Six months later

“Come on, sleepy head, wake up!”

“Mmph… five more minutes, please, for the love of God.”

“No, now. Wake up, girl, you can’t be late today.”

“Today? What’s today?” I opened bleary eyes and found Daisy leaning over me.

She was wearing so much mascara her eyelashes looked like baby tarantulas. As usual, she wore a belly skimming top.

Pulling the covers off of me, she laughed, “It’s only the day you graduate, Emily! So get a move on! Your mom’s been calling you for hours!”

I grumbled all the way to the showers.

An hour later, I was standing in line to receive my diploma. After finishing my coursework and defending my master’s thesis – an analysis of ee cummings’s poetry that my lead professor said was good enough to publish (!) – all of my hard work was finally paying off. I was graduating from NYU with a master’s degree in English Literature.

On stage, I looked out and found my mother standing and clapping as I went to receive my diploma. The tears in her eyes mirrored my own.