They Chose Their Adopted Daughter, So the Real Heiress Walked Out novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Bridge Cohort

Her classmates blame her, Chloe arrives with flowers, and the instructor quits, leaving the class to her.

Nobody in the classroom looked at me when I walked in.

Eight people sat in the old chairs, and every one of them had read the sheet on the door.

The boy in the back row had his hood up and his feet on the next seat.

The girl with the baby had the baby on her lap and a bottle in her free hand.

The man in work boots, who drove a delivery van at night, sat with his arms folded.

I took the empty chair in the front and sat down carefully, because of my ribs.

"So it's her family," the boy in the back said.

He didn't say it to me.

"Her last name's on the check, and her last name pulled the check."

"I didn't pull it," I said.

"Same name."

"Same name," I agreed. "I'm not going to tell you it's not my fault. They did it because of me."

The girl with the baby looked up.

"What did you do?"

"I walked out of a hospital without apologizing to my sister."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

The man in work boots laughed once, short and not friendly.

"I got in this class because I couldn't read a lease," he said. "Now I can. You're telling me it ends in May because of a hospital?"

"It ends in May unless we pass the exam."

"We?"

"I'm in this class too."

The instructor had been standing at the whiteboard the whole time with a marker in his hand.

He was a tired man in his sixties who had been kind to us all year.

He cleared his throat.

"Everyone, please. The exam is real, but it's also passable. If we start today and keep our heads down..."

The door opened.

Chloe stood there in a cream cardigan, holding a bunch of white tulips.

A bandage was still taped above her eyebrow.

A Foundation ambassador badge was pinned to her collar.

"I'm so sorry to interrupt," she said. "I just needed to see her."

The whole room turned.

She crossed the floor and put the tulips on my desk.

"Talia, I haven't slept. I keep thinking it should have been you. I told Eli that. I told him."

She said it gently, in front of everyone.

"Thank you," I said.

"Mom wants you at Family Day on Friday. The donors will all be there. If you just come and sit with us, I know it would fix everything."

"Fix what?"

"Everything." She smiled. "Please? For me?"

The girl with the baby watched Chloe all the way to the door.

I looked at the tulips.

They were wrapped in paper from the florist on Orchard Lane.

She had picked them out between the hospital and here, with a bandage on her forehead.

"I'll think about it," I said.

"Okay." She touched my shoulder, lightly, on the side that didn't hurt. "I'll tell Mom you're thinking."

She left.

The room was quiet for a moment.

"She seems nice," the girl with the baby said.

"She is nice," I said.

I meant it. That was what made it hard to explain to anyone.

The boy in the back finally took his feet off the chair.

"So you're the rich one."

"I have forty-one dollars."

"What are you doing in a cot, then?"

I turned around.

"How did you know about the cot?"

"My cousin's on the paramedic crew. Everybody knows about the cot."

Somebody snorted. The man in work boots uncrossed his arms.

"All right," he said. "What's the plan, rich girl?"

"I don't have one yet."

"That's honest."

"I only know two things. I can fight, and I can read. I'm better at the first one."

"Then what's the use of you?"

"We'll find out," I said. "The proficiency exam is in six weeks. Tell me which one of you is worst at what, and we start with that."

A hand went up in the middle of the room.

"Fractions."

"Reading comprehension," said the girl by the window.

"Everything," said the boy in the back, and he grinned for the first time.

The instructor put down his marker.

At the end of class he waited until the others filed out.

Then he walked over and set a stack of old practice exams in front of me.

"I got an offer from the community college this morning," he said. "I was going to say no. I took it an hour ago."

"You're quitting."

"I'm so sorry, Talia. I've tried for a year. They won't listen to me."

"Why would they listen to me?"

"Because they watched you walk in here and tell the truth with three cracked ribs," he said. "I never once managed that."

He picked up his coat.

The dean would not find anyone to replace him before the exam, and we both knew it.

So the next morning, there was no teacher at the whiteboard.

It was my class now.

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