a

y room in Wakefield, it was almost eigh

in, and learned that the silver-haired woman took her coffee with two sugars and pretended she didn't. Around four my stomach started growling again, because one bagel wasn't nearly enough to carry a person from morning to eight at night. I didn't get out of the office until a quarter to seven. Right before I got on the bus, I walked past a Subway,

obably from all the smiling.

My room was exactly the size you'd expect for the price. It had a bed, a desk I'd found on the curb, a hot plate I wasn't technically supposed

am with my forehead against the tile, replaying the day. The guard's joke. The tea cupboard. Nobody counts it. The ringing in my ears when Knight Ca

th it. I wasn't used to bei

o hungry I felt a little dizzy. I was already planning dinner, which w

s that ever buzzed on that phone were my landlord and

from a number I

n completing your first day. Your signing bonus of $15,000.00 h

slower, like the words might rearran

,00

of the bed because my

morrow, realize what they'd done, and send me an apologetic email asking for it back. I opened my banki

lance

digits with my finger, five of them and a comma, and my balance, which that morning had been three hundred and twelv

hand over

three weeks of double shifts at the café, and it had gone straight to rent and textbooks before I could even feel it. I'd

four-hundred-page file standing up in a supply closet,

ep it in. I was grinning so hard it hurt. My eyes were stinging. I kept looking at the number and the

ieves in rew

But maybe it wasn't. Maybe somebody really had looked at everything I'd done, every la

s what being

life had ever been free, that good things always came with a catch I hadn't spotted yet. I could almost hear it

at the water stain on my ceiling, and

cracked

wl so loud I jumped, and I st

always felt like a luxury. I scrolled past the cheap stuff, past the sad little combo deals I always looked at and clo

to be ridiculously bubbly. Then, because I was apparently a woman of

th the delivery

ds, my thumb hovering over the butto

dn't

pillow and screamed into it, a short, happy, ri

egged on the bed with a pencil. I didn't draw an empty chair. I drew

stopped, because I realize

to hear someone say I'm proud of you, or even just wow, or that's amazing, Rain.

nd the only people I'd have want

st went a little quieter, and a little softer arou

delivery guy holding a warm paper bag that smelled like he

e asked, alrea

nd I meant it, and I tipped him an extra five

and I drank that cola down to the last rattling ice cube. It was the greasiest, saltiest, most perfect meal I'd ever had. I lic

oor and my phone glowing next to my head, the numbe

t again. I didn't think a

ore in my life. I ironed the blazer once, not three times. I locked my door in the dark at a quarter

a cup without flinching. I walked into that freezing lobby with my chin up, bec