Dust by Mandy Harbin Page A

date. We're going to tutor each other on stuff we both despise but need."
    She smirked. "I didn't say it was a date...this time. That was all you, sister." When I groaned, she put up her hand. "What I meant was, hanging out with a hottie will help. Boring school work aside, you need some male interaction. Hell, with how you've been hiding out here, you just need interaction period ."
    "You said yourself that I've only been here a week. I've said more to you this weekend than I have my own mother in the last year. I promise, I'm getting everything I need right now." Funny, I hadn't realized how easy it was to talk to Jewel, too. Maybe she was right about the interactions. I wasn't a teenager having to attend high school with petty people who made fun of anyone different. Oh, I held no illusions of college girls not being petty, but I'd noticed as I'd gotten older that the types of girls who'd make fun of me before were now too self-centered to waste any energy on anybody but themselves.
    Unless provoked.
    "You've talked to me more than your mom?"
    Why did she sound as if she'd just won a Grammy or something? "Uh, yeah."
    She smiled and blinked several times. Oh shit, was she about to cry?
    "That's the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me." She reached out like she was going to touch my knee but stopped at the last second and pulled back. "Sorry. It's just that my parents ignore me, and my friends are fake. I remembered wishing I had people to hang out with because Mom and Dad rarely did. Then after Dad got elected, I realized I should've been careful with that wish. My friends only hung around because my dad was governor. They were never honest with me, no matter how minor the topic."
    "Whoa. Your dad's the governor?" Why was she just now mentioning this? That wasn't minor info.
    Jewel half-smiled. "Not anymore. He served two terms starting around the time I became acquainted with Midol but before Bieber fever set in." She chuckled. "He ran for a third but lost to a senator. There was talk of a scandal, that he was abusing his power." She rolled her eyes. "He wants to be president one day and still has hopes of working at the federal level. Anyway, those were impressionable years for me. Not that I got to sow any wild oats or anything while he was in office."
    "I guess it'd be hard to sneak out and play kiss with the state police hovering around."
    "O-M-G, you have no idea. They monitored everything. Facebook, texts. I couldn't say or do anything I didn't mind my dad's staff learning and risk discussing during some status meeting. It was bad enough I got my period while he was in office. My parents were at some governors' weekend thing. I used toilet paper until I worked up the nerve to ask his assistant for help. She had to buy me pads because all she had were tampons, and then the damn things had wings. I was like, 'Do they fly?' From wadded-up toilet paper to figuring out how to strap the sticky contractions onto my panties, I was in the pits of hell! Jeez, it was so embarrassing."
    The scrunched up face she made caused me to laugh. Out loud. I laugh so hard and so long I was crying and holding my stomach. Thankfully, she'd fallen into hysterics, too. When I was finally able to pull in a breath, I exhaled slowly through a smile. It felt good to laugh like that. I couldn't remember the last time I'd done it. Probably never. "Did you toss them across the room like paper airplanes?" We both burst out laughing again. "I think that's the funniest thing I've ever heard."
    "Gee, thanks. It was only the most traumatic experience of my life."
    She was joking, but that sobered me up in record speed. I couldn't share with her my most traumatic event. Now it wasn't even really a choice of keeping my stories in. No, I didn't want to horrify her with my reality. Jewel had lived a privileged life. She was better off not learning how hard mine had been. I licked my suddenly dry lips and struggled for a way to continue our lighthearted