THE PRICE OF DREAMS
JODY'S POV
Forty-three dollars and seventeen cents. That's what stood between me and complete academic failure.
I stared at the numbers on my laptop screen until they blurred, as if squinting hard enough might make them multiply. The crack running diagonal across the corner cast a shadow over my bank balance, making the pathetic sum look even smaller. Through the paper-thin walls of Sterling Hall, my neighbors debated their dinner plans with the casual indifference that came from never checking price tags.
"Should we do Le Bernardin or just grab sushi at Nobu?" The voice belonged to Madison, whose designer handbags cost more than my entire semester's food budget.
"Ugh, I'm so over sushi. What about that new place in SoHo? I heard they have truffle everything."
I pressed my palms against my ears, but their laughter seeped through anyway. The organic chemistry textbook sat on my desk like a monument to everything wrong with my situation. Six hundred dollars. For one book. The same amount my grandmother spent on groceries for three months back in Millerville.
My fingers hovered over the laptop keys, pulling up the email I'd read seventeen times since this morning. Professor Martinez's words hadn't changed, but I kept hoping they would rearrange themselves into something less devastating.
Miss Hopkins, you have eight weeks to bring your grade up to passing, or you'll need to retake the course next year.
Next year meant another year of tuition I couldn't afford. Another year of watching my dreams dissolve while everyone else moved forward. I pulled up my course materials, scrolling through the required reading list with a growing knot in my stomach. Half the books were "recommended" but functionally mandatory if I wanted any chance of understanding the lectures.
The acceptance letter to Ashford was still pinned to my bulletin board, its elegant letterhead mocking me now. "We are pleased to offer you a full academic scholarship..." I'd read those words to Grandma over the phone, both of us crying in our tiny kitchen while she heated up another can of soup for dinner. The scholarship covered tuition and basic housing, but somehow they'd failed to mention the countless other expenses that would slowly strangle me.
Lab fees. Technology fees. Books that cost more than some people's rent. Meal plans that barely covered two meals a day. The hidden costs of trying to fit in among people who treated money like air—necessary but not worth thinking about.
My phone buzzed. Another email. My heart clenched as I opened it, scanning the sender name twice before the words sank in.
Due to recent budget constraints, your work-study position in the campus bookstore has been eliminated effective immediately.
The laptop screen swam as tears blurred my vision. Eighteen hours a week at minimum wage—gone. That was my grocery money, my textbook rental fund, my safety net for the dozens of unexpected expenses that kept blindsiding me.
I pushed back from my desk and walked to the narrow window that overlooked the campus cemetery. Ironic, really. The dead had better real estate than the scholarship students. Ancient headstones stretched across manicured grounds, their inscriptions worn smooth by New England weather. Gothic spires rose beyond them, piercing the gray October sky like accusations.
My phone rang. Grandma's contact photo—the only decent picture I had of her, taken outside our trailer on my high school graduation day—filled the screen.
"Hey, Grandma."
"Jody, sweetheart, you sound tired. Everything alright up there in fancy college land?"
I closed my eyes, hearing the worry threading through her forced cheerfulness. She'd worked double shifts at the diner for months to help me buy supplies for freshman year, her arthritis flaring with every extra hour on her feet.
"Just studying. You know how it is."
"Your mama would be so proud, honey. First Hopkins to go to college. Though I still don't understand why you had to go so far away."
Because staying meant working at the gas station until I was sixty, watching other people's dreams drive past while I pumped their gas. Because this scholarship was the only ticket out of a life that felt like slowly drowning.
"I miss you too, Grandma."
"You call if you need anything, you hear? I've been saving up from my tips. Not much, but—"
"No." The word came out sharper than I intended. "You keep your money. I'm fine."
After we hung up, I sat in the growing darkness, counting problems like rosary beads. The chemistry textbook. The lost work-study job. The rent on my lab locker I couldn't afford next month. The growing stack of "optional" fees that weren't optional at all.
Outside, clusters of students headed to dinner, their voices carrying through my window. They moved with the easy confidence of people who belonged, who'd never had to choose between eating and buying the right notebook for class. Their clothes fit properly because they could afford tailoring. Their teeth were straight because their parents had paid for braces. Everything about them screamed money in a language I was still learning to speak.
I pulled up my laptop again and started searching for jobs. Campus positions were scarce, and off-campus meant transportation I couldn't afford. The local diner was hiring, but their evening shifts would conflict with my chemistry labs. Every option felt like a trap with no exit.
The cursor blinked mockingly in the search bar. I typed "emergency student loans" and immediately felt sick. More debt. More years of paying for the privilege of trying to escape poverty.
Movement in the cemetery caught my eye. A figure stood among the headstones, too far away to make out clearly but dressed in what looked like expensive clothes. Dark coat, perfectly tailored. They seemed to be looking directly at my window, though the distance made it impossible to be sure.
I blinked, leaning closer to the glass.
The figure was gone.
My heart hammered against my ribs. The cemetery was empty except for shadows and stone angels, their wings spread in permanent protection over the dead. I pressed my face to the cool glass, scanning the grounds, but nothing moved except bare branches in the wind.
"Get it together, Jody," I whispered to myself. "Now you're seeing things."
I turned back to my laptop, but a soft sound made me freeze. Paper against wood. Something sliding under my door.
I stared at the gap beneath the door, waiting. Silence stretched, broken only by my neighbors' continued debate about truffle pasta versus lobster risotto. Moving carefully, I approached the door and listened. No footsteps. No voices. Nothing.
A black envelope lay on my floor, thick paper that felt expensive between my fingers. My name was written across the front in elegant script, but no return address marked the back. The wax seal was deep crimson, almost black, pressed with a symbol I'd never seen—a serpent coiled around an ancient key.
My hands shook as I held it up to the light, but the heavy paper revealed nothing. Whatever was inside could wait. Or maybe it couldn't. Maybe this was exactly the kind of miracle I'd been praying for, even if it came wrapped in mystery.
The envelope seemed to pulse with possibility in my hands, warm against my cold fingers like it contained more than paper. Like it contained answers to problems I didn't even know I had yet.