CHAPTER ONE
Jesus, I thought. How much money is that?
I held an envelope bulging with hundreds, fifties, and twenties. It was thick. Too thick to close. The flap strained to meet the seal.
I’d found it under the mattress of the bed in my dorm room.
On the front, written in sparkly pink ink: Prof. X, #3.
I pulled the wad of cash out of the envelope and began to count it.
I counted the hundreds.
Nine.
Nine hundred dollars.
I moved onto the fifties. Six hundred more.
So far… Fifteen hundred dollars.
I moved on to the twenties.
I lost count.
I started over.
Twenty. Forty. Sixty. A hundred. Twenty. Forty. Sixty. A hundred. Twenty. Fort—
“Why is this door unlocked?” interrupted a female voice. An annoyed female voice, high pitched and sort of preppy sounding.
Startled, I thrust the money back in the envelope and shoved it back under the mattress.
The door to my dorm room opened. The dorms here were set up so that there were two alcoves at the far end of the room, a partition wall between them. The beds went sideways, spanning from the partition to the far walls of the room.
My heart pounded, and I stepped out around the partition. “Um… hello?”
When I’d moved my stuff in earlier that morning along with my dad and sister, I’d noticed that the other side of the room was occupied. There were movie posters stuck to the wall. The Hunger Games. Breaking Dawn. Les Miserables. The bedspread was fuzzy and purple, but the bed hadn’t been made. I’d seen a hint of rumpled flannel sheets. A few shimmering skirts or tops were flung over the door of the open wardrobe. As dorm rooms went, there hadn’t been enough there for me to really gauge the personality of my roommate, but she at least hadn’t seemed super strange or anything.
A girl stood in the doorway. She was pretty. Blonde hair in a ponytail. A pug nose.
Which she was wrinkling at me. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“Um, I’m Molly,” I said. “I guess we’re, um, roommates?”
“What?” She looked me up and down, still making a face like she smelled something bad. “No fucking way. They can’t move someone in here already.”
I gulped. Great. She hated me. “Sorry,” I said. “They, um, said that the dorms are overcrowded. The other girl who went through orientation with me has to live in a study lounge with four other girls. They have bunk beds in there and stuff. It looks packed, but they have a sink and full-sized refrigerator and a stove and stuff. I guess it’s supposed to be for the whole wing to share, but they don’t have space for all the students.”
Shut up, Molly, I told myself. I was babbling because I was nervous. I really didn’t want to live with a girl that hated me.
My new roommate narrowed her eyes. “You can’t be my roommate. I already have a roommate.”
“Uh… they said she left,” I said.
“Well, that’s what Cori said, and that’s what I told them, but I didn’t think they believed me.” She shook her head. “I was supposed to have a single.”
I bit my lip. “Sorry. Like I said, I think the dorms are really crowded.”
“Right. Really crowded.” She mocked me, raising the pitch of her voice.
I looked down at my shoes. “Look, I didn’t think you were coming until the weekend. They said that only new students were moving in today.”
“Oh, I’ve been here over winter break,” she said. “Paid the extra and everything.”
“I’m quiet.” I turned and walked back to my bed, which I’d been attempting to put sheets on. “You won’t even know I’m here.”
“Sure I won’t,” she said sarcastically. She opened the door again. I heard her dialing her phone. Then her voice, shrill. “Forget coming over here, Parker. You’re not going to believe this…. No. I have a fucking roommate…. I don’t fucking know why. She’s just here.” The door slammed.
I winced.
I waited for a few minutes until I was sure she was gone.
Then I dug the envelope of money back out. I resumed counting it.
When I was done, I counted it again.
Two thousand dollars in cash.
What the hell was that much money doing under my mattress?
* * *
“Sorry,” said my roommate. She was standing back in the doorway to the room. An hour or two had passed. I’d stashed the money in the top drawer of my desk underneath my notebooks. I didn’t know why it was there or what I was going to do about it. “You must think I’m a real bitch.”
“I didn’t think that,” I said.
“It’s okay. I was horrible. I’m really sorry.” She strode across the room and offered me her hand. “Can we start over? I’m Jill Rogers.”