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Heaving a sigh, I pick up the phone and scroll through my contact list until I find the one I need. Closing the door behind me, I sit on my bed and lean against the headboard, dialing my mother’s number. Waiting for the call to connect, my eyes roam around the room in our three-bedroom apartment. Technically, Kennedy and I share a room, as there are two beds in it. Most nights, she stays with at least one of the guys in another room.The sound of my mother’s voice brings my attention to the task at hand, and dread pools in my belly. As predicted, my mother is anything but pleasant.
“It’s about fucking time you called me back,” she sneers.
Pinching the bridge of my nose and praying for strength, it takes a lot of patience to keep my voice even.
“Hello, Mother,” sarcasm drips from my words. “I am fine, thank you for asking. How are you?”
“Oh, cut the shit, Kassidy. Why didn’t you come home?” She asks as if this conversation hasn’t already taken place several times.
“Mom, we have already discussed this. The main reason, I didn’t want to.”
“Don’t you get smart with me, missy,” she snaps.
“What did you want, Mom?” I ask, trying to get to the point of this call, assuming there is one.
“Am I not allowed to check up on my daughter?” Her tone changes drastically.
Her sticky-sweet voice has the hair on the back of my neck standing at attention.
“What do you want?” I ask flatly, deflecting her question and asking one of my own. The sooner we get to the point of this charade, the better.
“You ungrateful little bitch, don’t you get smart with me. I brought you into this world, and I can take you out,” she snaps. I pull the phone away from my ear, giving it a glare, before moving it back.
“Ugh,what the hell,” I exclaim. “Not only have you called incessantly, but you got both Karoline and Kavanagh into your drama. Now, one more time, or I am hanging up the phone. What. Do. You. Want?” My voice gets louder, biting out the last part of my sentence.
“Those friends of yours have money, right?”
“No!” I bark out, cutting her off abruptly.
“You don’t even know what I am going to ask,” she states, somewhat outraged.
“It doesn’t matter. Find someone else to leech off of. My friends are off limits.” My voice is loud and full of anger. Depending on how far into their activities Kennedy and whichever guy she is in there with are, they might be able to hear me.
“The trailer needs some repairs. The roof needs to be fixed, and a couple of windows need to be replaced,” she states as if this is going to change my mind.
“Then get a job to pay for it. My friends are not your cash cow,” my voice trembles as I fight off tears of frustration.
“How dare you!” she says indignantly.
Her words get cut off as my phone beeps with an incoming call. Pulling the phone away from my ear, a Groveton College phone number flashes on the screen.
“I have another call, gotta go,” is all my mother gets in the way of a goodbye.
Swiping my phone across the screen to accept the new call, my voice is timid. “Hello.”
“May I speak to Kassidy Heartwell, please?” a polite, high-pitched voice says.
“This is she.”
“Kassidy, I am calling from the tutoring center. We see you have signed up to tutor other students this year. Is that correct?”
“Yes, that is correct.” Confusion swims through my head. This was all taken care of just before the semester ended in December.
“Kassidy, we have a student who needs some extreme help getting his grades up. His father is willing to pay you a fair amount of money for your time. The father is also requiring thathis son be your only student this semester. If you accept this, you will have mandatory tutoring sessions four days a week.”
This girl is making this sound as if there is something wrong with this scenario.
“Okay,” I respond, drawing the word out.
