A barista job at the campus cafe from five to eight each morning. A cleaning crew position on weekends. A teaching assistant role in the economics department if she could land one. Combined income if everything worked out: roughly eighteen thousand dollars a year, leaving a gap of seven thousand that would have to come from merit scholarships.
The cheapest housing within walking distance of campus was a tiny room in a house shared with four other students. Three hundred dollars a month, utilities included. No parking, no air conditioning, no privacy.
Her schedule for the foreseeable future would look like this.
Up at five for the cafe shift. Classes from nine to five. Studying and work obligations from six until ten at night. Sleep from eleven until four in the morning.
Four to five hours of sleep a night for four years.
The week before she left for college, Victoria posted photographs from a Cancun trip. Sunset beaches, margaritas, laughter everywhere. Francis was packing a thrift store comforter into a secondhand suitcase.
Their lives had already diverged completely, and neither of them had even started yet.
Every night before she fell asleep, Francis whispered the same words to herself.
This is the price of freedom.
The Thanksgiving That Removed the Last of Her Illusions
Freshman year Thanksgiving, Francis sat alone in her rented room with her phone pressed to her ear, listening to the sounds of home coming through the line.
Laughter in the background. The clink of dishes. The warm noise of a family gathering she was not part of.
Her mother’s voice came on, distant and distracted. Francis asked if she could speak to her father.
There was a pause. Then she heard his voice in the background, muffled but clear enough.
Tell her I am busy.
Her mother came back on the line with a brightness in her voice that did not reach anything real. She said he was in the middle of something. She said Victoria had been telling the funniest story.
Francis said it was fine. She told her mother she did not need anything. She said she loved her. She hung up.
Then she opened social media.
The first thing in her feed was a photograph Victoria had just posted. Their mother, their father, and Victoria at the dining table. Candles lit. Turkey gleaming on the platter. Everything warm and celebratory and complete.
The caption read: Thankful for my amazing family.
Francis zoomed in on the photograph.
Three place settings. Three chairs. Not four.
They had not even set a place for her.
She sat with that image for a long time. The ache she had carried for years shifted that night into something different. The longing for their approval and attention did not disappear. It hollowed out. And where the pain had been, there was suddenly something cleaner and more useful.
