The Arrangement Anthology 1(12)

I smile at the use of my fake last name, and at the way he says he likes my lips. “Likewise.”

I don’t know what I think will happen next, but when Sean turns to leave, my heart falls into my shoes. That’s it? He’s leaving? I don’t get it. The only thing that I can think is that he doesn’t want me. Dejected, I step up onto the sidewalk. I turn away from him and start to head toward my dorm.

“Miss Smith,” he calls after me and I turn around. A gust of wind catches my hair, making the long dark strands streak like inky streamers against the sky. “It’s been a delightful evening.” He grins at me before flipping his visor shut. The engine on his bike roars and he’s gone.

I don’t mean to, but I watch him leave until the taillight is lost in traffic.

What am I doing? I’m infatuated with a guy that wants hookers, rather than women. Women can be hookers too, genius.

I have no idea what I think about anything anymore. My life is changing. I feel the telltale tilt as my world shifts to one side. The question is, what am I going to do about it?





CHAPTER 8





“Technically, you passed,” Mel says to me as we walk toward our next class. She looks sleek, with her dark suit and short skirt. I’d die to have her shoes. They’re so cute.

Mentally, I feel like my brain already vacated my body. I sense it happening—I’m switching to survival mode. Funny, I thought I was already in survival mode, but I wasn’t. Not fully. The thick air, the unblinking eyes, the way the wind stings as it whips by my face. I remember how this feels, how my entire body seems to shut down just to make it to tomorrow. I’m not breathing. My lips are pressed into a thin line and my jaw locks. I feel Mel’s hand on my shoulder, but it doesn’t register beyond that. I hear her voice, but all I can think is that I’m screwed. If I lose my scholarship, I have no home—no future.

I ask the question before I think about it, “Do morals matter?”

Mel raises a perfect eyebrow and glances at me. “Are we having a philosophical discussion here, or are you asking something more specific?”

“What’s their purpose? I always thought morality was there to guide us, to help us. What happens when it doesn’t help? What happens when it’s just in the way?” I don’t wait to hear the answers. I already know what morals are for. I took that class. I know my heart and my mind. I can’t sell my body. It’s fundamentally wrong, but there’s a tiny thought that brushes through my head when I consider it that seems to think surviving is all that matters. There’s part of me that’s Machiavellian and doesn’t care what the cost is to get what I want, but is that so bad? I just want to live. I want the life that I had before. It wasn’t much, but it was mine. Now, it’s gone. I swallow hard and take off running. I run away from Mel and away from class. I run away from everyone and everything.

I need to think. I knew this was happening. For the past few weeks things have gotten harder. My life is slipping away. I can feel it shifting beneath my feet like sand. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of everything. I hear Mel’s voice behind me, but she doesn’t chase after me. No one does. I’m alone. In a city of millions, on a campus of thousands, in a courtyard of hundreds—I’m alone.

Breathless, I clutch my books to my chest and run to the other side of campus, away from the dorms, away from my books and classes. I stop at the base of the tunnel that runs under the highway. I hate going this way. The cement tunnel stretches under the street to keep kids from becoming road-kill, but it creeps me out. I enter the tunnel and walk down the sidewalk, listening to the sound of car engines running and horns blaring.

I turn the corner at the end of the underpass and am back out on the street. I walk a little further and head into a diner, and grab a booth. A waiter brings me a cup of coffee before I open my books and look at the test. A big fat 69 is written in red ink on the cover, a D. This grade will destroy me. It wasn’t that I don’t understand what I read; it was that I didn’t have time to commit the material to memory.

I stare at the paper, at the numbers and the rounded sweep of the prof’s handwriting. I feel like the answers are here. One class stands between me and my future. One class. One grade. One professor.

My fingers twiddle the corner of the page as I stare at it. After all this time, this is what breaks me—a fucking grade. It’s not fair. Life’s not fair. It’s hard, too hard to manage alone. I slip the test out of the way, moving it next to me, and grab onto the coffee cup. I watch people as they walk in and out, wondering if their life is as fucked up as mine. I wonder if things turned out remotely the way they’d planned.