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Carolyn Lane’s sister seemed healthy and happy by all accounts. Nothing untoward on the surface of her physical condition. No wild eyes, or cold sweats in public, so the rumours said.
I could handle wild eyes and cold sweats if it came to it. They were familiar friends of mine from years gone by. Hell, I could even handle some lasting health defects as long as I was still physically well enough to go about my daily life once I’d bailed my sister out.
I didn’t realise I was staring at the back of Carolyn’s head until an elbow reached out to me from the desk at my side. It was Holly from my dorm, kicking back with a smirk as I turned to meet her eyes.
Her whisper was supposed to be subtle, but I could hear her words with no strain.
“You’re thinking about her dirty sister, right? Crazy, isn’t it? Thinking of that disgusting filth she got up to. Some people are unreal.”
My belly lurched all over again, and there, in the middle of the sensation, was a full-on bloom of guilt. I met her words with a shrug.
“I guess people do what they need to do.”
Holly laughed a husky little laugh. “Like anyone would need to sell their soul to filthy randoms for sixty days straight. You could offer me ten times what they’re offering and I’d still hold onto my dignity.”
I didn’t doubt she believed her words. Her eyes burned with disgust as she stared down at the fellow student with the newly-rich sister. Still, Holly wasn’t like me. She was from a comfortable family, two older sisters already graduated, one a doctor and one a pregnant military wife with an online interior design consultancy. Her father was some barrister from London, and her mum had looked like the centre spread model of some upmarket older women’s clothes magazine when she dropped her off at the dorm on day one of campus.
A girl like Holly wouldn’t understand desperation for financial security, or having a sister in such dire straits that you’d sell your very soul to see them safe.
“I wouldn’t be so smiley if my older sister was that much of a skanky bitch,” Holly hissed, and the guilt bloomed again. Guilt and distaste of my own.
Holly was nice, but she was judgmental. Judgmental wasn’t a quality I liked in people, not at all. Being judgmental never makes you a better person than the people you are casting down, it only makes you an asshole.
Holly, as nice as she seemed on the surface, was definitely straying into asshole territory. I could feel the holier-than-thou bristling under her smile, fingers rigid as they shuffled papers on her desk in prep for our lecture as the professor took his position up front.
I wondered if she would judge me like that, if and when the time came. I wondered if she’d turn her back on the friendship we’d cultivated over the past few months in favour of sneering and head shaking and calling me a skanky bitch along with anyone else who didn’t live up to her good girl standards.
Maybe word wouldn’t get out in the same way as it had with Carolyn Lane’s older sister. Maybe I’d be able to keep my earnings hidden, and come up with some convincing reason for a random, unscheduled sixty-day departure from college life.
Or maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t give a shit.
One thing I was sure of, as I sat there with Carolyn’s easy sloping shoulders relaxing back below as she took the lesson in, and Holly’s bristling distaste buzzing to my right all the way through the presentation, was that I’d be finding out if I could.
If sixty days would see my sister with anything like the chance of a new start, I’d give them gladly. Screw Holly Marsh and the rest of this campus and what they had to say about it.
I waved her off as soon as we were done with the lecture, hovering back and pretending to dig in my bag for papers as she disappeared on up the corridor. It was instinct that led me to hanging back long enough to slip in behind Carolyn as she headed away from the lecture room. Lunchtime was upon us, and I couldn’t hold back the hope that hanging close by her as she went about her day would lead to even a snippet of insight about the sixty-day gig and how to get on board.
She too was alone; her friend had gone on ahead before she stepped out of the lecture hall. She headed outdoors as the corridor reached an end, turning right and checking her phone as she strolled along the side wall and out towards the tennis courts. I’d never been a nosey girl, but right then I’d have given my soul to see her messages, let alone set my sister up for a new life. The desperation was horrible, deep and dark and painful. The thrill of maybe finding a way out of this mess made me shiver with cold relief.
