Jules POV
The textbook costs two hundred and forty-seven dollars.
I stare at the price tag in the campus bookstore, doing mental math that doesn't add up no matter how many times I calculate.
Personal essentials: zero. Food: sixty dollars a week. Laundry: eight dollars every two weeks. Phone bill: forty-five. Diner tips average fifty per shift, four shifts a week.
Two hundred a week minus expenses equals barely surviving.
The textbook stays on the shelf.
"Not buying?" the clerk asks.
"Just looking."
Outside, the wind blows heavily through my thin jacket. I've worn this same outfit three days in a row—jeans that need washing, a sweater with a coffee stain, sneakers falling apart at the seams.
The body spray I bought from the dollar store only masks so much.
At the laundromat, I co
