Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,110

just asking them to add their names.

Sam fiddled with the letter over the course of that day and the next. She stayed up working until three in the morning. In the end, she included everything: How Barney Reardon had decreased their pay, had made their insurance worse to the point where they couldn’t even afford to use it. How the kitchen staff kept the whole college running, and yet were treated as less than. She wrote about these women who worked more than full-time having to take food home to feed their families, having to sell students’ trash to keep their lights on. She wrote that it was massively unfair for an institution to brag about being family-friendly while ignoring some people’s children and embracing others’.

When it was finally done, Sam emailed the letter right away, before she lost her nerve. She didn’t sign her name in the end. She even went so far as to create a fake email account. She received a message back from an editor the next morning, saying the Collegian would be running the letter in February, when school was back in session.

At some point each day now, Sam checked. The month was half over and the letter had yet to appear. Whenever she saw her friends in the kitchen, she felt a rush of excitement, as if she were planning a surprise party that they would soon find out about. She imagined students picketing on their behalf, demanding change.

Sam resumed her place in the post office line.

The package turned out to be from her father.

She should have known. Every year since she could remember, he had given her a Disney princess valentine. He still did it now, in an ironic way. This year’s card, like all of them, was hot pink. Belle on the front wearing a yellow ball gown, holding a book, beneath the words Daughter: Someday You’ll Be Anything You Want!

Her father had also sent a large red satin box of chocolates, heart shaped, with a flimsy fake flower attached.

Sam typed out a text to Isabella: Not even a card from Clive .

Instead of hitting send, though, she deleted it, watching the letters disappear one by one as she tapped her finger on the screen.

She took a picture of the card and sent it to the group text she had with her siblings. There was a separate thread that included their parents, but this one was reserved for making fun of or otherwise discussing them behind their backs.

A text came back from her brother, Brendan, not to the group. Only to her.

Mom let it slip that Dad hasn’t had a single new project since August. She is freaking out. She’s taking all these extra shifts and basically working around the clock. I’m worried.

Their father’s business was unpredictable. Good years, and bad. The bad ones never got easier or less surprising when they came.

Caitlin was too young for this sort of information. Sam wasn’t sure why Brendan hadn’t included Molly, why he chose to single her out with the news. Because she was the oldest, she supposed.

Oh no, she wrote back.

We need to help, he wrote.

How?

Maybe we should each set a little money aside in case things don’t get better soon.

Sam would never say what she was thinking out loud. It made her feel like a selfish jerk. But—why was this their job? All her friends had their parents’ fortunes thrown at them. The idea of having to help their parents, reversing those roles, never would have occurred to any of them. Why, in her family, was it always about not having enough?

Her second thought was of her father, and the fact that he had thought of her even in a stressful moment, and sent his usual valentine as if nothing was wrong. He would never burden her with his struggles. Nor, she knew, would he ever accept a penny from his children.

She hoped Brendan was overreacting.

Okay, she texted back. I’ll try. Let me know if you hear more.

Sam texted her dad then. Love you, Daddy. Thanks for the card and the candy. Happy Valentine’s Day! Miss you.

She put her phone in her bag.

She was due at Elisabeth’s in forty minutes. An awkward amount of time. If she went back to the dorm, she would end up chatting in the hall, accomplishing nothing. She went to the library instead.

Once inside the heavy front door, Sam saw Julian, the Mollusk, with whom she’d had that brief semi-romance two years ago.