Study Days
by Jessica Greene Camara
Light snowflakes drift outside the window, oblivious to the heat blasting in my dorm room. It’s the last day of Study Days, the weeklong period before final exams. Everton is notorious for it—late-night cramming sessions in the libraries, sold-out Red Bulls in the campus store, and last-minute nervous breakdowns in virtually every dorm. They say for freshmen, and especially us scholarship kids, Study Days are the true initiation; if you survive your first, you’ll survive the next four years.
But even if I make it through this, I’m still not sure I’ll survive what comes right after: Christmas break. Not after I tell my parents.
“English?!” I can already hear Pops saying, kissing his teeth and pulling out the accent he reserves for yelling at me. “Eh, yu don sabi Inglish!” Then Ma would jump in, all “nobody needs a degree to tell tall tales,” and “you can write your little stories in your free time.” They’d never accept me abandoning pre-med. It’s not that they care about medicine. They aren’t moved by the idea of me healing the sick and saving lives. What they do care about are the bragging rights, being able to say, “Allegra is going to be a doctor,” in that way that swells their chests with pride and shuts up the stank-faced ladies at church. Well, all that will be over soon. In about twelve hours, I will no longer be their perfect daughter that made all their sacrifices worth it. I’ll be some insolent girl who screwed everything up by turning away from the future they’d planned for me. A fuck-up with no plan for how the hell to pay for school. My eyes scan the email from my faculty advisor for the millionth time this week.
Hi Allegra,
I’m more than happy to discuss your interest in changing majors! However, I would like to gently remind you that, to maintain your First Gen in STEM scholarship, you will need to remain within one of the STEM fields such as Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, or Biology.
If you are considering a shift to a non-STEM major, we can certainly discuss other financial aid options. Please be aware that the only other full-ride scholarship available is The President’s Scholarship, which does require maintaining a 4.0 GPA.
4.0. No pressure. Except with the way my cram sesh for Organic Chemistry is going, that’s not going to happen. I pick up the flash cards again. My loopy scrawl in my favorite color—purple—reads back at me: a property of a molecule where it cannot be superimposed on its mirror image. I close my eyes, knowing the term is somewhere in the recesses of my brain. “Mmm…isomerism?” I open my eyes and flip the card over: chirality.
Well, I’m fucked.
The door bangs open and I jump. Inez, my roommate, stands in the doorway, the bags under her eyes so prominent they might as well be designer. She looks about the same as she did last night: wild, new growth still pushing up against her month-old cornrows, toothpaste stain still splattered across her dark, blue t-shirt. It has the word “Baby” scrawled across her chest in glittering, pink cursive. If she were her normal self right now, it would be cute, but all I can think is that she looks exactly like an overgrown baby, crusty-eyed and still in yesterday’s pajamas. Seeing pretty-girl Nez reduced to this state opens a pit in my gut.
The other day in the dining hall, a kid who’d been in my orientation group, Sean or something, came in looking haggard and tripping all over himself. With notebook paper spilling out of his bag and trailing behind him, he floundered over to the desserts table, piled about fifteen donuts onto a tray, and shoved himself in a back booth to stress eat each and every one of them. It was hard watching someone lose it like that, but a table over a couple of frat boys had seen the same scene and laughed their asses off. Mouths full of hamburger meat, they’d chanted at the kid, “Fiiiiire-fly! Fiiire-fly!”
Firefly: the upperclassmen’s term for a bright freshman who burns out quickly and is squashed like a bug. Fireflies do not survive Study Days. As I watch my roommate fumble through scattered notes, knocking over her half-empty emergency Xanax bottle, I fear she may be one of them.
“Hey, Nez…”
She continues scrambling at her desk as if I haven’t said a word, looking for God knows what. I eye the pills scattered across the floor again and clear my throat.
“Inez!”
She jumps at my voice, slamming her knee into the table. “Shit,” she hisses to herself, before turning to me to snap, “What?!”
I cock an eyebrow her way to remind her who she’s talking to.
Her shoulders settle. “My bad. What’s up?”
I gesture to her disheveled appearance and mess of a desk. “I could ask you the same thing.”
She sighs.
