Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Of course she doesn’t. Jessica and I might have grown up together, but we have had vastly different lives. My best friend comes from a rich family with a bulging bank account. My family isn’t poor, but we’re not nearly as well off as the Krists. Her house in Queens has a pool, whereas my house is so close to the neighbors that I could hear them doing things that you do not want to hear your neighbors doing.
I suppose my living situation prepared me for a dorm room at NYU. Jessica’s parents originally wanted her to live in a cushy off-campus apartment, but she nixed that idea. We both wanted to experience living on-campus our freshman year, even if the food is bad.
But maybe next year, we’ll take her parents up on the offer. I thought living in a dorm would be fun, and it’s been okay. There are a lot of social activities, and someone’s always awake if you need company.
But I would love to have my own room. Or at least a bathroom that Jessica and I don’t have to share with an entire floor of girls. The other ladies are nice, but some of them are just not hygienic, to put it delicately. I definitely didn’t need to see Elmira Budd washing her crotchless panties out in the shared sink last week. Ugh.
Shuddering at the memory, I turn to my buddy again.
“The point is that I don’t want you getting kicked out of school,” I say.
Jessica rolls her eyes.
“My grades aren’t that bad, I promise. I have a C average. I’m safe from academic probation.”
“For now,” I say ominously.
Jess just rolls her eyes again.
“It’s fine, don’t worry. Besides, we’re talking about you right now, not me. You’re the A student who got a B on her paper. So what went wrong?”
I can’t resist. Taking a deep breath, I launch into a long-winded description of my essay to Jessica. She’s in the class too, so it shouldn’t be Japanese to her. I don’t think Jess read The Scarlet Letter, though. If I’m being honest, I don’t think she wrote the essay that got her a C either. Allegedly, there are ghostwriting services that you can hire on-line, and I have a feeling Jess had someone do this assignment for her.
“It sounds like you don’t really have a thesis,” my friend says wryly.
I look at her askance.
“What do you mean? My thesis is that the choices we make should be based on ourselves and what we want, not on the people around us.”
Jess looks flummoxed and a bit disinterested.
“Oh okay. That makes sense. My paper was just about the symbolism of the scarlet letter.”
“That should’ve been my angle, too, I guess.”
“Please. You could never take the easy way out.”
Jessica has a point. I have a bad habit of making things more difficult than they need to be. The original draft of this paper was a seven-page rant about how backwards the townspeople were in their treatment of Hester. It took me a week to clean it up into something coherent with a clear thesis.
But obviously, I still failed.
“Don’t you think the professor’s so unfair?” I whine a bit, indulging myself. “I swear, he has a stick up his butt.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jess yawns. I can practically see her back molars because her mouth is open so wide. “You know what I can’t believe?”
“What?”
“Zoey and Peter broke up last night.”
My eyes widen.
“Wait…are you serious?”
Jessica nods. “Zoey called me this morning freaking out. That’s where I was all day. She needed a shoulder to cry on for a few hours.”
My mouth falls open.
“Shit. I can’t believe that! How is she doing now?”
Jess shrugs.
“She was better when I left. Heather came over to take the next shift of listening to Zoey sob about how awful Peter is for dumping her.”
Zoey, Peter, Heather, Jessica, and I all went to high school together. We were the Fab Five, and by the time we started at our respective colleges, Zoey and Peter had already been together for three years. They were practically married, come to think of it, and I had secret dreams of being a bridesmaid in their wedding. Apparently, that’s not going to happen now.
“Do you know what happened?” I ask, still aghast.
Jess shrugs.
“From what I gathered between sobs, Peter wants to see other women.”
“Really? But they’ve been together forever.”
My friend nods.
“Yeah, that’s the problem exactly,” Jessica laughs. “I can’t believe they’ve only slept with each other. Wouldn’t you die? I know I’d go crazy wondering what I’d missed.”
I gulp. Jessica is much more promiscuous than me. I’ve only slept with one guy in my life, and that was when I was sixteen. It was messy and only lasted a couple of minutes. Three years have passed since then without so much as a prospect. I’ve made out with a few guys, but nothing has come of it.