Random in Death (In Death, #58)

by J.D. Robb

Then she stood in that bright light in the buzzing hallway of her state school. She could smell it: sweat, cheap cologne that couldn’t cover the sweat, hints of—forbidden—gum and candy. Whiffs of the even-more-forbidden Zoner wafting from the bathrooms along with the faint aroma of piss. Other kids brushed past her. Some sneered, some snickered, some ignored her as beneath notice. She preferred being ignored. She wore the ugly blue uniform—the pants too short because her legs kept growing, the top baggy because her frame stayed too thin. She’d tried to cut her hair, and made a mess of it, so even pulled back it looked ragged and uneven. She just wanted to get to class. Get through the next class, and the next. Get through the day, get through the night. And mark another off. One day closer to freedom. Freedom came in twenty-two months, one week, and three days. She’d take the money she’d saved from the stingy monthly stipend—the money most of the others blew on snacks or smuggled-in Zoner—and she’d go to New York. Into the Academy. She’d be a cop, and when she was a cop, she’d be somebody. She could get through twenty-two months, one week, and three days more, as long as at the end of it she climbed on a bus headed for New York.

Eve dreams, remembering what it was like at her state school