Chapter 83: Mandi’s Crisis

POV: Georgia

She gets a phone call in the middle of helping me with homework and comes back a different person.

It’s Sunday, and my dorm room is covered in paper. My lit project is due in two days, and I still can’t get the thesis section to say what I actually want it to say. At this point, I’m pretty sure I’ve read the same paragraph so many times that the words have stopped having meanings, dissolving into shapes that mean nothing at all.

Mandi is sprawled across my bed with a highlighter between her teeth, reading my draft upside down because apparently that makes more sense to her brain than sitting like a normal person. She’s the kind of friend who makes everything easier just by being present, and today I’m grateful for the distraction from my own tangled thoughts.

"This paragraph doesn’t do anything," she mumbles around the highlighter, tapping it against the page. "You’re just repeating the last one with fancier words."

"I know." I drop my pen onto the notebook. "I’ve read it so many times, I don’t even know what I’m trying to say anymore."

"Okay." She pulls the highlighter from her mouth and props herself up on one elbow, giving me the full weight of her attention. "What are you actually trying to say?"

I open my mouth, ready to try explaining the argument I’ve been chasing in circles for an hour.

Her phone buzzes against the comforter.

The sound is sharp in the quiet room, cutting through the lazy warmth of the afternoon like something out of place.

Mandi looks down at the screen.

For half a second, her entire face changes.

It’s small. So small I almost think I imagined it, a flicker gone as quickly as it appeared. Then she picks up the phone carefully, like she already knows she isn’t going to like whatever comes next.

"I have to take this," she says, her voice suddenly clipped as she gets off the bed. "One second."

"Take your time."

I look back down at my draft, trying to ignore the small knot forming in my stomach.

She steps into the hallway and pulls the door shut behind her.

I try to focus.

I really do.

I cross out a sentence. Write another one. Cross that out too. Nothing sounds right, and I’m not sure if it’s the essay’s fault or my own scattered concentration.

The radiator ticks in the corner. Someone down the hall has music playing, the bass coming through the wall in a soft, uneven beat that does nothing to steady my thoughts.

A few minutes pass.

Then a few more.

I’m not trying to listen.

But Mandi’s voice starts carrying through the door, and I know immediately that something is wrong. There’s an edge to it I’ve never heard before, something brittle underneath the words.

Her voice is tight. Higher than usual.

I can’t make out most of what she’s saying. The words come through in pieces, broken up by the door and whatever noise is happening in the hallway.

"I don’t understand how..."

Then nothing.

I stop writing, my pen hovering uselessly above the page.

A few seconds later, one word comes through clearly.

"Investigation."

My stomach tightens.

There’s a pause.

Then Mandi says something quieter.

"Asset freeze."

My pen stops moving.

Ink pools beneath the tip, leaving a dark spot on the page, spreading slowly like the dread now pooling in my chest.

I stare at it.

I don’t know why those words make my chest feel tight, but they do, a strange, hollow pressure that has nothing to do with my own problems and everything to do with hers.

On the other side of the door, Mandi goes quiet.

I hear her breathe in.

It’s shaky.

Then nothing.

Not normal silence. The sort of silence where you start noticing every little sound because you’re waiting for the person to speak again, holding your own breath without meaning to.

The door opens.

Mandi walks back in.

And I almost don’t recognize her.

Her face is pale, drained of the color it had only minutes ago. Her freckles stand out against her skin, stark and dark, and her eyes are red around the edges like she’s blinked back tears more than once. She’s holding a piece of paper folded into quarters, the creases soft from being opened and folded again, over and over, like she couldn’t decide whether to read it or hide it.

She notices me looking.

Before I can say anything, she tucks it against her side, quick and instinctive, like a reflex she didn’t have time to control.

I catch the top of it anyway.

Letterhead.

A law firm’s name printed across the page, the kind of formal, official font that makes my pulse quicken without knowing why.

Mandi stuffs it into the pocket of her hoodie.

Fast.

Almost too fast.

"Sorry about that," she says.

Her voice is bright.

Too bright, stretched thin over something I can’t name.

"Are you okay?"

"Fine."

The answer comes immediately, clipped and automatic, the kind of word people use when they mean the opposite.

She drops back onto the bed and grabs my draft.

She looks at the page.

She doesn’t actually read it.

"Mandi."

"So." She taps the highlighter against the paper, refusing to meet my eyes. "Your thesis."

I watch her, searching her face for some crack in the composure she’s trying so hard to hold together.

"It’s nothing," she says.

Her tone changes on the last word. Sharper now, a warning not to push further.

I don’t push.

Not yet.

"You don’t have to tell me anything," I say carefully, keeping my voice gentle. "But you don’t look fine."

"I am fine."

Too fast. Too rehearsed.

She taps the highlighter against my paper again, like the motion might convince us both.

"So, what if you flipped the order?" she asks, her words tumbling out quickly now. "Start with the ending instead of building up to it."

I stare at her for another second, watching the way her hands won’t stay still.

Her fingers are moving constantly now, drumming against the highlighter in a rhythm that feels more nervous than thoughtful.

She’s talking faster, too.

Paragraphs. Structure. Thesis statements.

Anything to keep me from asking about the phone call.

I let her, because I don’t know what else to do, and because some part of me isn’t ready to hear the answer yet either.

"Yeah," I say slowly. "That could work."

She launches into her idea, pointing at different sections of my draft and rearranging them in her head. She gestures with the highlighter, gets distracted halfway through one explanation, circles a sentence, then tells me I should probably cut half of it because it’s "doing way too much."

She’s right.

Of course she is.

Mandi is annoyingly good at this stuff, the kind of sharp, instinctive intelligence that makes me wonder what she could do if she ever let herself focus fully on something just for her.

So we keep working.

The afternoon light moves across the floor, slowly changing from gold to orange, and for a little while it almost feels like an ordinary Sunday. She laughs at one of my sentences, and for a second it sounds real.

Almost normal.

Then her hand goes to the pocket of her hoodie.

Again.

Her fingers press against the fabric, light and quick.

Checking for the letter.

Making sure it’s still there, like it might vanish if she stopped paying attention.

I look back at my notebook, giving her the privacy of not being watched.

I think about the two columns I’ve been filling in lately, the quiet list of things that don’t add up about the people around me.

I think about the first night I met Mandi, when she told me her family had been at Rosethorne forever.

She said the word strangely.

Not dramatically. Just with a pause that lasted a little too long, like she was deciding how much truth to let into the sentence.

Forever.

I still don’t know what she meant.

She’s never explained it.

Not once.

And right now, I have the feeling that whatever is happening has something to do with that, some thread connecting the phone call to the strange, careful way she talks about her own history.

I don’t ask.

She looks like she might break if I push her too hard, and I don’t want to be the person who does that, not to her, not when she’s been nothing but kind to me since the day we met.

So I keep working.

Eventually, she closes my notebook, her movements gentler now, like she’s returning to herself.

"I’m starving," she says, forcing a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. "I’m going to grab dinner."

"Okay."

She gets up and pulls her hoodie straight, smoothing it down like armor.

At the door, she looks back at me.

"See you at seven."

Her smile is bright.

Easy.

Almost convincing.

"See you."

The door closes.

I sit there for a while, staring at it, listening to her footsteps fade down the hallway.

Then I look down at my thesis.

I don’t read a single word.

For the first time since I met Mandi, I don’t believe her.

Not even a little.