Desperate for Approval novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Speech

In the spring of my junior year, a woman from the dean's office stopped me outside the library.

"Britta Holm? You've won the national scholarship. The foundation wants a student to speak at the ceremony on Friday."

"Me?"

"They asked for someone who earned it the hard way. That's you."

I laughed, and then I saw she was serious.

The ceremony was in the big auditorium.

Two hundred seats were full, and the front rows were filled with parents in nice coats.

I stood in the wings in my one good blue dress, holding a folded page with my hands sweating through it.

A woman from the foundation had handed me an envelope backstage, and it held a letter that said twenty thousand dollars a year, for two years.

I had read the number four times without believing it.

My phone was off in my bag.

For the first time in two years I didn't need it on in case someone wanted me to explain myself.

Grandma sat in the second row.

I had bought her a plum-colored dress at a consignment shop, and she had tucked a tissue up her sleeve in case she cried.

She waved at me with two fingers, small, so no one would notice.

My roommate sat beside her, because she had a sixth sense about when I needed backup.

The dean introduced me.

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