“…But I won’t. Hey, I get it. We’re all stressed. You wanna eat? I could make something on the hot plate.” Hot plates aren’t technically allowed in dorms, but who the hell could survive off a mini-fridge and microwave? My hot plate and seasoning skills are something of an open secret on our floor. On Wednesdays, when our Resident Assistant, Samantha, has an 8:00a.m., the other girls on the floor bring their offerings of eggs and bacon and sausages, and in return, my little Walmart hot plate cooks us up a real breakfast, none of that unseasoned dining hall crap.
Nez leafs through a nearly empty binder. “Nah,” she says, not looking at me. “I left my laptop in the library. I just needed my flashcards for Organic Chem…but I can’t find them. Have you seen ‘em anywhere?”
Left her laptop? Now I know she’s bugging. As part of the First Gen in STEM scholarship program, the school provides us with loaner laptops, but they made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that we were absolutely on the hook for returning them upon graduation. A missing laptop would mean a hefty ass bill, one I know Inez can’t afford.
“Well, why don’t you at least eat something—”
“I said no!”
The silence that follows is nearly as loud as her outburst. I get she’s stressed right now, but her attitude is trying me. I have my own shit to worry about.
My face must communicate my aggravation, because Inez slips out a hurried, “Sorry.” She grabs a granola bar from the snack basket on the top of the microwave. “I’ll eat a real meal after the exam. After I pass.” She gives me a resigned smile and wrenches open the door.
We gasp. Hovering just on the opposite side of our door stands Samantha, holding instant ramen in one hand and two bottles of water in the other. “Hello,” she says, seemingly to both of us, but her blue eyes lock onto mine. “I had no intentions of startling you,” she adds, her voice its usual too-chipper tone, but laced with a mechanical manner as if reading from a script. “As you may have heard, there is going to be a major snowstorm tonight.”
I feel Sam’s eyes on me even as I shift my gaze toward the window, where the gentle snowflakes have transformed to a stark-white downfall unrelenting against the black, night sky. Damn. At some point in my worrying about Inez, it really started coming down.
“Due to the storm, Public Safety has issued a shelter-in-place order, effective immediately,” Sam recites. “All student centers, academic buildings, and libraries will be closed for the remainder of the night and students are asked to stay in their rooms with windows shut.” Man, Sam seems out of it. Study Days must be getting to her, too. Her eyes stay fixed on me, but they look glassy, distant, as if gazing into some galaxy far away. I wonder how many times she’s had to relay this same message. I wonder if they’d ever let a first year become an RA. That’s free room and board, at least.
“What?!” Inez’s protest calls me back to the present. “But, but, I have to get back to the library.”
Sam plasters on a strained smile. She responds to Inez, but her eyes don’t leave mine. “Unfortunately, the library will be closed for the remainder of the night.”
I think this might just be the moment I watch my roommate self-destruct.
“Okay, thanks, Sam,” I cut in, placing my body between them while Inez’s eye twitches behind me. I grab the ramen and water bottles. As my fingers graze Samantha’s, her smile falters. Before I can close the door, she reaches up to grab the handle and slams it shut herself.
Damn. What’s her problem?
But I can’t focus on my weird RA right now. Because when I turn to face Inez, great pools are threatening to spill over the edges of her eyes. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s other people’s tears.
“Hey, um, Nez?” I say gently, because her entire body is shaking. It seems as if the rings under her eyes have only deepened in the last five minutes. Fingers trembling, she whips her head to face me, a raccoon in headlights. Nez is losing it, but one look at her and I see a mirror of my own desperation, how easily this could be me. We’re both on the edge, pushed by expectations we didn’t ask for.
“I’m sure your laptop will be fine,” I lie.
Inez bites her lower lip, which she’s already chewed raw. “It’s not just that, it’s—”
“The final,” I finish for her. “Look, I’m nervous about that, too.” Only a half lie. I am nervous: about my major, my parents, my scholarship, and everything that comes next. I walk over to my desk and hold up my flash cards. “We can still study. See?”
Her wild eyes twitch before settling on the stack of index cards in my hand. I can almost hear the wheels churning in her head, calculating. “Uh-uh. That’s not enough. Not nearly good enough,” she’s saying to herself. Or maybe it’s my own voice I’m hearing. Outside, the wind howls.
Inez runs her fingers over her face, and it’s then that I see she’s missing two pink acrylics. That’s not good. Nez is a nail girl. Has no money, but always spends her last dollar getting her full set refilled every three weeks. She’s skipped class before because she broke a nail opening a jar of peppers and couldn’t be seen “looking raggedy.” Those two missing nails are a sign: Nez is officially a firefly. She’s burnt out. Only thing left is the squashing. I feel bad for her, of course. But at the same time, I’m relieved that it’s not me. I haven’t lost it. Which means I haven’t lost. Not yet.
