LATER THAT NIGHT, I was sitting on my bed, eating pad thai out of the carton with chopsticks from the Chinese restaurant (my favorite Thai place never gave out chopsticks; apparently real Thai people don’t use them) and flipping through the pile of mail that had accumulated on my nightstand, a paper mountain of bills and useless notifications, when I came across an envelope from my old friend Sallie—Sallie Mae, the former title holder of my student-loan debt. Who knew how long this letter had been there, buried between various credit card offers and multiple supplications from the World Wildlife Fund.
I was alone in the apartment—Emily was out on a date—but I still set my chopsticks down like a secret I didn’t want anyone to hear before slitting the envelope open.
It was a letter of congratulations, informing me that my debt had been paid in full. It boldfaced my final statement balance: double zeros.
Well I’ll be damned, Sallie Mae.
I released a shocking and spontaneous orgasmic breath. It wasn’t right, how thrilled I was at the sight of those zeros. The sensation that washed over me was like nothing I’d ever felt before, except maybe, appropriately, when I found out I’d gotten into NYU.
I returned the letter to its envelope and set it down onto my nightstand, then inexplicably stashed it beneath my pillow.
It was done. I had a clean slate. A new start, like I was eighteen and hopeful again, but this time I was smarter—too smart to sign my life away to a school I knew nothing about.
The only reference I’d had for NYU when I decided I had to go there was that Theo Huxtable went there in season five of The Cosby Show. I could have chosen a cheaper school, like my parents wanted me to. But cost was no issue, my Doc Marten–boot–stomping self insisted. This was my college education we were talking about! I wanted to go to the best school I could get into, the school I’d seen on television.
Not since then had I been this free.
Emily’s key rattled in the front-door lock, so I returned to my dinner and tried to appear normal, or at least regular. My mouth was full of noodles when she appeared in the bedroom doorway, kicked off her high heels, and said, “I brought you a hamburger.”
I glanced down at my mostly eaten pad thai and attempted an instant calculation of how disgusting it would be to eat both. Then I recalled the hamburger I’d already eaten for lunch and had to recalculate.
“My date sucked,” Emily said, crossing the room. “And I have no intention of ever seeing that jerk again, so when he went to pee, I told the waitress to give me a burger to go.”
Emily dropped a plastic satchel that looked more like a swag bag from the Oscars than a restaurant’s to-go carton onto my nightstand. “It’s actually quality meat, so you’ll probably think it tastes weird.”
She sat beside me and started removing her jewelry, piece by shiny piece. “What’s wrong with you? You look like you’re hiding something, or like you just had sex. What are you hiding?”
How did she already know me so well? I pushed my Thai food aside and allowed myself one nibble of burger, seeing as it was still warm. “I got a letter confirming the untimely death of my student loan.”
Emily’s doll eyes popped. “Let me see it. I bet I’ll be getting one of those too, soon. When I do, we should frame them side by side and hang them on the wall like diplomas.”
I retrieved the letter from beneath my pillow to show her. “My diploma is buried under a dozen rolls of wrapping paper in the bottom drawer of my parents’ china closet.”
Emily put her hand on my shoulder, squeezing as she scanned the letter from top to bottom. “This is way better than a diploma anyway,” she said. “I’ll get the champagne.”
“Hang on a sec.” I caught her by the wrist. “You’ve still never told me, where did you go to college?”
“Harvard,” she muttered, yanking her wrist free and turning quickly away. She scurried to the kitchen.
“How did you get into Harvard?” I called out after her, striving not to put too much emphasis on the you.
Emily returned with a bottle, not bothering with glasses. “Hartford. H-a-r-t-f-o-r-d,” she said, spelling it out for me. “It’s in Connecticut.”
I should have known. Only Emily Johnson would choose a college based on its likelihood to induce favorable misunderstanding.
“You know everyone at Titan thinks you went to—”
“I know.” She uncorked the bottle.
“What was your major?”
“Don’t get me started.” She took a long slug of champagne and handed it off to me. “I wanted to be an actress; that was my biggest mistake. But who knows, maybe there’s still hope for my starring role in Busted: A True Crime Story of Not Getting Away with It.”
My stomach churned, not from the Thai food mixed with my second burger of the day, mixed with champagne, but from the realization that we were in fact an Oxygen network original series waiting to happen.
“Do you think it’s our own fault?” I asked. “That after all these years, we’re still just assistants?”
“You’ve got a few years on me, don’t forget.”
“Two. Two years doesn’t even qualify as a few.”
“But you’re thirty, and that counts extra.”
“I guess it’s all our own fault,” I said.