to continue showing up to events for her father to look like the perfect family seemed completely unnecessary at her age. “I’ll be there, but I’m not bringing a date.”
Her mother’s voice changed to a honeyed tone, and Fiona knew she was the fly her mother was aiming to catch.
“Sweetheart, it would mean so much to your daddy if you could just pretend to look like you’re settling down, just until the end of the runoff election in January. Your father is scared for the first time in 12 years that he could lose. To someone endorsed by the Dockworkers Union, no less. They used to have his back, and now …I don’t know. Some bad apples got into the mix. I don’t understand all of it, I just want this to be over. After that, I don’t care what you do.”
This lifted Fiona’s spirits for a moment. Maybe this meant her mother and father would not care so much if she decided to drop out of college.
“Really? You don’t care at all?” She tried not to sound too excited. She didn’t want her mother to think she was up to something.
“Fi, you’re an adult, last time I checked. Your father and I understand you’re sowing your wild oats. Just don’t be surprised if they come home to roost.”
“That’s a mixed metaphor, Mom.”
“So it is,” her mother said. “Guess all that money spent on college isn’t a complete waste.”
The full-body cringe was so strong when she hung up the phone with her mother that Fiona had to check her face in the mirror to make sure her makeup hadn’t gotten smudged.
She marched out to the common room, where her housemate Kaylee was reading the paper.
“Did you read this?” Kaylee said, holding the Newcastle Dispatch in her direction.
“I read it all right. Here, I’ll recycle it if you’re done with it.”
Fiona took the paper and skimmed the article once again. Yep. Still made her blood pressure go up. Why did she insist on reading the paper at all, and then re-reading the horrible things people said about her? Why did she keep doing this to herself?
“Seriously, fuck Zach.” Fiona threw the newspaper across the room, where it smacked into her housemate’s meticulously constructed beer can pyramid.
“Dude!” was all her housemate Pete said when it came crashing down on the carpet, startling Brioche, the white bichon that had been sleeping on the end of the sofa.
“You need to get it together,” said Kaylee. “You don’t know it was Zach who said that to the press.”
Fiona crossed from the chair over to Brioche, who was cowering under the sofa. She coaxed her little powder puff of a dog and said, “I was the one who said that to Zach when I thought we were friends. I was just joking around, though. And just the other night I turned him down when he asked me out. So I think I can Sherlock who told a reporter all that shit.”
Kaylee winced. “But you kind of are past your five-year plan.”
Fiona pouted and held Brioche to her face and let the little dog lick her cheek. “I know. It’s not that I don’t try. I just…I’m starting to think college is not for me.”
Pete laughed as he began stacking his silly beer cans again. “You couldn’t figure that out about two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of student debt ago?”
Fiona glared at Pete, and Brioche growled.
“For your information, she doesn’t have any debt,” Kaylee spouted.
Fiona cringed, because she knew what was coming next. She didn’t want to hear it, so she went to her room to look over her classwork again. This term paper on medieval poetry was killing her.
She looked over the passage she was supposed to interpret, and it didn’t make sense. She hated medieval literature.
“Ugh,” she growled, scratching Brioche behind the ears. “Maybe I should just drop out.”
Brioche looked up at her and whimpered.
“I know,” she said, looking down at her furry friend. “Mom and Dad are going to freak. I just can’t do this anymore. I thought an English degree would be easy because I liked writing, but it sucks. Big time.”
Flipping her notebook and her medieval literature anthology closed with a loud thunk, she got up and gently set Brioche down on her bed.
“Now what should I wear tonight, huh?” She sifted through her dresses. Black was too drab, and she was already depressed. Glitter was too much, as she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. She finally settled on a