Cammie Healy - Jennifer Foor Page 0,27

I can’t buy spare parts and make it new again. I’m in trouble. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Why? How did you get involved with a married man anyway? Don’t you spend all your time in a library?”

“You would think that, you big idiot.”

“So who is he?”

I almost choked as the words came out. “My teacher.”

More laughter. “Aw, hell, Cam. You’re in the deepest of shit. Dad might fall out over this. Not his precious little doctor in training. This will kill him.”

“I know,” I whined. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come home yet. It would have been better to tell them over the phone that way they could have gotten all the yelling out of the way.”

“Maybe you should have written it in a letter instead. You could have thrown your phone in a river and pretended you didn’t exist until they had time to get over it. I know what’s going to happen. They’re going to drag you to church first. They’ll think the devil made himself at home in your heart for leaving us.”

I shoved him. “You were the worst person to confide in.”

“Sorry. I can’t help it. This is the biggest mindfuck since…well ever.”

I covered my face with my hands and cried more. “They’ll never forgive me.”

“Forgive you for what?” I heard someone say from outside the bedroom. My sister Callie was standing there. She’d died her hair red and cut it to her shoulders. Her makeup looked professionally done, though I knew she’d probably done it herself in between clients. “Cammie, what the hell are you doing home? Mom didn’t mention it, so I know something must be up.” She walked over and hugged me, only pulling away to give me a once over. “What happened?”

“She’s in trou-ble,” Josh over-enunciated the word.

“With the law?”

I shook my head. “No. Not that I know of. I mean, I don’t think I can be charged with anything.”

My sister pulled me out of Josh’s stinky room and into her own. She patted the bed and she took a seat on it. “Come over here and tell me all about it. I’m sure it’s nothing. You’ve always been one to assume the worst and come out smelling like roses.”

“There won’t be any flowers this time, Cal. In fact, I don’t think anyone can come out of this smelling like roses.”

She took my hand. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. If you need help talking to Mom and Dad I’ll be there.”

“I don’t want to involve you. It’s bad enough Josh knows some of it.”

“If he knows, you better tell me too. He can’t keep a secret to save his life. If I know him like I think, Mom and Dad are already on their way here.”

I wiped away a few shame-filled tears. “I’ve been having an affair with one of my professors for several months. Everything seemed fine until someone took pictures of us and put them on the internet. Now they’re talking about pulling my scholarship. He’s probably going to be asked to step down from his position. It’s a mess.”

I could tell she was in shock. She sat there staring at me as if she’d never seen me before.

“Say something.”

“I never expected you’d do something so careless, Cammie. You of all people. Why? How did it happen? Tell me he lied about who he was. Tell me you didn’t know he was married.”

It was impossible to feel anything but horrible for my actions. My despicable choices had left a lot of people hurt, some destroyed. “I should have said no. I should have pushed him away, but I couldn’t. I was weak when it came to him. I thought he loved me.”

“Jesus, Cam. What are you going to do?”

I shrugged. “Pray my grades are good enough to get me into Stanford without the courses from this last semester. I can spend the summer catching up. I’ll retake the courses I didn’t finish and be ready to move on anyway. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. I can make it work. I don’t have to lose everything.”

“What if Stanford finds out what you’ve done? Could they revoke admission?”

I looked down at my shaking hands. “I don’t know. If they do then my future is pretty much shit. I need that acceptance. James wrote me a letter of recommendation. If the truth comes out his letter won’t count for anything. You know how much that school means to me. What if I’ve come this far only