Page 46 of Vas

“Rebecca Adler’s office,” a cheery voice answered.

“Hello. My, um, name is Anna Hayden and I was calling—”

“Oh, yes. One moment, Ms. Hayden, and I’ll put you through.”

Before Anna could say anything else, she was put on hold, a song from the eighties filling the dead air.What the heck? She pulled the phone away from her ear, frowning down at it before quickly putting it back when she heard a voice start to speak. “Miss Hayden, it’s lovely to hear from you. I assume you received my letter?”

“Um, well, yes, but—”

“Excellent. Excellent. Now, we just have to set up a time that’s good for you to come in to sign some paperwork and we can finalize the scholarship.”

“But I don’t understand. I mean, I think there’s been a mistake.”

“I assure you, there’s been no mistake. You’ve been selected as the winning recipient from our database.”

“But I’ve never applied for a scholarship there.”

“That may be true, but you have enrolled as a student here. When this scholarship became available, we went through our database for qualifying applicants and your name came up.”

Annahadenrolled back when she still had her job at the country club and thought she’d be able to afford the tuition but had to pull out when she’d lost her job. Was it possible this was legit?

“We’re well into the spring semester, I’m afraid to say, but summer classes start in just ten short weeks. Just enough time for you to get settled into your new home. When can you come in?”

“Well, um, I’m free tomorrow.”

“Perfect. I’ll put you down for ten a.m. Does that work for you?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Great. See you then.”

Anna started to say more until she realized Mrs. Adler had hung up. Pulling her phone from her ear, she frowned down at it again but then noticed the time. She’d have to worry about the bizarre turn to her afternoon later. Right now she needed to leave or she’d be late for work.

Unable to keep the news to herself and wanting to share it with someone, Anna searched out Tiffany as soon as she got to work. She found her in the store room shoving her things into her locker. “The weirdest thing happened today.” Anna said, going to her own locker and opening it. “I got a full-ride scholarship, including free housing, from CSUN to finish my degree.”

“Holy shit, Anna, that’s fantastic. I didn’t even know you applied for any scholarships.”

“That’s the weird part, I didn’t,” she said, pulling out her apron and tying it around her waist.

Tiffany’s brow scrunched. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t fully understand it either, but the woman I talked to said my name was chosen from a list of qualifying applicants. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I enrolled but never registered for classes.” She shrugged. “Like I said, weird.”

“Well, weird or not, it’s still great news. Now you don’t need to wait until you save enough money to start classes back up.”

Anna closed her locker and leaned her back against it. “I know I should be grateful, but I can’t help thinking it’s too good to be true.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist. Things like this happen all the time.”

“Not to me.”

“Then it’s about time it did.”

“I have an appointment tomorrow morning to go over it with them.” Anna shrugged. “I guess we’ll see.”

They both got to work and it wasn’t until hours later that Tiffany came up to her behind the counter and remarked, “I’ve noticed Vas has been MIA the past few nights.”

Anna nodded while keeping her concentration on the banana split she was making. “He had to go out of town.”

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