I collect the remainder of my notes and gesture for her to sit on the rug that parts her side of the room from mine. She sits. I sit. I place the flashcards between us, knowing they won’t change a damn thing. We’re snowflakes in a storm.
“Okay, so,” I start, pulling up the first card, “a reaction where an ester reacts with water.”
Inez picks at the rug with one of her broken nails and exhales loudly. “Hydrolysis.”
I flip over the term. “Correct. Not so bad, see?”
She doesn’t look at me, just keeps picking at the rug, but the corner of her mouth does curl up a bit.
I grab at the next one. “Alright, a property of a molecule where it cannot be superimposed on its mirror–”
“Chirality.” She sighs again. Damn. That was one of the ones I kept getting wrong. I try to keep the pace going, but after her third sigh, I shove the stack of cards down.
“Something wrong?” My voice comes out testier than I’d wanted.
Maddeningly, Inez sighs again. “Nah, it’s fine…” She rises and moves to her desk. “I’m just gonna make a new set.”
“What’s wrong with this set?” I hate how childish and defensive my question comes out.
Her hesitation tells me that the “nothing” she draws out is a complete lie. “I’ll just,” she grabs index cards from her drawer and starts sorting them by color. “I’ll probably learn it faster by writing out the terms and equations myself.”
Something about the gentleness in her tone, as if I’m the one who needs to be tiptoed around, pisses me off. “Fine,” I say, flopping onto my bed and jabbing the power button for the TV. “Good luck.”
A pounding on the door seconds later makes me jump. Even though her desk is much closer to the door, Inez continues her notes as if she hasn’t heard a thing.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get it,” I might as well say to an empty room.
It’s Sam again. Her strained smile has been replaced by furrowed brows and red cheeks, and the bottoms of her slippers are caked in melting snow. “You’ll need to keep down all the noise,” she says.
I twist my head to look back into the apartment. Nez is silently scribbling away, and the TV, which has been on for all of fifteen seconds, is barely audible from where I’m standing. “Noise?”
“Yes. It’s way too loud in there,” she insists, pointing an accusatory finger straight at my chest, as if she can hear how loud my heart is pounding. Can she?
“We’re…not being loud,” I say, taking a step back.
It’s like Sam doesn’t even hear me. She looks beyond me, brows still knitted together. “How’s the studying going, Allegra?”
The heat of the room intensifies at her question. I try to mask the thundering in my chest with a forced smile. The weight of my decision lays as heavy as the snow on her shoes, seeping into the carpet. It’s like Sam knows, and she—with her two jobs and perfect GPA—hates me for it.
“Um, it’s fine. We’re just trying to get through it, like everybody else.”
Her eyes snap back to mine, and there’s an unsettling pull in her stare that tugs at the back of my navel. “You know the ship tightens for everyone during study days. If you don’t get it together, there will be problems.”
“Problems?” I start to argue, feigning offense. “Problems like w—?”
But Sam shuts the door in my face. I am so stunned for a moment that I just stand there blinking into the closed door until something below me catches my eye. Underneath the door frame, I can see the shadow of two feet standing just on the other side, just…lurking. I don’t know why, but her presence makes my breath catch in my throat, my hands clenching before I even realize it. Did she just threaten me? When I wrench the door back open to tell Sam about herself, she’s gone.
Jesus. Sick of my crazy roommate and my crazier RA, I flop back onto bed and put in my headphones. All I need is some lo-fi to drown out the nonsense. It’s hard to relax, though. I keep catching Nez fidgeting in my peripheral vision. I close my eyes and try to vibe with the music. Until the crash. When I sit up, Inez is up, her desk chair is on the ground, and the flashcards are strewn all over the place. She’s sobbing. Shit. It’s happening.
“Hey, hey.” I jump up and wrap an arm around her, guiding her to sit on her bed. “Let’s take a break, huh?”
Inez is blubbering like a baby. “You don’t understand. It’s, it’s just I’ve sacrificed everything to get here. I was valedictorian in high school, you know?” How could I forget? She only mentions it all the time. “And my parents…my dad picked up a third job for my SAT prep course because I wanted to come here so badly. It nearly killed him.” She wipes her nose with a blanket. “I owe them so much, and pre-med is the only way I can pay them back. But it’s so hard.” I hand her a tissue. She takes a huge, trumpeting blow and I covertly scoot an inch away.
