I lower the book by an inch and risk a glance. Aaron is at the counter, ordering a black coffee and a scone, still mid-lecture to his friends about “the one that got away.” I catch just enough to know he’s talking about Jessica Rabbit, again, and thehopelessness of a campus-wide search when no one even knows the girl’s real name.
“He’s obsessed,” I whisper, voice laced with something I refuse to call hope.
Sara snorts, then leans in. “You know, this is the plot of, like, half the romance novels in the world. Secret identities, yearning, the dramatic reveal.” She waggles her eyebrows. “Very sexy.”
I want to die on the spot. “You read too much fanfiction.”
“Or not enough,” she fires back. “I say you let this play out. Maybe he gets bored. Maybe he moves on. Maybe you get to have a normal semester and never think about this again.”
I nod, but I can’t imagine anything being normal again.
Aaron collects his order, and as he turns from the counter, our eyes lock for a split second. He hesitates, like he might recognizeherin me, but then one of his friends jostles him and the moment passes. I let out a breath, feeling both relief and disappointment in the same millisecond.
Sara watches him go. “He’s relentless,” she says. “Kind of hot, actually. In a stalker-adjacent way.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Remind me to never let you set me up.”
She shrugs, sipping the last of her iced latte. “I don’t have to. You’ve already set yourself up.”
The bell over the door jingles as Aaron and his entourage leave. I watch the back of his head until he’s swallowed by the crowd outside.
For a long minute, neither of us says anything. The noise of the shop, the sugar rush, the faint clatter of cups—it all fades into background radiation.
Finally, I break the silence. “I should just tell him, shouldn’t I?”
Sara’s smile is soft. “You’ll know when you’re ready.”
I nod, then sip my lukewarm coffee, already replaying every possible outcome in my head. For the first time, the idea doesn’t feel radioactive. Just inevitable.
Chapter 5
There is nothing as relentless as a week on this campus after your entire identity collapses in on itself. I know because I am living through it, hour by hour, seven days out from the party and still counting. My dorm room smells like old ramen and the ghosts of every failed experiment, which is to say: it smells like home, if home was a cell block with mandatory cinderblocks and a single window the size of a mini-fridge.
I’m supposed to be studying for Monday’s chemistry midterm—Aromatic Substitution and Beyond—but the words are just a lattice of carbon rings, a meaningless blur in my brain. I stare at the textbook until my eyes ache, then stare at the wall, then at the ceiling, then back at the book. I make it three lines before my brain shorts out and replays the Halloween kiss, full HD, every time.
It’s always the same: total darkness, the warm crush of Aaron’s hands at my waist, the taste of orange Gatorade and cheap rum. Sixty seconds that may as well have been sixty years, judging by how stubbornly my body remembers it. I keep expecting the memory to fade, but instead it just gets sharper, burning away everything else.
The organized chaos that was my desk has devolved into a full-blown disaster zone. Laptop with a bajillion tabs open, two half-finished lab reports on my iPad, a graph pad with scribbles and notes, a hardcover chemistry text, three lingering, not-quite-empty coffee cups, half a Powerade, and an open bag of Cheetos.
Every ten minutes my phone lights up with a new text from Hunter, usually a screenshot or an audio file of Aaron Thompsonholding court in the quad, repeating the legend of Jessica Rabbit to an ever-growing audience.
It’s become a thing now. Aaron’s Search. Hunter thinks it’s hilarious, which is why he’s assigned himself as chief archivist of every development. He sends updates in real time.
8:04 am: Bro he’s still at it! This man is going to comb the entire campus in a week at this rate.
8:18 am: [photo of Aaron, blurry but still distressingly hot, at the campus cafe holding up his phone as if looking for mugshots]
8:26 am: He just asked the barista if she’s seen you lmfao
It’s not that Hunter knows, exactly. But he suspects, and he’s weaponizing it. I want to be mad at him, but mostly I just want to unplug my brain and hide it under the bed with the rest of my bad decisions.
I drum my fingers on the desk, then stop when I realize I’m doing it. My left leg has been bouncing for the better part of an hour, a nervous metronome I can’t silence. My back aches from hunching, but every time I sit up straight it feels like too much—like I’m standing at attention, waiting for the ax to fall.
My dorm room is aggressively blank. The university-issued furniture is arranged for maximum discomfort: bed against the wall, desk at an angle that catches the light and burns your retinas, dresser too small for anyone over the age of twelve. There’s a single poster above my bed—an old diagram of the periodic table, color-coded by atomic radius—and three sticky notes on my closet door, all chemical formulas I once thought I would need to memorize for an exam and now keep because it’s the only thing giving my room any personality.
Inside the closet, beneath a layer of hoodies and forgotten gym shorts, is the wig. I don’t look at it. I don’t need to—it’s been branded onto my memory in such vivid detail I couldreconstruct it atom by atom. It’s not even hidden well. I just shoved it into a paper bag from Sara’s Sephora haul.
I can’t get rid of it, either. Every time I think about walking it to the dumpster, I imagine some janitor finding it and holding it aloft like a trophy, or worse, turning it in to Lost and Found. If I throw it away, it wins. If I keep it, I lose.
