4: 4
4.
The day the term started, Nancy only bought me the cheapest seat.
Seventeen hours.
There were no new clothes in the suitcase, just two sets of old uniforms, a thin quilt, and the half-bag of dried noodles she'd stuffed in.
The station was packed. She handed me a black plastic bag.
“Three hundred inside. Make it last. Next month's living money I'll send once I get paid.”
“The school charges for the physical and for textbooks.”
Nancy frowned, impatient.
“Can't you apply for the hardship aid? Scored so high and all you know how to do is study?”
Around us, the other parents dropping off their kids carried milk and fruit.
One of them heard and couldn't help glancing at me.
Nancy's voice went up at once.
“A widow, putting her through a top university, and she still says three hundred's not enough. Kids these days, spoiled rotten.”
Eyes settled on me from every direction.
I took the plastic bag and said nothing.
Before the ticket check she suddenly caught my arm.
“Remember, a thousand a month, and the rules still stand. You want money, first send a video I'm happy with.”
“What video?”
“You, slapping yourself.”
Wind poured in through the entrance and rattled the plastic bag.
Nancy looked at me like she was explaining the most ordinary little thing.
“If you won't take a beating, that proves you don't need the money.”
It was like an iron bar lodged in my throat.
The ticket agent was pushing the crowd forward.
Nancy let go of my arm and added one more thing.
“Don't go running your mouth to teachers and classmates. Air the family's dirty laundry and I'll never live it down. If you dare send the school after me, I'll go make a scene outside your department and tell everyone how ungrateful you are.”
Before the doors closed she stood on the platform, waving at me.
To anyone watching, she really did look like a mother who couldn't bear to see her daughter go.
It was already night when I reached the school.
The dorm was on the sixth floor. No elevator.
A roommate helped me haul the suitcase up and asked,
“Your parents didn't come with you?”
“My mom's busy with work.”
The lie came out so easily it made me feel pathetic.
The advisor sent out a notice: textbooks eight hundred twenty, physical one hundred, training uniform one fifty.
The three hundred from the black plastic bag lay spread on the desk like a joke.
That night I went to the dining hall window and asked if I could put a meal on credit.
The woman waved me off.
“Sweetheart, the campus card doesn't do credit. Go see your advisor.”
A long line of freshmen stretched outside the advisor's office.
Some were asking about scholarships, some about switching dorms.
When it was my turn, my phone suddenly lit up.
Nancy had sent a voice message.
“You're at school by now, right? Slap yourself ten times and show me. Do it and I'll transfer a hundred.”
The office was very quiet.
The advisor looked up.
“Zoe Fox, what's the trouble?”
On the screen, the message played itself to the end.
Nancy's voice came through, clear as day.
“Quit acting pitiful. You want to eat, you do as you're told.”
5.
The advisor's name was Maya. Maya Summers.
She didn't press me. She just shut the office door and poured me a cup of hot water.
“Sit.”
The cup burned my hands.
I was close to crying when Nancy's call came through.
Maya glanced at the screen.
“Answer it if you want. Put it on speaker.”
The second the line connected, Nancy laid into me.
“Zoe Fox, are you deaf? I told you to send a video and you're playing dead?”
Maya's expression changed.
I held the phone, knuckles white.
“Mom, I'm in a teacher's office.”
There was a pause, then a cold laugh.
“Oh, wonderful. First day at school and already tattling. A teacher, is it? Go ask your teacher — have I paid for your schooling or not? Have I raised you eighteen years or not?”
Maya spoke calmly.
“Hello, ma'am. I'm Zoe's advisor. Right now your daughter doesn't have enough to live on, and her enrollment fees aren't paid off either. The school can help her apply for temporary hardship aid, but the guardian has to give us the true situation.”
Nancy's voice turned wounded on the spot.
“Teacher, you don't understand, my family struggles. I raised her all on my own, and she's been stubborn since she was little, spends money like water. Give her too little and she says I abuse her.”
Maya looked at the finger marks still fading on my face.
“Ma'am, how did the child get the marks on her face?”
The other end went quiet for two seconds.
“She fell. Did it to herself.”
Maya didn't call it out.
“Then please pay her basic living expenses as soon as you can. I wouldn't advise disciplining an adult student by hurting her.”
Nancy blew up.
“So she's an adult, so what? Being an adult means she's not my daughter anymore? Teacher, don't you go turning her against me. She wants money, fine, then she follows the rules of this house.”
After the call ended, Maya pushed the phone back to me.
“The school has work-study positions. I'll get you registered first. You can apply for the temporary aid too, though it takes time to come through.”
“Thank you, Professor Summers.”
“One more thing. Keep your evidence.”
The hot water tipped a little in my hands.
Maya's voice was very soft.
“Chat records, transfer records, photos of the injuries, save all of it. Not for revenge. To protect yourself later on.”
That night, she lent me five hundred.
“Call it a personal loan from me. No school paperwork. Pay me back when things ease up.”
I signed my name on the IOU, the pen tearing through the paper.
The first week of the term, classes, the physical, and club recruitment all piled up at once.
While everyone else bought iced drinks out on the field, I shelved books in the library, fifteen dollars an hour.
At night, back in the dorm, Nancy's messages came one after another.
“Where's the video?”
“Playing dead won't help you.”
“I asked around. Your dining hall's cheap, ten dollars a day is plenty.”
“Send that video or I'll have your cousin come find you.”
On the tenth day, my bank balance was down to twenty-seven sixty.
The cheapest rolls in the dining hall were fifty cents each, and the free-soup window always had a long line.
My roommate Bertha Manning dropped a chicken leg into my bowl.
“I'm dieting. Eat it for me.”
Just as my chopsticks touched the chicken, the phone buzzed again.
Nancy had sent a photo.
In it, Warren stood at the school's south gate.
The next voice message popped up.
“The rules don't get broken. Slap yourself a hundred times and I'll transfer the money right away.”
