Chapter 24: Approved

The dining hall opened at eleven, and I was first in the line.

It was a gray morning, the first week of spring term, and the windows were fogged on the inside.

The soup of the day was tomato.

It cost four dollars and fifty cents.

The same cashier stood behind the register, a heavy woman with a pencil in her hair.

She looked at me and then at my hand, where the stitches had come out and left a pink line.

"Morning," she said. "Just the soup?"

"For now."

I took a bowl and put it on her tray.

In my pocket was a card with my name on it, plain and gray, not black.

Mom had gone with me to the bank to get it.

She had stood at the counter in her good coat the whole time, because she wanted to watch the card come out of the machine.

I held it out.

The cashier took it and slid it through the reader.

My stomach tightened.

I could not help it.

The little screen thought for a moment.

Then it beeped, short and bright, and a single word came up.

Approved.

The cashier tore the receipt and handed it to me.

"That's four fifty," she said. "You're all set."

I stood there with the receipt in my hand.

Behind me the line had grown, ten students, then twenty, with their trays and their coats and their phones.