Chapter 12: The Fall Edit

"He's selling them," Will said. "He's actually selling them. On campus."

"He's suspended from campus housing," I said. "Not from the lawn."

"Read the fine print."

"I wrote the fine print."

Maddie texted again.

"I'm going over there."

"Wait for us," I typed.

"Too late. I'm in my overalls. Nobody notices overalls."

I stood up.

"I need twenty minutes," I said.

Will looked at me. "For what?"

"To get dressed."

He followed me back to north-quad.

Maddie wasn't there. My room was still a wreck.

But the jacket was gone from the box spring.

On my desk chair, folded neatly, was my mother's jacket.

I picked it up.

The center back seam was closed.

I turned it over and over in my hands. I looked inside, at the lining.

The stitches were so small I needed the window light to find them.

She'd told me three nights. She had done it in the two hours I was gone.

Under it was a white shirt. Not silk. Cotton poplin, with a pleated bib, the pleats running right to left.

A sticky note was stuck to the collar in Maddie's round handwriting.

"Straight seam. I lied about three nights so you'd be impressed. Shirt is not your mom's, sorry, best I had. Pleats go the RIGHT way."

I sat down on the floor and held it for a minute.

Will didn't say anything. He just waited.

Then I got dressed.

The pop-up tent took up half the lawn in front of the student union.

It was crowded. There were maybe a hundred students around it, browsing the racks, holding jackets up to their shoulders.

Sterne Group staff in black polos ran the register.

A speaker played something with a heavy beat.

Hunter stood in the middle of it all, in his navy suit, shaking hands.

Tyler stood beside him holding a clipboard.

I walked across the lawn.

People started to notice.

First one head turned. Then five. Then twenty.

By the time I reached the tent, the music was the only thing still making noise.

I stopped at the edge of the rack.

Hunter turned around.

He saw the jacket.

The real one, closed up the back so cleanly you'd never know a box cutter had been through it.

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