Page 3

* * *

The next night, Annie spent in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then it was a straight shot through the Southwest until she picked up Interstate15 in California.

She honked her horn as she crossed the state line from Arizona, but alone in the car, the gesture made her life seem small. She had listened to the same five cassette tapes on the entire drive, and as she approached civilization, she was happy to switch back to the radio. Even staticky commercials were a refreshing change.

She’d had second thoughts from the moment she left Toledo. Was this the right thing to do? More school and going into debt? No one but her would be paying for this degree, and she wasn’t even sure what she wanted to do besides help people in a less shadowy way. Wasn’t that what academically inclined people did in times of doubt—fall back on more education to buy time?

She liked to have a plan, to have all the answers before she started something, and this was not that. Still, maybe venturing into the unknown would be good for her. She could go to classes, learn something, figure it out as she went. But it was nerve-racking too. She didn’t even have a goal past getting the master’s.

She’d overslept that last morning, which meant a delayed start, and she stopped at a gas station somewhere in West Covina to call the residential office to say she’d be arriving later than expected.

She got turned around once she entered the city and had to pull over to study a map. She finally found the campus by dumb luck, then asked someone walking along the sidewalk for directions to the building.

The plan was to live on campus in a tiny graduate student apartment, but when she got to the residential office, an undergrad working the late shift looked up from his book and passed her a voucher with a shrug. She looked at it. At the bottom was a line for when the voucher expired. Someone had written in “8/31/92,” which was exactly a week away.

“Stuff fills up fast,” the student said. “The university puts up overflow students in a motel for a week while they make other arrangements.”

“Other arrangements,” she echoed, too exhausted to be mad. “What does that mean exactly?”

“Come back tomorrow,” he said. “My boss will be here from eight to five, and he can explain.”

“And where is this motel?” she asked, flapping the voucher at him.

“Oh, it’s like three blocks from here, I think,” he said with another shrug. “Like…north?”

“Write down the address. Written directions, please.”

He closed his book with a sigh, pushed back from the desk, and stood up. “Let me ask.”

It turned out that the motel was close, though she drove past it the first time. Someone honked at her, maybe because she was going too slow, maybe because she still had Virginia license plates. Maybe Californians liked to honk. She flipped on her turn signal when she saw the motel sign again, parked outside thelobby doors, and shut off the engine. She allowed herself a few moments to collect her thoughts and assess. There was no point in being mad at the situation. The kid at the desk didn’t seem to know much at all. She would get everything sorted out in the morning.

Anyway, what was one more night in a motel after two thousand miles?

* * *

Annie made the man explain it three times. What it came down to was this: they always overbooked graduate dorms because there were usually a few students who dropped out at the last minute. Financially, it made more sense to overbook than to have empty rooms. But this year, no one had dropped out, and since Annie had waited so long before accepting her slot at UCLA, she was at the bottom of the barrel.

“We give you a week to make other plans,” the man said.

“Other plans?” she screeched. “I had plans! You’re the one who made them fall through!”

“I understand our system can be complicated—”

“You think it’s my failure to comprehend your system?” She made air quotes. “You think that’s the problem here?”

“Ma’am—”

“Look, I have been in California for about twenty minutes, and I’m really not equipped to go house hunting on my own. So either you find me the school housing that was promised to me, or you produce a better option.”

He pushed his glasses up to rub the bridge of his nose. His plastic name tag saidPaul.

“I can’t help with outside apartment rentals, but I can give you a list,” he said finally. “We usually only give it out to postdoctoral and foreign exchange students, but because of this unique circumstance, it might be a good solution for you.”

“What list?” she asked.

“It’s a list of faculty who are willing to take in students. Rent out rooms in their houses for a quarter or two. It’s meant to be short-term, but it should be enough to get you into student housing later.”

Annie held out her hand. “Give me the list.”