“Hey, girl, I definitely get it. We’re in the same boat. It’s hard as hell.” I laugh and admit how stressful this week has been for me, too. I tell her the story about the boy in the dining hall, and she falls over laughing, sharing a story about a girl who pooped her pants in the library.
“At least we’re not that messed up,” she says, finally smiling.
“Yeah, everybody’s gotten a little weird. Like, what’s good with Sam? One minute she’s talking like a robot, and the next she’s making these veiled threats, like ‘oh, you better get it together, or else.’ She’s creeping me out.”
Inez snorts. “Right. And what’s up with her hair?”
I look at her pointedly. “Girl, I know you not talking.” We both burst out laughing, the acknowledgement of how far she’s lost it suddenly hilarious at this hour.
Then Inez stops laughing. “Wait,” she says, sitting up.
My giggles subside. “Yeah?”
“Veiled threats? From Samantha? You know about her, right?”
“No. What exactly am I supposed to know?”
“People said she was kicked out of her old school for murdering another student.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“You didn’t hear that during your orientation? It was going around that one of the female RAs was an RA at Columbia, but then she had a complete nervous breakdown and stabbed one of her residents with a knitting needle.”
I didn’t hear anything like that at my orientation, nor did I believe Everton would let someone like that in, but there was that unsettling feeling again, just behind my belly button. And Inez was insistent. “Didn’t Sam say she was a transfer student on our first day?”
I shrug. “To keep it real with you, I can’t remember anything that happened on the first day.”
Inez sucks her teeth and whispers, “of course not,” which I try not to take personally. Try, but fail. Even though she’s never said it aloud, I know Inez thinks she’s smarter than me. I might not have graduated first in my class and might suck at chemistry, but we both got into this school. And not because of some affirmative action bullshit, like some of my classmates smirk about behind my back when they think I can’t hear them. It’s easy to be a genius when you’re so busy studying that no one invites you to parties and your DMs are drier than the dining hall food.
But I am well rounded. My life is full. And I am way smarter than anyone gives me credit for.
I have to be.
“She definitely said it. Hang on. Lemme Google it.” She whips out her phone, entering 1-2-3-4 as her passcode. Some genius. She tries searching for Sam by name, but neither of us can remember her last name. Then she tries “Samantha Columbia RA” and “RA attacks student Columbia” but nothing comes back. We’re both ready to give up when Inez gasps. “Found it,” she says, opening up a New York Times article. “Student, twenty, found dead in her dorm room,” Nez reads, her voice disturbingly excited. “In a tragic event at Columbia University, a student identified as Alexandra Zhang was found deceased in her dorm room yesterday. Miss Zhang was a bright, young woman, attending the school on a highly-selective robotics scholarship. Her roommate, Samantha Reynolds, described Alex as ‘more than just a friend; she was a part of me. Everyone who met her loved her. It’s strange to think that now, she’s gone in such a quiet, solitary way.’”
My heart back flips in my stomach. “She was a part of me?”
“That’s so creepy,” Nez says, voice still full of twisted glee. It’s like she’s watching one of her true crime documentaries. I hate that crap, but Nez is completely into it. If she had it her way, we’d fall asleep every night to stories of serial killers and cannibals. “‘A quiet and solitary way,’ what does that even mean?” She continues scrolling. “It doesn’t say anything about the knitting needle, though. I’m trying to see what the cause of…oh.” She stops.
I scoot closer to her. “What? What does it say?”
She points to the bottom of the article. “Officials have ruled Miss Zhang’s death a suicide.” She lowers the phone, her voice almost disappointed at the news.
“When was this?” I ask.
Nez scans the article. “Mmmm…looks like it was last December, during a…” Her voice trails off.
“What?”
She clears her throat and reads aloud. “Emergency services were delayed arriving at the scene due to the severe snowstorm rocking the Northeast.”
I gaze out the window at the thick, white flakes swirling in the dark. Same storm. Same month. Same silence in the halls. If you squint, you might be able to imagine that time was looping back in on itself.
As if the storm had brought something else back with it.
Nez and I stare at each other in silence. I can see her left eye twitch.
Study Days at our highly competitive university are definitely getting the better of us, each in our own way.
