Chapter 10: Mending

I didn't touch the suit.

I stood in the doorway and looked at it.

The cut ran straight down the center back seam, clean.

They had known exactly where to hurt.

Will was already on the phone.

Not to campus security. To the town police.

"Break-in," he said. "North-quad residence hall, room three-fourteen. And I'd like an officer who doesn't get paychecks from the university."

Maddie was still sitting on the top step, staring at her phone.

I sat down next to her.

"Hey," I said.

"I'm fine," she said. "I'm totally fine. I'll go home and work at the bait shop. It's fine. Worms are fine."

"Maddie."

"I like worms."

"You're not going home."

"Georgia, she just..."

"You're not going home," I said. "I'll pay your tuition myself until the board fixes this. Starting tomorrow."

She shook her head hard.

"No. I'm not your charity case. I'm not anybody's charity case. I stood on a chair."

"It's not charity. It's back pay. You sewed for this university for a year and never got a dime."

She opened her mouth. Shut it.

"That's a very lawyer thing to say," she said finally.

"I've been hanging around a lawyer."

"I'm not a lawyer yet," Will said from inside my room. "But that was a good one. I'm stealing it."

The town police came at midnight.

A tired officer took photos and wrote things down.

He looked at the cut in the jacket for a long time.

"Somebody really doesn't like you," he said.

"Somebody's just been told no," I said.

When he left, it was the three of us and the wreck.

Will went out and came back with two pizzas and a six-pack of root beer from the gas station.

We cleared a space on the floor and sat in it.

Maddie sat cross-legged with my mother's jacket across her lap.

She'd asked first. She'd asked very quietly.

"I can fix this," she said.

"You don't have to."

"It's a center back seam. They cut on the seam line. They wanted it to look worse than it is."

She ran her thumb along the edge.

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