She Picked the Wrong Charity Case

I was a scholarship student with thirty extra pounds. Del Ashford had two hundred thousand followers and her family's supplement brand on every wall of the athletic center. First week of school, she decided we were going to be best friends.

She said she wanted to help me get in shape. What that actually looked like: I carried her product shipments up three flights of stairs, drafted her ambassador emails, and picked up her lunch from the place across campus that didn't deliver.

My roommates started calling me her errand girl behind my back. I let them.

She also introduced me to Beckett Hale. After that, things went the way they went.

She knocked my protein shake over and said I'd burned her. She planted her limited-edition earphones in my bag and told everyone I'd stolen them. The school opened a conduct review. My roommates stopped talking to me.

Beckett said I was the kind of girl who got a little attention and started thinking she deserved more of it.

I couldn't prove any of it. By spring, I was gone.

Some people just aren't built for this, Wren. You know that, right?

Del hadn't even been looking at me when she said it.

Then I opened my eyes and I was back at the party. The night she introduced me to Beckett.

"Beck." Del pulled me forward by the arm. "This is Wren. She's kind of my project this semester — helping her lose some weight, get on the program." She smiled at him over my head. "Give it a few months and you might start ignoring me for her."

Beckett looked at me. Once. Back to his drink.

"Doubt it," he said.

Del laughed like that was the right answer.

His family had their name on three apartment complexes within two miles of campus. Students signed leases a year in advance. I'd learned that from Del, the way I'd learned everything about him — bits and pieces she dropped without thinking.

Del squeezed my arm and kept going. "She's got such a good face though. Once she actually commits—"

"I need some air," I said. "Back in a minute."

I found him outside before I went looking. Far end of the back steps, alone, phone face-down. I knew he'd be there — Del had mentioned it once in passing, the kind of thing she said and immediately forgot. This date, every year. Something about his mom.

I reached into my bag. Last energy bar in the box. I bought them one at a time from the co-op near campus, close to two hours of wages each, and I'd been stretching this box for two weeks.

I put it on the step next to him.

"You haven't eaten. Drinking on empty just makes it worse."

He looked at the bar. Then at me.

"I don't need you feeling sorry for me."

"I don't. I just don't want to deal with someone passing out on Del's front steps."

"You're not going to ask why I'm out here?"

"No," I said, and went back inside.

Del scolded me for disappearing without telling her. I apologized. I was going to be doing a lot of that.

The weeks after looked like this: shipment days, I hauled boxes. When Del didn't feel like going to class, I grabbed whatever she needed from the lecture slides.

When she posted about the ambassador program, there was sometimes a photo of me from behind — body visible, face cropped out — captioned something like progress is a process. Her followers left comments I stopped reading after the second week.

She'd say things in front of people that sounded like encouragement. Wren's been so dedicated. You can really start to see it. People would nod. Nobody asked if I wanted to be talked about like that.

Beckett came by sometimes. He had reasons to be wherever Del was, and then gradually he had reasons to be wherever I was too.

Del watched it happen with the kind of satisfaction that meant she thought she'd planned it. She liked Beckett the way you like something you've decided belongs to you — not enough to commit, just enough to keep him around. A girl like me, by her math, was safe. Something to point him at while she figured out what she wanted.

She thought she was running this.

Getting his attention was part of what I came back for. Just not the part she knew about.