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Chapter 13

Kaden had been gone for two days. But in the morning I had seen him from a distance on his way to a seminar on campus.

“Did you see? The grades from the lit exam are in,” said Grace, who sat next to me in the Film and TV class. “I barely passed.” She wiped her forehead and grinned at us. Everyone took out their cell phones and logged into the university network.

Dawn shouted and hopped up and down beside me. “Thank God. I made it!”

I stared at my phone screen as the site loaded. Madison, sitting next to Grace, slumped down with relief. “Me, too.”

Scott groaned. “Failed.”

“Oh no, Scott.” Dawn patted his arm. “Don’t worry about it. You have two more chances.”

He stretched out his arms and laid his head on them. “Damn.”

I swallowed hard as I saw that the site had finished loading. I scrolled down.

Literature—fail.

A wave of disappointment overcame me, and I felt nauseated.

But then I felt the expectant glances of my classmates on me.

“And you, Allie?” Dawn ventured.

I cleared my throat and took a deep breath. I didn’t want to show how disappointed I was.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to study together, Scott,” I said with a crooked grin.

Scott held out his hand for a high five.

“You’ve passed all the rest,” Grace said, encouragingly. “Right?”

I nodded. I had passed all the other exams.

Okay, the grades weren’t the best, but that was the case for many of my classmates, too.

“You see?” Dawn elbowed me in the side. “Then we’ll work on it together. You guys will make it.”

I nodded and forced out a smile.

The rest of the day, I brooded. I could hardly concentrate in my other classes, because two words were louder in my head than any others.

You failed.

If I couldn’t make it through the first semester, how could I finish my degree? I kept thinking about my mother. She would be thrilled about my failure. Not only because she could hit me over the head with a satisfied, “I told you so.” But mainly because she wanted me back in Lincoln by Thanksgiving at the latest.

I closed the apartment door and took off my shoes. As expected, Kaden wasn’t home.

Morose, I went into the kitchen and took the ice cream from the freezer. I stuck the scoop into the hard mass and dug out a large portion.

You’re letting yourself go,I heard the voice of my mother inside my head. I swallowed hard and slammed the ice cream container onto the counter.

It wasn’t just that my mother had found me… No. Now I was slipping into old behavior patterns. The emptiness inside me was back, and I didn’t know how to fill it. Only with Kaden did I feel like myself. But he hadn’t even looked my way for days.

A big lump formed in my throat.

Maybe Mom was right.