number she didn’t recognize, she thought about stuffing it
back into her bag immediately. She was sitting near the back
and the prof hadn’t noticed her when she took her phone out.
There were at least two hundred other kids in the class. She
told herself she wouldn’t get noticed even if she kept looking
down at her lap instead of paying attention.
Even if the prof did notice, what then? Was he going to call
her out for using her phone when everyone in the class was an
adult? It wasn’t like it was high school. In college, people had
real emergencies they needed their phones for. People had kids
and lives and jobs and sometimes they needed to be reached.
Even if they didn’t, Emily doubted the prof would even care.
He was droning on about, well, she didn’t actually know what
because she hadn’t been paying attention long before her
phone went off.
Emily flipped her textbook off the armrest and slid it into
her lap. Tucking her phone into it, she brought it up to where
she could more easily read it.
No one texted her from numbers she didn’t know.
She scanned the text. Her heart beating strangely for no
reason at all other than getting a mysterious text was the most
exciting thing that had happened to her since- since she left
that little shop in the French Quarter eight days ago.
Yeah. It’s not like I have a very rockin’ life. Unlike Mom.
Emily knew she wasn’t being nice. Her mother’s
announcement about her latest show had nothing to do with
Emily at all. It had nothing to do with wanting to spite Emily,
with making a point, with drilling home the idea that she
wasn’t going to help her own daughter while she herself
succeeded wildly.