The Boy You Starved for Him novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Ahead of Him

I did not sleep.

At six in the morning I went down to the diner kitchen, where Norman was already cracking eggs into a steel bowl.

I put my phone on the prep table, with Dexter's texts open.

"Read these," I said.

Norman wiped his hands on his apron and read them slowly, moving his lips a little.

"What's he mean, the dean?"

"I write college essays for other students," I said. "For money. I've done it since September. Nine papers, maybe ten."

Norman set the phone down.

I waited for him to say I was fired.

"That's how you bought the bagels," he said.

"Yes."

"That's how you paid the gas station for the bus pass."

"Yes."

"Is it against the school rules?"

"Yes."

He cracked another egg.

"Then you should have asked me for a raise," he said. "And you can stop. But it was a bad way to stay alive, and you weren't doing it to cheat anybody. You were hungry."

My throat closed.

"Dexter is going to tell the dean," I said. "He wants me to take back what I said about the money."

"What did you say?"

"That I never got it."

"Is that true?"

"Norman, you saw the statement."

"I did," Norman said. "So you're not taking back anything. You're getting ahead of him."

I looked at him.

"Whoever tells it first gets to say what it means," he said. "Tell the people who matter before he does. Tell them in your own words."

I stood there until the eggs started to burn.

Then I went upstairs and wrote four emails.

The first three went to the students who had paid me. I told each of them I was done, that I would refund what they had paid me for anything unfinished, and that if the school asked, I would tell the truth.

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