Gemotions

The ramen noodles tasted like ash in her mouth. She poked at the congealing broth, the steam doing little to warm her chilled fingers. Finals week loomed, a monstrous shadow over everything. Lately, just the thought of opening her textbooks felt like lugging a mountain. The email, when it arrived, was a blow. A clerical error. The scholarship, the one that kept her afloat, wasn't hers. It was meant for a student with the same last name, a freshman she’d never met.

She leaned back in the creaky chair, the cheap plastic digging into her back. The library around her hummed with the frantic energy of other students, but she felt adrift, separated by a pane of glass. This wasn’t just money; it was the entire foundation she'd built to get here, to escape the life she knew. Now, it was crumbling.