Curvy Girls Can't Date Cowboys - Kelsie Stelting Page 0,1
crushing, suffocating silence sounded in my ears. Cori would still be my roommate? “What do you mean?”
Cori said, “I’m not going to college with her.”
“Ginger’s going to stay here, of course.” She said it so plainly. So matter-of-factly. As if I should have known this in my bones.
“What?” I managed, feeling like a bucket of ice water had just been dumped over me. I'd been banking on college as a source of freedom. My opportunity to get out from under their rules and helicopter parenting. They never mentioned me staying at home.
“There’s no reason for you to live in the dorms when you can stay here and we can watch you,” Mom answered. “The first semester of college is hard, and I don’t want you forgetting a breathing treatment and being back where you were in eighth grade.”
I closed my eyes. Not only had being so deathly ill haunted my past, it was going to follow me for the rest of my life. But my parents didn’t care about that—they cared about logic, control. I had to prove to her that living in the dorms was the smarter, safer choice.
“It's an hour drive,” I said. “More in traffic. That’s a lot of gas money and time wasted, plus I’ll probably be exhausted. I shouldn’t be driving tired.”
“You probably won't have school every single day, and you can always grab a latte on the way out of town if you need to.”
My mouth fell open. I got my wits about me to argue just when my mom said, “Hi!” into her phone. “Ginger got in!”
While she celebrated with my dad, Cori met my eyes with a sympathetic look.
My own eyes stung, and she blurred in my vision. Rather than cry in front of my captor, I turned around and walked out the door, knowing that my entire escape plan had crumbled.
Cori met me out in the car, holding the bag of chocolate chips. “Want one?” she asked. “Or twelve?”
A tear slipped down my cheek as I took a handful. This kind of a morning called for more than a little chocolate.
“I just want you to—” Cori began, but I shook my head and took off.
“I don’t feel like talking,” I said.
She pressed her lips together in a frown but nodded and used what surely must have been all of her self-control to stay quiet. Still, she reached over and rubbed my arm as it rested on the console.
I looked over at her as I pulled into the school parking lot and gave her a halfhearted smile. No matter what happened, she understood what I was going through better than anyone else.
“You’ll figure it out,” she said with complete confidence and then got out of the car and caught up with her friends. Only wished I believe in myself that much.
With a sigh, I got out of the car and began walking toward the school. A guy from the football team said, “Find your soul, Ging?”
I rolled my eyes. “Find your penis? Or did you need to borrow a microscope?”
His friends all oohed and laughed at my burn, but I was so not in the mood. My anger grew and expanded with each step I took toward the school and the stupid motto engraved above the entrance.
Ad Meliora. Toward better things.
I scoffed and pushed through the glass double doors. How was I supposed to go toward better things with my parents holding me back? “Toward” implied movement, and I? I was stuck.
I met my friends at Rory’s locker, where we always hung out in the morning before the bell rang. The four of them greeted me with smiles and hugs. Even though we’d only been a group of friends for a semester, it felt like I’d known them my whole life.
“You guys are not going to believe this,” I said and told them the whole horrible story about how I’d gotten into UCLA and then how my mom dropped a massive bomb on me that detonated all my dreams of freedom.
“You're kidding,” Zara said, her dark eyebrows furrowed together. “They can't keep you locked up at home forever.”
I shook my head. “They should just change my name from Ginger to Rapunzel and call it good.”
Callie put her hand on my shoulder sympathetically. “I'm so sorry. Is there anything we can do?”
“You mean other than giving me a spoon to dig a tunnel out from my room?”
She laughed, and Rory said, “You're one of the smartest people I know. Surely you could at