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“Is it about the money?”
“Yes.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“He talked about it last night, huh?”
“Yeah, he said he wanted it.”
“So why didn’t you just give it back to him? I know there’s no way you spent it all,” she said, looking at me carefully. Fawn knew me much too well, I thought, considering we just lived together. We didn’t talk about money a lot. There was never really a reason to. As long as we each paid what we were supposed to, we were happy.
“I got rid of it,” I told her.
“What the fuck? Like you threw it away?” She shook her head. “Are you serious right now?”
“I was walking by a church on my way home last night,” I told her. “I donated it.”
“To a church?”
“Yeah.”
“On a whim?”
“Yeah.”
“Honestly, not a horrible idea,” Fawn shrugged. “You’ve had worse ideas.”
“You’re not opposed to churches?”
“Not so much. They do a lot of good,” she said. “The one on 17th Avenue has free lunch every Wednesday.”
“I didn’t know that.”
More importantly, I didn’t know Fawn was the kind of person who took advantage of free lunch. Maybe I misjudged her. I always kind of thought of her as a girl who had unlimited resources. Maybe I was wrong. She seemed to read my mind, because she smiled a little bit.
“Surprised?”
“Honestly? Yeah.”
“I grew up poor,” she shrugged. “I still have a hard time with money. My parents have a lot of it now, but they don’t exactly give me much. Not that I expect them to, you know. That’s their cash. They’re paying for school. Everything else, I kind of figure out on my own.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought they paid your rent.”
“Nah,” she shook her head. “I just...”
“What?”
“Look, I don’t want you to pity me,” she said, looking up at me sharply. “I have some money saved up from when I worked and now I’m trying to make the most of everything that I’ve been given. I’ve taken out some loans, and I’ve saved a little. I’ve actually been looking for a job,” she added. “But I don’t know how to tell my folks. The fre
e lunch thing? It’s not a lot, but it helps. When you’re struggling, every little bit helps.”
“That makes me feel a lot better about giving it to the church,” I told her.
