“I’m so proud of you.” She swallowed dryly. “I wish I were there.”
“Don’t,” Claire said, more gently than usual. “You’re doing your thing on Fantasy Island. You’re where you should be.”
“At least my parents are there.”
“They’re stalking me with a camera, by the way. I looked at the lens three times on purpose.”
“Umma’s going to make a shrine.”
“Good. I deserve one.”
Bea smiled. “How do you feel?”
Claire’s sunglasses slid up to her forehead. “Like I just got handed a degree and twenty expectations I didn’t ask for. But also…happy.”
“You look it,” Bea said. “You’re glowing.”
Behind her, Bea saw Claire’s mother and father taking selfies, three tall older brothers wrangling children, their wives dressed in sundresses and heels, one of the nephews climbing a small tree before being tugged down by a sister-in-law.
“The whole clan came,” Bea beamed.
“Yep. They actually showed up.”
“Tell them I said hello.”
“I will,” Claire promised. Someone called her name. “Time to be fed and interrogated. Thanks for watching, Bey.”
“Of course.”
“Love you. Good luck on your exam today!” Claire hung up.
Bea was happy for her bestie. So happy. But also, she missed being in the photo.
Then she checked the clock. And scrambled.
“Pens down.”
Chairs scraped back. The air sighed with post-battle exhaustion, the exam edition that hit when all the adrenaline wore off and your brain felt like overcooked pasta. Bea flexed her fingers, easing the ache in her wrist, then stood and began gathering her things.
She made it halfway down the hall before she heard, “Bea.”
She turned.
Damien Ellis. One of her tutors. Mid-thirties, rumpled in a way that made him somehow both annoyingly handsome and academically suspect. He was probably halfway through writing a book no one would understand but everyone would cite.
They hadn’t spoken much. Her main interactions with him consisted of his red annotations on her work that cut clean and never overexplained.
“Walk with me to my office,” he said, already turning.
She fell into step beside him.
“You’ve done well this term,” he noted. “Consistently.”
“I’m trying,” she said.
It wasn’t modesty, she really had been. Scholarship students probably never stopped.
They reached the top of the stairwell and veered toward the faculty wing.
