I needed this, whatever it took and however it came. For Phoebe and for me.
And that’s when a strike of luck found me in the darkness. A random divot of upturned earth took Carolyn by surprise, her attention firmly on her phone, and I was close. So close. Close enough behind that I could reach out on instinct when her flailing feet sent her hands flying into the air. Her phone was tossed as she tumbled, and a dart and a dive saw me catch it in nervous fingers, bouncing it off my chest and clutching tight in a bid to keep it safe from the ground.
Carolyn stared up in relief as she gathered herself together, and her smile bloomed as she realised her phone was safe.
I offered her a hand and helped her up, and she took the handset back with a happy sigh.
“Wow, that was close. You’re a lifesaver. I thought that was a goner.”
“Lucky I was near enough to catch it,” I said, trying to keep my smile as innocent as possible.
“My own guardian angel phone saver on my shoulder,” she laughed, and I found myself laughing along with her. “Were you heading to the snack bar?”
I’d never been to the snack bar on campus. Not once in the previous months. Snacks were a luxury I didn’t entertain. Still, I kept my smile bright, and she took it in the affirmative once she’d finished checking her handset and shoved it in her pocket.
“Come along with me if you like,” she said. “I’ll grab you a donut as a thank you. Paige, isn’t it? From dorm ten?”
My heart prickled at the recognition. I had no real idea she knew my name, let alone which dorm I was in.
“A donut sounds fab,” I replied, and it did. It really did. Just not as fab as finding an in with her older sister’s sixty-day tormentors.
The snack bar wasn’t far past the tennis courts. Carolyn went up to the counter and grabbed a tray of iced donuts which had my stomach rumbling before she’d even set them down on the table between us. I knew this was my shot at small talk and conversation, bridging a gap I’d never have imagined being able to reach out and bridge between us just a few hours earlier.
She made it easy.
She asked me questions about me and my study and my dorm friends, and I answered with the easy smile I’d learnt to paste on so well here. I told her I liked my friends and was loving my study in this place. I told her I wanted to be some kind of occupational therapist in the future, helping people make the best of their life in challenging situations, and it was true, I did. And then I ate a donut, nodding my head in absolute pleasure as the thick white icing danced on my tongue.
“Good, aren’t they?” she asked, and I exclaimed in a grunt as I finished up my mouthful. “I love the snacks here, they are awesome. My sister loves this place down at the pier, she says they do the best donuts around, but I say these are the best in a ten-mile radius at least.”
The fates were really lining up for me.
It made a real change.
“You should bring her here,” I managed. “See if she changes her mind.”
She shook her head as she munched on a mouthful of her own. “She’s been here, she was at uni here until a couple of years back.”
“Studying psychology too?” I asked, and she shook her head again.
“English lit. She wanted to be a university professor.”
I could feel my heart pounding. “Sounds great. Did she make it as one?”
And there it was, the weird flash across the eyes of someone trying to weigh up another person. A stranger. A stranger sharing a donut with a smile on her face.
“Not exactly,” she said, and leaned in a little. “She was all on track for it. She’d done some placements. But then…”
I did my absolute best not to react to her shifting composure. It must have worked.
“You haven’t heard the rumours?” she prompted.
“I don’t really listen to rumours,” I told her, and usually it was true.
It seems she believed me. In another time and place I would be glad for the fledgling signs of an actual friend around here. Her eyes were bright and blue and genuine. Her attention all real and all on me.
“My sister had an opportunity. A weird opportunity,” she told me. “People are talking about it all over these parts. I’m surprised you haven’t heard it all already.”
“A weird opportunity like a job opportunity?” I quizzed, and the girl opposite me looked totally awkward, even with half a donut in her sticky fingers.
“Something like that,” she said. “Enough of an opportunity that she doesn’t need to be racing into university lecturing for a while yet.”