The cursor blinks at me from an empty document. I type three sentences of the response paper, delete two of them, and then reach across the desk without thinking and pullThe Princetoward me.
I've done this four times tonight.
I’m not sure whose annotations these are. That's the thing I keep snagging on. The handwriting is dense and deliberate, pressed hard into the margins like whoever held the pen had something to prove. I've been reading the notes more than the text — trying to build a picture of the person who sat with this book and argued with it, agreed with it, questioned it in the same breath.
Someone who grew up around people who think they run things.
I turn to a page I've already read twice and find a note beside a passage about the nature of loyalty:
Loyalty given freely is the only kind worth having. Everything else is just fear with better manners.
I read it three times.
My phone lights up again, reminding me of the messages from Beckett.
I close the book and stare at my laptop screen. The cursor is still blinking. The document is still mostly empty. It's 11:47 PM.
The deadline is midnight.
I openThe Princeagain.
My alarm goes off at seven-thirty, and I lie there for a full minute before I remember why I set it.
The extra credit talk. Psychology department. Eight AM.
Professor Aldridge had mentioned it at the end of Thursday's lecture, almost as an afterthought —there's a senior thesis presentation in the psych building tomorrow morning, if any of you want to attend and write a response connecting the material to political behavior, I'll add five points to your midterm.I'd written it in my planner without thinking much about it. Five points felt like a lifeline, given the deadline I missed by four minutes last night.
I get up, wash my face, pull on jeans and my camel coat, and go.
The psych building is a ten-minute walk across campus in the early morning cold. I find the right room — a mid-sized lecture hall, maybe sixty seats, already half full with students who also apparently needed the extra credit. I'm three minutes early. I find a seat in the middle, set my notebook on the desk, and look toward the front of the room where a professor is arranging papers at the podium.
And then the door beside the whiteboard opens, and Theo walks in.
I go completely still.
He's in dark trousers and a black shirt, without a hoodie, which makes him look… different. He sets a single notecard on the podium and says something quietly to the professor, who nods and steps aside.
He hasn't looked at the room yet.
I should leave.
The thought is immediate and clear. I could stand up right now, walk back up the aisle, slip out before he turns around, and find another five points somewhere else. I could pretend I was never here. I could go back to the comfortable, controlled version of this, where I decide when and where I encounter him.
I don't move.
He looks up.
His eyes find me in approximately four seconds. His expression doesn't change. He holds my gaze for one beat, two, and then looks back down at his notecard.
I open my notebook and click my pen.
He's good at this.
That's the first thing I think when he starts talking, and the thought doesn't leave for the entire hour.
His thesis is on compliance — specifically, why people follow authority figures they know to be wrong. He opens with Milgram. He moves through Zimbardo. He talks about the psychological mechanisms that allow ordinary people to participate in systems they privately object to — the diffusion of responsibility, the power of uniforms and titles, the way institutions create moral distance between a person and the consequences of their actions.
He doesn't pace. Doesn't fidget. Doesn't look at his notecard more than twice.
