Page 90 of Unfix Me

I paused my scrolling when I saw a picture from 2019. It was a group of boys in front of a cabin, some smiling and others looking miserable. Sen’s expression was somewhere in the middle. He looked pretty much the same, just a little smaller and with shorter hair. Seeing him there at all made my face feel hot.

Continuing, I found the one from 2017, which was his first year there. He was noticeably younger and more lanky. He looked terrified. I wanted to find a way to time travel so that I could go back and drag him out of that place before they started trying to indoctrinate him and fix something that was never broken.

I zoomed in on the guy beside him. He was taller and fitter, probably a jock. His arms were crossed over his chest; the scowl on his face made it clear that he didn’t want anything to do with Camp Dumont. I read the names underneath the photo, which were in order of where each person stood.

Travis McKinney. He was the one who killed himself. Aside from all of the other trauma Sen endured there, his death affected him deeply. There was nothing in the description that expressed any grief for his death. It didn’t mention the incident at all.

McKinney. That sounded familiar. I typed it into Google, then leaned back against the headboard.

“Mom, I gotta go.”

“Let me know if Sen decides to come for Christmas.”

“I will.”

After I ended the call, I rubbed my jaw.

Well, this was weird as hell.

Chapter 30

Sen

With winter break starting in a week, it felt like I was scrambling to make sure I was caught up. Most professors were pretty cool, but I had one who assigned us a whole packet to complete during our time off, which seemed like it defeated the purpose, but whatever.

I didn’t know what I was going to do while classes were out. Yesterday, I left my mom a voicemail to tell her that I missed her and hoped we could find common ground someday. She’d yet to return my call. I’d expected it, but it still hurt.

When I stopped by Kai’s room earlier, he was on a video call with his mom, so I decided to give him some space to talk to her. I knew that he was struggling too, just in a different way. He had the perfect parents and he was slowly losing one. It didn’t seem fair when good people suffered. People like Derek and Ms. Tabatha were more deserving of that fate.

Sitting at a table in the coffee shop down the road, I thought about the paper that was due the day before break started. There was still time, but I wanted to get it done. The less stress I added to my plate, the better.

Who was I kidding? I was the stress. There was no escaping it.

School was one of the reasons I was stressed. My tuition wasn’t going to pay for itself and my dad had made it very clear that he wouldn’t help. I couldn’t go home, which meant I’d have to either find a job that paid well enough for me to live in the city, which was unlikely to happen, or I had to find a way to pay for school. Going into debt at twenty was my only option.

After spending almost two hours in the financial aid office today, I wasn’t feeling great about my future. There were some grants I might qualify for, but even with those, I would have to borrow a lot of money. I hated the idea of student loans. People on a reddit forum I browsed said that they were predatory and I’d be paying them off for the rest of my life. It sounded horrible, but what else was I going to do?

I stared at the form on my laptop. Some of the information it wanted, I didn’t have. For over an hour, I’d been staring at it, hoping some miracle would happen and the site would suddenly tell me that I didn’t need to contact my dad. Was there an option for, “My dad hates me and texting him might kill me?”

With a sigh, I tapped his name on my phone.

Sen:I need info for financial aid.

Dad:Call me.

What? No. That wasn’t one of the scenarios I’d gone over in my head. A text back was cool. Him ignoring me was another possibility.

Since he was impatient, his name popped up on the screen as the phone vibrated. I connected it to my ear buds and prayed to the nausea gods that I wouldn’t throw up in front of everybody here.

“H-hey,” I answered. Clearing my throat, I tried again. “Hi.”

“You’re getting financial aid?” His gruff voice curdled the latte in my stomach.

“Well, I don’t have much choice.”

“You have a choice.”

Ignoring his comment, I clicked through the form. “It’s asking for your information. And Mom’s. Um, social security numbers and income.”

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