Excerpt from Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"But the character would not be interesting if he were a real person," Mark said. "You would never want to know someone like this, you would never become their friend. They are only interesting

because they aren't real. The fakeness is where the interest lies. In fact, I would go so far as to say that all things that are genuinely interesting aren't quite real."

"Real things are boring, and unreal things are interesting, got it," Derek said. I could see only the back of his head, but he sounded like he was rolling his eyes, which was brazen even for him.

"The point is," Mark said, "the narrator doesn't do x or y because he has borderline personality disorder. He does x or y because the author is making him. You aren't trying to have a relationship with the character. You are trying to have a relationship with the author through the character."

"Okay," Derek said, "now that sounds less stupid."

"All right," Mark said, "I will settle for less stupid."

And then everyone laughed like now we were all good friends. I did not say a word in that class. I did not speak in any of my classes. It honestly never even occurred to me that I should. Teachers always claimed part of your grade was participation. I'd learned long ago this was a bluff. I had no idea why anyone would choose to speak in class, but there would always be one or two who jabbered the whole time like the professor was a late-night host and they were some well-loved celebrity come to promote the movie of their own intelligence.

But the day he handed back our first papers, Mark asked me to stay after class.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Oh, I'm enrolled," I said.

"No," he said, "this paper."

I saw now he was holding my essay in his hands. I could see it had an A written on it in red pen, but I pretended to be worried. I'm not sure why. "Was the paper not good?"

"No, the paper was excellent. I am asking why are you at Fullerton junior college. You could go anywhere."

"What," I said, laughing, "like Harvard?"

"Yes, like Harvard."

"I don't think they let you into Harvard for writing a good English paper."

"That is exactly why they let you into Harvard."

"Oh," I said.

"Would you like to get coffee sometime?" he asked. "We can talk more about this."

"Yes," I said. I had no idea yet that he was interested in me. It didn't occur to me at all. He was married, he wore a ring, he was in his late thirties, old enough that I didn't think of him in that way. But even if I'd known his intentions, I still would have wanted to go for that coffee.

He was my professor, and for some reason this mysterious title made him slightly nonhuman. In the beginning it was hard to imagine that I might hurt his feelings or affect him in any way. I did not make moral judgments about him either. I accepted him as he was, as though he had earned the right to be dorky and odd and adulterous by being better and smarter than other people, better and smarter than me. Mark seemed as whimsical and mysteriously useless as the city of Fullerton itself.

Fullerton wasn't really any richer than where I'd grown up in Downey, though it had a completely different vibe because of the colleges: Cal State Fullerton and its little sister, Fullerton College. In Downey, you could eat overpriced seafood in a dark restaurant pulsing with techno or wait in line for an hour to eat Instagram-worthy sweet rolls from Porto's. Fullerton, by contrast, was like an entire town run by maiden aunts. It had so many dentists and tax advisers you'd think people did little else. Even the frat houses seemed quaint and harmless, shaded by mature elms. Fullerton's money didn't come from industry. It came from its connection to learning, the colleges reason enough to keep the rents high and dollars flowing. Mark was a part of all that. He was a wind chime in human form, dangling dorkily from the glorious tree of higher education.

Excerpted from Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe. Copyright © 2024 by Rufi Thorpe. Excerpted by permission of William Morrow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.