Maid for My Nemesis novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Apron

I did not sleep, and I did not cry.

Around two in the morning, I took my yellow apron out of my work bag and laid it flat on my bed.

I looked at it for a long time.

It was the color of a school bus, and a lemon, and the sun.

My mother had bought it for me at a yard sale for one dollar, when I was fifteen, and it had never once embarrassed me.

I decided it wasn't going to start now.

At lunch the next day, I walked into the dining hall at the busiest minute, wearing the apron over my uniform.

Four hundred students were lined up at the trays and the long tables, and every head turned, one after the other.

My stomach twisted, but my feet kept going.

I climbed onto the bench of the nearest table, then up onto the table itself, in my school shoes.

"Hattie!" Ruby hissed from the serving line. "What are you doing?"

"Making a speech," I said, and I turned around.

The hall went quiet.

"You've all seen the picture," I said. "I know you have, because it has six hundred likes."

Somebody giggled, and somebody else shushed them.

"So let me save you the trouble of wondering."

"Yes, that's me. Yes, that's my apron."

"Yes, I clean a house on Orchard Road on weekends, and two nights a week."

A gasp ran through the room.

I kept going.

"I get paid two hundred fifty dollars a week for it. I've counted every single bill, and I am paid to the penny."

I looked straight at Presley, who sat at the center table with her friends, her phone in her hand.

"I lost my stipend two weeks ago, and my mother's rent is due on the first."

"So I got another job. I scrub floors. I'm good at it."

My voice shook, but I kept it loud.

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