each month and doesn’t have to put her half of the rent on her credit card. Plus, she can afford little luxuries, like . . .
Courtney catches me eyeing her iced vanilla bean Frappuccino and hands it over. I greedily take a sip. “You poor thing.”
I scoot my legs into crisscross applesauce. “How do you expect me to get a job? I’m still trying to finish my PhD!”
She laughs. “In comparative literature. I don’t even know what kind of job you can get with a degree like that. You said you don’t want to be a professor.”
“I don’t.” It’s not that I wouldn’t. Actually, teaching sounds like fun. But getting up in front of a lecture hall full of college students and speaking? Even the thought gives me hives. I hate being on display like that. “But I’ve graduated with honors from all my classes. There are plenty of jobs available for someone with my education.”
I may be deluding myself. I’d kept myself firmly out of the career counselor’s office at college. Never did a thing to brush up my résumé. I’d been perfectly fine, advancing my education at Emory University, first with my undergraduate double major in philosophy and art history, then my master’s in anthropology, and then my PhD. That’s because when Penelope Carpenter starts something, she finishes it. When I was a kid, I asked my parents what the furthest was that I could go with my education, and I made plans to get there, taking the classes that interested me. I said I was going to go all the way, and I did—on my own terms.
I’m made to go the distance. Unfortunately, I amassed a little bit of debt along the way.
But god. The real world? It gives me a panic attack. School is where I shine, where I feel comfortable. Books are my safety. And life? Well, that’s anything but.
Ugh, just thinking about it, I feel the red welts popping up on my face.
Which is why I really wish there were another degree I could go for. A megadoctorate. Maybe I can go for my JD? Postpone the day of reckoning even more?
“You’re coming to the ceremony on Thursday, right?” I ask her.
She pulls off her blazer. “Of course, Doctor.”
I smile at her. Good. I don’t make friends easily, so she’s the only thing close to family I have here in Atlanta. All the rest of mine is up in New England, living the hoity-toity high life. And no, they made it pretty clear to me that if I wanted to go to a school that wasn’t Harvard, I was on my own when it came to paying for it, which I’ve been doing—poorly—by picking up tutoring gigs here and there. My dad was self-made and wants his children to be as well. He cosigned for me on my credit card and apartment lease, but he expects me to pay him back in full when I get the money. My mom thinks I’m making a terrible mistake by endlessly advancing my degrees and doesn’t hesitate to tell me every chance she gets. My father has told me that my inheritance is actually going to his alma mater, Harvard, when he dies. So I didn’t even invite them to my graduation. Not that they would come anyway.
I pick up the folded paper by one corner like it’s dirty, then let it fall to the ground. “You think Gerald will be there?”
She snorts. “No.”
“But—”
“Nell. The Gerald train has not only left the station, it’s in another country, speeding far, far away from you.”
Way to be blunt, Nee. But yeah. I knew that. Still, I always hold out hope where his big blue eyes are concerned. I’d never taken an interest in guys before him, but I kept bumping into him at the library. He ended up asking me to study together, and I’ve been smitten ever since. He’s cute as heck, a fencer, a wine connoisseur, an art and classical music lover, and my all-around perfect man.
He’s also a resident now at the Atlanta Children’s Hospital and engaged to some brilliant med student in a Barbie package. It’s been nine months since we broke up. You’d think I’d have gotten the hint and would’ve stopped texting him every week by now.
But no, that would be what a girl who has her life together would do.
And all Nell Carpenter has, clearly, is a giant black hole of debt.
I stand up, throw my student loan statement in the trash,