But I have a secret. A factor in this godforsaken equation that my roommate doesn’t know—
About my plan to switch majors from STEM to English. Because one extra second studying molecular construction and I will swan dive from the bell tower in the quad.
About how, in doing so, my STEM scholarship goes poof, like the wind.
And how the only way to stay in this hellish cauldron of first gen ambition and bootstrap desperation is to qualify for another grant, which requires a perfect average.
Perfect. 4.0
No room for error.
So, yeah. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
Not to mention that my parents will absolutely lose their collective shit if I can’t pull it off.
But my dad once told me that sometimes, to move forward, you have to break a few rules. Whatever it takes. He did it back in my senior year of high school, when I was still waiting to hear from Everton. Something had happened, but nothing we ever talked about. Just like we never mentioned the blood on his knuckles that night, or the way Ma started whistling while she cooked dinner, like she was trying to drown something out. I didn’t ask, and anyway, my acceptance letter came in the next day.
Whatever it takes. I’m sure he never thought I’d take that advice and use it to go against him. Yet here I am.
Still, it’s not my eye twitching.
I cough to break the quiet. “To sum up, not only are our entire academic, and probably personal futures riding on these finals, but our RA’s roommate died last year. Mysteriously. During a nasty snowstorm. Just like the one out there.”
I point to the window.
Inez nods and turns to look at the heavy flakes swirling in the streetlight. “Yeah.”
“Well. That’s messed up.”
Neither of us say it, but we’re both thinking the same thing: maybe Sam’s got a bit more going on right now than just stress from Study Days. My stomach twists. The room feels too still, like the air is thickening, pressing in. I move to pick up Inez’s flash cards when something catches my eye.
A shadow.
It’s faint, barely there under the doorframe, but unmistakable. My pulse quickens, and I freeze, eyes locked on the thin strip of darkness stretching across the light. “What’s wr—” Inez starts, but I clamp a hand over her mouth. Her eyes go wide with confusion, but she doesn’t fight me. Slowly, I lower my hand and point toward the door.
“Look.”
The shadow moves again, stretching slowly, deliberately. My throat tightens. I can hear shuffling outside, the soft squishing of soaked slippers pressing into the carpet, the sound of melting snow.
“Is it her? Is it Sam?” Nez grips my hand, her remaining fingernails digging into my skin. The silhouette lingers just outside our door. My heart pounds louder with each second that passes, the silence between us growing heavier. Neither of us moves.
Finally, the shadow shifts. The footsteps squish against the floor before fading down the hall.
I pull my hand back, sucking in a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
“How long was she out there? You think she heard us?” Even though I’m pretty sure Sam’s gone, Inez is still whispering.
I shake my head. “No idea.”
SLAM!
We both jolt, a scream catching in my throat. The door rattles like someone’s trying to kick it open. Inez squeezes her eyes shut, burying her face in her knees.
This is getting ridiculous. I lunge at the door and wrench it open.
There are three guys I’ve never seen before just outside our door: tall, broad-shouldered, clearly athletes. One’s cradling a football, another’s tackling him into the wall, laughing so loud it echoes down the hallway. The third guy, fine as hell, skids in place, nearly slipping on the puddle of slush from their snow-soaked sneakers.
“Yo!” he calls to his buddies. He turns toward me, grinning. “My bad.” Then, eyeing my shorts, he adds, “Damn. If I knew you were gonna answer, I would’ve knocked harder.” His green eyes sparkle with mischief.
I cock an eyebrow at him and chuckle. Probably, when this is all over. But not tonight.
“Idiots,” Nez mutters behind me.
The boys laugh again, still half-wrestling before jogging off, shouting something about taking it to the laundry room.
I’m about to shut the door when I see her.
Sam’s standing at the end of the hallway, her face illuminated by the light of the vending machine. She doesn’t say a word, just watches.
Not the guys. Me.
For a second, I swear she sees straight through me. She knows something I haven’t even admitted to myself.
She’s still watching when I close the door. This time, I make sure that I lock it.
Nez doesn’t see any of this. She’s laid back on her bed with her feet up, scrolling through her phone. “You know, Reynolds…” she says. “That might not be our Sam’s last name after all. I mean, there’s no picture or anything. Maybe I’m getting the school wrong…”
I nod, trying to shake the goosebumps creeping up the back of my neck. “Yeah, maybe the story about her is bullshit.” Is it? “It’s probably just some dumb rumor.” I’m not so sure. “Like the pool on the roof, or the Humanities building being haunted.”
