Page 28 of Reversal of Fate

Just like she’d hoped, Professor Seymour had been impressed with her paper on Nanotechnology, which she’d handed in as her final assignment for the class he’d taught during the summer semester. He was more than willing to give her a glowing recommendation for her application to MIT. Knowing that he had taught there a few years earlier before moving to the West coast for family reasons, his words would weigh heavily in her favor. She wanted to hug him for it, but didn’t, and instead thanked him and shook his hand enthusiastically.

The campus bookstore was busy. Everybody was picking up their books for the coming semester. Julie got in line. She didn’t mind the wait. It gave her time to daydream about her night with Carter. She still felt a tingling sensation between her thighs when she thought of his touch.

“Hey, Julie, what a shocker about what happened last night, right?”

Startled, Julie turned her head to the voice. Sandy, one of her roommates, stood next to her.

“Oh, morning, Sandy.” Julie felt flushed, though she knew that Sandy couldn’t possibly know what she’d been interrupting with her words. “You mean at the fraternity party? Yeah, Todd’s an ass. He deserved it.”

Sandy shook her head. “No, not about that, though yeah, he’s a total jerk, and now, finally, everybody knows it. Spread like wildfire last night. But that’s not what I was talking about.”

Julie froze. Had Tonia told the entire house that she’d walked in on her and Carter? Oh God, how embarrassing.

“Haven’t you heard?” Sandy continued. “Somebody broke into the house last night when we were at the party.”

It clicked immediately: the open door when she and Carter had arrived at the house after leaving the party early. She was about to mention it to Sandy, but her roommate continued to talk a mile a minute.

“But we’re gonna get him. It’s on camera.”

“On camera? There’s no security system at the house.”

Sandy leaned in. “You probably don’t know this, but Emily is really particular about her stuff, and she always blames one of us for taking her makeup, or borrowing her clothes, or whatever, you know. Totally paranoid. Turns out whenever she leaves the house, she points her second laptop toward the open door and uses some motion sensor app on it to switch on and record when somebody enters her room, so she can catch one of us in the act. Right? Well, she caught somebody, but it wasn’t one of us. She’s gonna go to the police later.”

Julie’s heart beat faster. Thank God Carter had been with her last night, and had made sure the burglar had left. “Wow. Was anything stolen?”

Sandy shrugged. “Not sure yet. When I left the house, half of them were still sleeping. I guess not everybody has heard about it. You should check your stuff, make sure your computer is still there. Doesn’t look like he took anything from the living room. TV’s still there.”

Julie pointed to her bag, which held her laptop, since she was going straight to the repair shop from the bookstore. “Got my computer, and it didn’t look like anything was disturbed in my room.”

“That’s good.”

“Next,” the clerk suddenly called, and Julie realized it was her turn.

“Talk later, okay,” Julie said to Sandy and went up to the clerk, handing him her order slip.