Freshman Just Wanted Dinner — Until Three Bullies Made a Mistake That Cost Them Everything
Chapter 2
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She was a freshman, a first-generation college student, pre-law. She had not told anyone at Hartwell about the scholarship: not her roommate, not the girls in her study group, not her professor who seemed to like her and probably would have been impressed. She told no one that the scholarship she was attending on was called the Eleanor Matthews Academic Excellence Award. She told no one that Eleanor Matthews was her grandmother. She told no one that her grandmother had never once set foot on the Hartwell campus, but had funded the scholarship from a savings account she built over forty years.Claire wanted to earn her place at Hartwell on her own terms. She wanted to be the girl who studied hard and asked good questions and stayed after class and worked for everything she got—not the girl who was here because of her last name, not the girl who got in through a side door. She had told her mother this. Her mother had said, "I understand. I'm proud of you. Call me after your midterm."Claire had called. They talked for twelve minutes while she walked across campus. Then her stomach made the kind of noise that only an empty stomach can make; she had not eaten since noon.She saw the lights of Miller's Diner from two blocks away. She had walked past it before—three times, maybe four. She had always meant to go in. There was something about it that felt familiar, comfortable, the way a place feels when it reminds you of somewhere you loved a long time ago.She pushed open the door.The bell above the door rang—that little jingle that bells above diner doors make, like a signal, like the place is saying,"Welcome in. Come rest awhile." The smell hit her immediately: coffee, bacon grease, something sweet baking in the back, the particular warmth of a place that has had its ovens running all day.Claire stopped just inside the door and took a breath. She had been tense for six days straight between classes and reading and the study group that met three nights a week and the two midterms and the noise of the dormitory at night—six days of tight shoulders and a jaw she had to consciously remind herself to unclench. Standing in the doorway of Miller's Diner on a Friday night, she unclenched for the first time all week.She found a booth near the window: not too close to the door, not too far from the kitchen. A good booth. She slid in, set her backpack down on the seat beside her, and pulled out her economics notebook. Old habit: she always studied when she ate alone. It made her feel less like she was wasting time.A woman appeared beside the table: sixty-seven years old, though she moved like she was fifty. Silver hair cut short, reading glasses pushed up on her forehead, an apron that said Miller's and had a small coffee stain near the pocket that had been there so long it was practically a feature.