Rebuilding her life and explaining herself

In her wallet, Candace had her driver's license, her credit card, cash, her student ID, and a library card. The cash would never be recovered, Candace knew, but the other items would take only a few phone calls or the visit to the DMV.

Once her phone had enough charge to start, Candace saw that she had many missed calls, including some from her friends. She called back the first number she saw from voicemail, her friend Abby who thankfully picked up.

"Hey Candace, how was getting home?" Abby said with a hint of cheekiness.

"It... it was good..." Candace stammered. She had just gotten to know Abby this semester in unfortunate circumstances that had left her nude - a situation that had felt grotesque and scarring until yesterday.

"I see you've... blossomed..."

"What do you mean?"

"You're on the news, sweetie! You're trending on Twitter!"

Candace didn't use any social media except for Instagram, and sure as hell wasn't going to check Twitter. But she groaned inside at what Abby from the east coast was saying, and figured that she must as well have been right.

"Well, it was just a huge mistake, that's all."

"Huge indeed," Abby smirked unseen by Candace, "well, catch ya later when you come back!"

"O-okay..." Candace sheepishly hung up the phone. Not wanting to deal with that conversation many times over from her now-full voicemail, she just cleared the inbox and noticed her Instagram icon had 120(!) notifications on it. She opened the app, and after perusing some of the new likes she had accumulated she saw 102 follow requests on her private account that was followed by only 90 college and high-school acquaintances. That account was the last thing she still had that was private, but right now she didn't have time to reject all of the follow requests and instead looked up the numbers to her bank, the school, and the library.

The bank call went alright - just ten minutes of Candace explaining the loss of her card and arranging for a new one to be sent to her dorm at the end of break. Next came the library, who agreed to print Candace a new card whenever she was ready to head over (though, with the sweet old lady at the place, this one took 15 minutes). The school, however, put her on hold, where she would stay for the next 10 minutes until her mother came over.

"Alright, sweetie," she said, "it's time to go to the DMV for your new license."

"O-okay mom," Candace hung up with the university. Recalling the past hour she couldn't recall the bell ringing once, but maybe that was just her being distracted from everything. She got up and walked out the door to find...