Excerpt: The Price of a Good Education

Friday afternoon after her classes, Nora waited rather morosely in the student union before the cafeteria opened for dinner. There was a raucous group watching The Simpsons on the big screen TV, and she hated The Simpsons. There was going to be some kind of freshman-class picnic on Sunday, and she would be forced to go, or spend the evening doing Mrs. Barnes’s laundry again. And she was nervous about writing her first paper – it was for Dr. Janssen, who had strict and rather peculiar requirements, starting with how many spaces to put between your name and the title of your paper, not to mention the actual content.

So far, college was fulfilling all her unpleasant expectations: she could see the next four years stretching before her, a repetition of the last four years of high school, only with more work. And instead of staying away from the clique of preppy rich kids, she was unavoidably surrounded by them.

“Hey Nora.”

It was James. Why did he always have to appear when she was on the point of tears?