“Mum?”

“Yes?”

“Does your doctor, Dr. Copeland, happen to have a daughter and work as a professor at Vanderwood?”

The coincidence made me laugh.

“Yes, quite possibly.” It came hesitantly from my mother. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I’ll be sharing a room with a girl named Emely Copeland, and one of my professors’ last names is Copeland.”

Abruptly, Mum let the pan she had just been scrubbing so vigorously slide into the sink. She came over to me and literally snatched the letter out of my hand. Her expression darkened.

“What is it?” I asked cautiously.

She rubbed her forehead. Then she walked back to the sink and resumed her work as if nothing had happened.

“I want you to stay away from the Copelands as much as you can,” she replied to me hesitantly. “Your best bet is to switch courses.”

Dumbfounded, I looked at her.

What was wrong with her?

“Why? One of them is your doctor...”

When I didn’t get an immediate answer, I looked over at her.

Her whole body had tensed, and she was looking intently out the window as if she was thinking carefully about what to say next.

It had become so quiet in the house that you could have heard a feather fall to the floor.

“Mum...” I said, which snapped my mother out of her stupor.

“The professor and the doctor are related.”

“Okay, and why should I stay away from them?”

Mum seemed to realize that I had become suspicious. But what else could I be when she had been acting so strangely since we arrived, leaving me with so many unanswered questions?

“I remember the Copelands from my time here. They were always doing very risky things. You know...illegal things.”

Mum avoided my gaze.

“Illegal things?”

Her words had surprised me. Then why was she letting a doctor from that family treat her? Was she serious about this? How reputable were these people?

“You know... drugs, wild parties, and street racing.”

Still, she was unable to look at me.

“Street racing?” I asked, amused. I couldn’t suppress a laugh.

Mum threw the wipe at me but narrowly missed.

“That’s not funny, young lady! Things like that can turn out dangerously,” she said with a played strict tone as if she was speaking from experience.

I just didn’t believe that a university professor found time for parties or hard drugs these days, let alone any street racing.

Mum got serious again.

“Just be careful and don’t get involved in anything there that you wouldn’t normally do, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I returned, playfully annoyed.

I would heed her advice. But these people couldn’t be that bad, could they? Because even if they had done a lot of forbidden things, according to Mum, they had become something. Doctor, professor? That rather screamed of a rich family with a lot of reputation in the city, which they surely owed to their status as a founding family, among other things.

I put the letter back with the other brochures and notes. No more Vanderwood crap for today!

“Did your lady friend ever get back to you?” Mum asked pointedly, painfully reminding me of all I had to leave behind.

I rolled my eyes in annoyance.

“She’s got a name, too...”

My mother didn’t like Larissa at all. Maybe it was because of that one time with the drugs when I’d had to go to the emergency room for my lost pills, and Larissa had been all drugged up. I understood that it had been a really lousy action. But the fact that I had fallen over was not because of Larissa. It was only because of me. But exactly this fact made Mum put Larissa in a bad light whenever possible. Like now.

And the fact that she hadn’t contacted me wasn’t due to her, but to this lousy signal in this part of town.

“No, but she promised to call me on Friday night.”

“For your birthday. I’m surprised she even remembered it,” Mum joked.

I didn’t elaborate on her teasing.

Larissa wasn’t stupid. She was just trying her hand at a lot of weird things at the moment, always trying to get me involved. But only because she thought I wouldn’t have had fun with her otherwise. That wasn’t true, of course. Larissa was easy-going and funny, and everyone who knew her knew that where Larissa was, something was going on. And I missed her incredibly. Of all the days, she couldn’t be there for my birthday.

I took the flyers from the university along with the envelope and headed for the stairs.

“I’m going to have to do some more prep work for the university.”

Unfortunately.

“Don’t forget dinner tonight!” Mum called after me.

“I won’t,” I called back, annoyed, as I climbed the stairs.

I would have preferred to stay in my room for the rest of the day, because the last person I wanted to see today was Julian.