Page 8 of The Beautiful Collision
Maybe I could just… not answer. I could claim I was in the library… in a coma… decomposing in a dumpster somewhere. I doubt he’d care either way. But ignoring Dr. Robert Hayes only compounds the interest on your suffering, the disappointment growing like a blob until it can’t fit through the door.
So, with a sigh, I descend and answer.
And he speaks before I can say a word.
“I have your credit card statement pulled up on my screen, Maya.”
No greeting—no ‘how’s my daughter’ or similar—just straight to the prosecution. I can picture him in his study, the statement displayed on his monitor like damning evidence in a murder trial, as if any amount of money would make the slightest bit of difference to his life.
“Good, I?—“
He cuts me off, reading each charge like he’s presenting symptoms of a terminal diagnosis. Each word lands like a scalpel incision—precise, sterile, designed for maximum damage with minimal visible trauma—so I let him go on, rolling my eyes at each item and smirking at more than a few of them.
“Is this how you choose to hemorrhage my money?” The disgust in his voice could sterilize surgical equipment. “On bacchanalian excess?”
Bacchanalian.
I roll my eyes so far back in my head they spot my brain. Trust him to name-drop ancient Rome. Like hosting a party for nursing students drowning in student loans and existential dread is equivalent to running a Victorian opium den crossed with averylow-class brothel.
“Dad, it was just?—“
“An embarrassment.” He bisects my explanation with surgical precision, the technique he’s perfected over twenty-three years of never letting his daughter complete a fucking sentence. “Twenty-three years old and still behaving like a freshman.”
“To be fair?—“
“Your siblings are building their practices, establishing themselves as contributing members of society, joining their place in the correct echelons with the right people, and you’re… what?” He sighs. “Hosting keggers like some state school sorority president? Studyingnursing?”
Suddenly, all the fuck-yous I’ve rehearsed in the shower for the last few years, while scrubbing twelve-hour shifts’ worth of blood and bodily fluids out of my hair evaporate. I’m fifteen again, standing in his office while he alphabetizes my failures.
“I maintain a 3.9 GPA.”
“Academic performance was never your deficiency, Maya. Character and decision-making are the problems.” There’s a long pause. “And your mother and I have decided that continuing to enable this lifestyle in the hope that you might one day grow up is no longer sustainable.”
The bomb lands right on target.
Breathe.
He talks like I’m mainlining cocaine and vodka. Like it’s a crime to blow off steam after holding someone’s hand while they flatline, after cleaning every fluid the human body can produce, or after watching a six-year-old code because life’s just that fucking hilarious.
“Your credit card has been terminated, effective immediately.”
My knees buckle and I white-knuckle the counter to prevent from falling.
No. Fuck no. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck?—
“Additionally,” his voice hardens. “We will not be renewing your lease. You have thirty days to secure alternative accommodations.”
The line goes dead.
I stand there, phone still suctioned to my ear, listening to the sound of my breathing doing a passable impression of a dying ventilator. Around me, the apartment—myapartment for thirty more sunrises—suddenly feels like I’m already trespassing in my existence.
Thirty days.
The number loops in my brain. Thirty days to find shelter with no money and no job. Thirty days to figure out how civilians without trust funds navigate capitalism. Thirty days to learn skills like “paying for groceries” and “not dying of exposure.”
Thirty days before I’m?—
Homeless.
