Page 1 of Tough Luck

Prologue

The scratchy wool of my new green sweater was currently doing a better job of exfoliating my skin than the actual skincare routine I had used just that morning. Between the itch and the soul-crushing boredom of macroeconomics, I was about two minutes away from a mental break. Which, by my count, would be my third one that week.

I was slumped in the most uncomfortable chair known to humans, in the corner of the almost empty college library, during my one and only open period.

The whole place smelled of old paper and the burned coffee that my bestie, Nova Clark, had insisted we stop and get before heading across campus for this break. Nova was sitting across from me, totally engrossed in what I could only assume was the homework that was due in twenty minutes.

My bestie had always loved to walk the wild side. Currently, her long neon-pink hair was tied up in a messy bun that somehow defied gravity. While banging away at her laptop keyboard, she was shoveling as many goldfish crackers as she could fit into her mouth at once, a talent she’d been perfecting since we met in second grade.

“You’re doing that thing again,” Nova muffled through a mouthful of cheddar snacks without even looking over at me.

“What thing?” I hissed, scratching my shoulder through the coarse wool. Why had I bought this stupid thing? Oh, that’s right, I thought as I glanced out the windows at the fresh layer of spring snow on the ground. Because it was the warmest thing ever and walking across campus was a hazard during a snowstorm after dark.

“The ‘I’m-about-to-commit-arson’ face.” She stopped typing and glanced up at me. “What are you working on?”

I was supposed to be writing the last essay of the year for Professor Higgins’s creative writing class. But that wasn’t due for another day, so instead I was writing about how much I hated him for giving me a B on my last paper.

That may not seem bad, but from someone who aced everything—and I do mean, everything—a B was a huge slap in the face. Besides, the only way I could get rid of that “I’m-about-to-commit-arson” face was to use my wit and humor and write the most honest truth that I knew. I was currently upchucking my darker thoughts about how the professor could spend some of his free time.

“Send whatever you have for your essay to me,” Nova said with a grin. “I’ll read it and check it for you.”

“It’s not my essay.” I groaned.

Nova’s eyebrows arched as she ran her eyes over me. After all the years we’d spent being best friends, I could tell she knew the kind of mood I was in.

“Venting?” she guessed. I nodded. Her smile grew. “I love it when you do that. Send it to me. You know I love the shit you write when you vent. I could use a good laugh right now.” She pointed to her computer with a handful of crackers. “Besides, everyone knows that venting is a biological necessity.”

“It’s more than a vent. It’s a masterpiece of vitriol,” I pointed out dryly.

I had less than a week before the semester was over. One week and a whole other year until I earned my bachelor’s. At this point, with the state of my mental health, I doubted that I’d make either.

School was a struggle. But earlier, as I’d added one final flourish to my critique of Professor Higgins’s personality, my fingers had flown across the keyboard.

God, I really loved writing satire, I thought as I hit send.

I felt a brief, glorious rush of relief, until I looked at the ‘To’ field.

Somehow, I hadn’t sent it to Nova’s email address. Instead, Outlook’s auto-complete feature had completely screwed me. I thought I was sending it to Nova’s student portal address, but the system had swapped it for the professor’s email address. I’d hit send without looking.

My heart stopped as my head began to spin.

Unsend, my mind screamed while I searched for the option. But there wasn’t an unsend button.

“Nova,” I whispered as a buzzing sound consumed my head. “I think I just ended my academic career.”

She stopped typing and looked up at me.

Twenty-eight minutes later, the real torture began.

We were in class, and Higgins—who lived to publicly shame students—had my essay on the projector screen for all to see as they entered the room.

Of course, everyone began whispering the moment they started reading it.

The worst part wasn’t the whispers in the room. The biggest horror was Caleb, the boy I had been fixated on and drooling over for about half the semester.

He was currently sitting three rows ahead of me. I watched his broad shoulders tense as he looked up at the screen.

Then, to my even greater horror, Professor Higgins started reading my essay out loud.