Gemotions

The acceptance letter had felt like a golden ticket. Now, clutched in Anya’s sweaty hand, it felt more like a flimsy, easily-torn IOU. The campus security guard, a man with a perpetually bored expression, had just informed her of the error. The scholarship, the one that had kept her from dropping out, wasn’t hers. It belonged to another Anya – Anya Sharma, apparently, a student she’d never met. Her jaw clenched. She needed that money.

The cafeteria buzzed with a noisy happiness she suddenly found grating. Students laughed, their trays piled high with food she couldn’t afford. She picked at the single apple in her bag, the tartness doing little to soothe the knot twisting in her stomach. She hated the bright, cheerful posters advertising student events.

Anya walked to the library and slammed her books on the table. The librarian looked up, her eyebrows raised in gentle inquiry. Anya quickly opened her laptop and stared at the blank screen, the words of her essay on post-colonial literature blurring into illegible lines. This was supposed to make things better. Now what?