She chuckles. “Yeah. Or the one about getting a 4.0 if your roommate unalives themselves.”
“Or that thing with Dean Kincaid being a spy.”
Inez grins. “Actually, that one is half-true.” I raise my eyebrows at her. “For real! His wife is my psych professor. He’s not a spy, but he did work for the CIA before becoming a professor.”
I shake my head and offer to make the ramen. Maybe she’s tired of fighting my pleas for her to eat, because Nez accepts. I collect the flashcards from the floor and toss them to her. Before heading to the microwave, I even gather the spilled pills, dropping them back into her prescription bottle. Nez starts studying again, and this time, she seems a lot more relaxed.
Maybe she’s made of stronger stuff than I thought. Maybe she's not a firefly after all.
When I hand her the ramen, she slurps it down greedily. “Damn, I hate when you’re right. I must be hungry as hell because this is giving me life right now. You add extra seasoning to it or something?”
I smile, placing my own cup on my nightstand and crawling into bed. “You know how I do.”
Nez nods in approval before taking another big slurp. “You know Sam’s exam schedule? We should do a breakfast with the girls whatever day she’s not here.”
I spin my fork around my noodles, letting the steam waft into my face. “Not sure.”
Nez has already finished hers and is chugging the broth. She sets the empty cup at her bedside.
Finally, the vibes settle, and we’re working in amicable silence. Then Inez looks up as she reaches across her nightstand. “Hey, I can make a second set of these flash cards if you want. No offense, but your notes su…” The empty ramen cup comes clattering to the ground as she folds over on her bed.
My heart starts pounding. “Nez?”
No answer.
I get up, crossing the room to her bed. I prop open one eye and call out, “Inez!” But as soon as I let go, her eye rolls shut and she doesn’t respond.
My heart settles.
Jesus. Took her long enough.
Then I get to work. Shouldn’t take long. She’s made it so easy. I click 1-2-3-4 on her lock screen and schedule a text message to a group chat named Parentals. I’m so sorry and so on. Eyeing the strip under the door and finding it shadowless, I strip and head to the bathroom in my towel, making sure to slam the door on the way out. Samantha pops her head into the hall and gives me an angry “Allegra!” I take a long shower, the best I’ve had in a year, letting the hot water scrub me clean of the guilt and anxiety. When I slip back in the room, Inez is stirring, which is strange, because I crushed every last pill into that broth. Despite everything, she’s one tough bitch. I’ll always remember that about her. Well, time is of the essence then. The snowstorm outside has reached a fever pitch, the wind howling and the snowflakes now a blur of white fury against the dark. My pounding heart has found its way to my ears, thumping fiercely as I do what I must. I straddle Inez, watching her crusty eyes widen with shock and betrayal before I grab a pillow from underneath her and press it deep into her face. She struggles once, but she is still too doped up to fight back much. It’s not long till I feel the tension in her body fade like a candle extinguishing. It’s over.
It’s her own fault, really. In a second, when everyone rushes in, they’ll see the mess of a desk, the empty Xanax bottle, the dirty pajamas and they’ll come to the obvious conclusion. Inez was a firefly. She shined brightly for all of one semester, and then she burned out and was squashed like a bug. Happens all the time. Shame she left her roommate to find her.
If your roommate kills themselves, you get a 4.0.
I look out into the night. The storm is still raging, but it doesn’t look so dangerous from here. With the world enveloped in white, it looks like a clean slate. I glance back at my roommate’s lifeless body and gently close her eyelids. She could be sleeping. It’s a shame, such a smart girl, gone in such a quiet, solitary way. But I’m ready for my 4.0.
I watch the flakes rush to pile onto one another, feeling warm. Then, I clear my throat, and let out a blood-curdling scream.
YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF THE CHAIN.
Come back every Tuesday… if you dare.
About the author
Jessica Greene Camara writes fiction and poetry, sometimes tender, sometimes haunting. She holds a BA in English from Rowan University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers Newark, where she was the Ralph Johnson Bunche fellow. Her work has been published in Avant. When not writing, Jessica teaches high school English. She lives in Jersey City, NJ with her wife and cat and loves a good plot twist.
Omg! The ending for this was crazy
Oh, so she's CRAZY crazy!