Better Off

Bela Rosa

Sierra's quote collection #13: 

"You are far too smart to be the only thing standing in your way."

In the last chapter...

She takes a deep breath and tells herself to stop with this nonsense.

She can't fall for her roommate. She shouldn't.

She's not here for that.

After Diego had left the apartment at around 10am, Sierra felt kind of relieved. His presence was making her nervous and she needs to stay focused to work on her plan.

She needs to work on the plan. It's all that really matters now.

Determined to get it together, Sierra searches for the newspaper and isn't surprised when she can't find one - it's the time of technology after all and no one her age actually looks up news anymore when they're all over the internet, tv and radio.

But it's not the news she's eager to read. It's the section that contains all the job offers. 

Sierra doesn't have a phone, laptop or what else there is. She doesn't have the money and kind of never felt the need to spend it on those kinds of things, even when she had the chance to.

The only thing she holds onto are the books she got from her deceased abuela. She was a woman of class, who always knew what to say and when not to say anything at all. 

Sierra still looks back to the day where she visited her grandma a while after abuelo Fernando had passed away; She had asked her how she managed to be so strong all the time.

She had explained to her that she read a lot, basically whenever she had the chance to. Then she quoted Jonathan Franzen when she said:

"The first thing that reading teaches us is how to be alone."

Grandmother Rosalita (her nickname was Bela Rosa) probably was Sierras favorite person, mostly because she had brought her mother Liliana into the world, but also because of the wise things she had told her all the time. 

Sierra realized that she was getting lost in her thoughts, so she shakes her head as if it would also shake off her memories.

Then she has an idea and walks over to Apartment 31, knocking on the wooden door. 

After a while, the girl called Lauren opens the door and seems surprised by seeing Sierra in front of her.

"Hey, how can I help you?" she asks curiously and smiles, which makes her look even more approachable.

"Hey, this may sound weird, but do you have a newspaper by any chance?" Sierra asks and is almost prepared for her to say no, but she nods instead.

"I actually do. Wait right here," she says and leaves, only to appear again with the latest newspaper in her hand.

With the words "Here you go, I've read it already so you don't have to give it back" and another one of those perfect doll smiles, she hands it over to me and I thank her. 

"See you around, then" is all she says before closing the door. 

Sierra walks back to her room and lets herself fall onto the bed, newspaper in hand.

"Vamos," she says to herself before flicking through the pages until she spots the job offers.

After a few minutes, Luna hops onto the bed and then sits next to her, observing while her tail twitches lightly through the air.

"Ahh, that's perfect!" Sierra shouts so suddenly that the cat literally jumps and is lifted into her arms right after.

"Sorry Luna, but this waitress job is right around the corner. I'm just so excited!" Sierra says to either the cat or herself or not really anyone after all. It just needed to be out of her system.

With a pen, she circles the adress of Pietro's Pizza Palaze and puts a smiley face next to it. Then she closes the newspaper with a fast movement of her hand and catches a piece of paper falling out of it and onto the ground.

She leans down to pick it up and all of her excitement vanishes in the blink of an eye when she reads what it says.

"Do yourself a favor. Leave as long as you still can."