Swish

.32

If the gossip about the truth of my father's involvement in my mother's death wasn't enough to keep my name in everyone's mouths, word about my 'psychotic break' and breaking up with Eli was more than enough to keep me on everyone's minds.

It wasn't until later in the week that I realized my birthday was coming up, and I had absolutely no one to celebrate it with.

My grandmother had let me stay in her hotel suite for the entire week even though she had long since returned to New Jersey, and it was nice being secluded and only having to face certain people during the school or work day.

It was harder than I thought to avoid Eli, but a few desperate pleas with Chuck and he had me doing inventory in the back as well as billing and answering phones in his back office until close, which was something that I couldn't thank him enough for.

With a new phone number that wasn't given to him, Eli had no real way of contacting me, nor did my father, cousin or aunt, but I made sure to log into my social media accounts and stay in touch with my grandmother as she was one of the only people who had access to my new number.

And then the late notice came in my P.O. Box from the University. It had originally been addressed to my father's home, but with the multiple 'return to sender' notices stamped on the envelope, I realized that my father had effectively kicked me out of the house, if it wasn't obvious already.

I had no money to pay for my dorm, and the bill for next semester and the classes I'd already picked hadn't been paid, nor would it ever be paid.

I needed to face facts. I couldn't continue to go to school somewhere that I not only wasn't wanted, but also couldn't afford. I needed a new plan. Scrap the showcase, scrap the drama department and all my 'friends' there, scrap the new job that I actually enjoyed until my ex whatever he was ruined it for me. Scrap the entire fucking thing.

Maybe it was time for a fresh start.

***

"Do you have everything, love?"

"Yes, and thank you for hiring this moving truck, there's no way we would've been able to fly to New Jersey with all this."

My grandmother's features softened as I took one last wistful glance back towards the dorms. Hazel and Bea were both attending the second round of callbacks for the showcase, and Eli was most definitely still in practice if the time on my phone was correct. We were home free...

...until a familiar figure came strolling in between the alleyway that split the buildings up by boys and girls. A rather tall figure, though hunched over and dragging a limp foot behind him slowly, I wasn't sure what exactly I was seeing.

A grey hoodie covering his face, I knew it was Eli before he was even twenty feet in front of me, then ten. Then, as he grew closer to the dorm's entrance and I only stood there as if I were staring at a ghost, he finally spotted me.

"V?"

He looked as if he'd seen a ghost, too. Well...maybe he had.

After everything had gone down, I resigned myself to school, work, hotel, rinse and repeat. Of course, I'd completed the usual monotonous hygienic tasks, but eating? That had been a harder feat.

A rice cake for breakfast, air for lunch and popcorn for dinner...nothing but water and a few peanuts the next day and so on and so forth until I was sure I resembled a walking skeleton with bags under my eyes that would pass as a floatation device.

And then he noticed the bags dangling from my hands.

"Are you--" he cleared his throat, like he was drowning on gravel. He cast his eyes downward, still not meeting my own head on. I agonized over the fact that he'd been trying to reach me all week, even going so far as to ask Hazel and Bea about me, though both told me in our shared classes that they didn't tell him anything. I didn't even respond to them.