Chapter 18: The Check

I did not sleep.

I lay in my bed and listened to the couch spring creak under a boy who was also awake.

At seven I put the cream envelope in my bag.

I did not tell Drake what I was going to do.

He didn't ask. He walked beside me to the bus stop and said nothing the whole way.

I waited all day.

At last bell, six hundred students poured out onto the front steps of Ridgemont, and a black car was idling at the curb.

I knew that car.

The rear window slid down.

Mr. Hargrove sat in the back with a folder on his knee, waiting for the board meeting at four.

I walked down the steps toward him.

I set my phone on the stone ledge to free my hands.

The screen was still lit from Cassie's last message. I did not look at it again.

"Mr. Hargrove," I said. "You forgot something at my door."

People slowed on the steps. Phones came up, one after another.

I took the check out of the envelope and held it high, so the back rows could see the amount.

"It's for two hundred thousand dollars," I said, clearly. "The memo says, 'For leaving.'"

A murmur ran down the steps.

"Miss Rafferty." His voice was low. "This isn't the place."

"You said that at the dinner. I asked you for a better one. You never answered."

I looked straight at him.

"My mother worked in your building for eleven years. You fired her for a photograph, and then you took her back to save your face."

I tore the check in half.

"You can't buy a girl out of her own school."

I tore it again, and again, until it was a handful of blue-lined paper.

"If you have that money to spare, take it to Maple Court."

"Give it to the women who wipe your father in the night."

I leaned in and dropped the pieces onto his folder, through the open window.

They scattered across his knee. One slid off onto the leather seat.

The steps were silent. Then someone near the top began to clap, and someone else joined in, and it spread.

Mr. Hargrove did not look at the paper.

"Your scholarship renews in March, Miss Rafferty," he said, so softly that only I could hear. "I'd think about that."

"I have," I said. "Then you'll have to explain it to everyone on these steps."

He held my eyes for a long second.

The window slid up. The car pulled away from the curb, and the applause followed it down the drive.

Drake stood at the top of the steps with his hands at his sides, white to the lips.

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