want to stay and room together now that she and Lucas were completely solid. I hadn’t been around them much, but she and Lucas seemed like they would not easily be separated for the summer.
He was an okay guy, and made Lily happy, but she could have done so much better.
Here we were in a sea of future movers and shakers—learning to become that ourselves—and she goes and falls in love with a townie janitor.
Whatever. If she was happy…
I just knew I was done with townies of any kind. Been there, done that. I wanted to belong to the world that these kids came from.
Maybe a little too desperately.
After the first week or so of classes, I had overheard two of the girls calling me a poser. Jane had come to my defense (none of them had seen me), which was kind of unusual because I think Jane had thought that about me herself.
We kind of came to a truce after that, Jane and I. On paper, we were nothing alike—she coming from a very prominent family (sort of), having been raised knowing that she’d be taken care of financially (with a few strings), and being an only child (well, she wasn’t quite, but was raised as one).
But when you scratched the surface, Jane and I had a lot more in common than most would think.
We both had fractious relationships with our fathers (okay, at least she knew who her father was), we both felt out of place at Bribury (though she hid it better than I did), and we both could go toe-to-toe with anyone who wronged one of our own (though Jane would do it with her savage wit and I’d just call upon my Queens-born badass self).
Maybe Jane would want to stay here this summer too and the three of us could save money and find a cheap place off campus together. I knew Jane wanted to go home for the summer about as much as I did.
I checked in with my boss, Mrs. Otterbein, at the office of Administrative Affairs and got my schedule for the coming three weeks.
Score.
While my fellow students would be out binge drinking with their prep school posses, I would be clocking about thirty hours a week for the next three weeks.
I’d be able to buy gifts for the boys and send them home.
The feelings of guilt swamped me, as they did any time I thought of my younger half-siblings.
And, as I did all those other times, I pushed the feelings away, deep down, and thought about something pleasant.
Like ten thousand dollars buying me my freedom. At least for the summer.
When I got back to the dorm, Lily and Jane had already left for break. We’d known we would probably crisscross today and so we’d said our goodbyes last night, drinking from a bottle of champagne that Lily had supplied. (A perk of having an of-age boyfriend.)
We’d even done this silly thing that Lily had suggested—yeah, it wouldn’t have come from Jane or me—where we each wrote down a sentence that started with “This time next year, I will…”
It was kind of hokey, but we couldn’t say no to Lily. She’d said, “No bullshit like ‘I’ll be ten pounds lighter’ or anything. Dig deep, ladies.”
It felt kind of like a natural extension of the paper for Montrose’s class that we’d each written. Who we were today, and I supposed, who we wanted to be in a year.
We’d made jokes about it, but the room had turned quiet as we’d all filled out our paper and sealed them up in individual envelopes, writing our names on the front.
Lily was the keeper of all three and said we’d open them next New Year’s Eve, or as close as possible when we’d all be together.
We’d easily killed the bottle of champagne, then Lily and Jane had gone back to their room to start packing.
I’d seen postings on Instagram about the different parties around campus, and could have gone to one of them, but had stayed in.
Now, as I entered my room, even though I always had my own space, I could feel the emptiness of the suite.
I passed through the bathroom, Lily and Jane’s stuff gone, the vanity looking a bit bereft and bare.
