Colton pinched the bridge of his nose. “We knew what we were getting into when we pledged.”
“Did we?” Hayes peered over his shoulder, to where Lane and her friends had begun to pack up their things. Books shoved into bags. Arms slid into coats. Someone laughed, the sound high and clear. Glancing back at Colton, he said, “Because I don’t think you did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means we’re one week into the semester and you’re already tailing her like a sad dog. This thing is bigger than you, Price. So do me a favor and start following orders before you screw this up for the rest of us.”
The warning rang hollow. And, anyway, it didn’t matter.
His mother used to call him strong-willed, when he was still small and whole and she wasn’t afraid to look him in the eye. Contrary, how he’d pick the blue truck if someone offered him red. Relentless, how he’d insist on climbing all the way to the topmost branches of the old maple at the park if Liam told him he was too small.
How close he was determined to get to Lane, the more he was told to stay away.
Delaney’s philosophy professor was an unsmiling woman with a shock of red hair and a presence like a bird. Her face seemed infinitely crafted into a tightly puckered moue that made it impossible for Delaney to discern whether her teacher was explicitly disappointed in her, or if that was merely her baseline expression.
“The study of fundamental truths lends itself to a Socratic approach,” Professor Beaufort declared, peering at Delaney across the wide beak of her nose. “As such, I expect all of my students to contribute to the classroom discourse.”
“I understand,” Delaney rushed to say. The office in which they sat was brightly lit and absurdly floral, the shelves stacked with pale Grecian busts. Two weeks into the semester, and Delaney was already scheduling meetings to beg for additional amenities. It didn’t feel good. “It’s not that I don’t want to participate. I’m just having difficulty keeping up with the flow of conversation in class.”
A single one of Beaufort’s thinly penciled brows stretched into a dramatic arch. “I have trouble believing that. You’re a bright, articulate young woman. You and I are conversing now, and you’re doing remarkably well.”
It was meant as a compliment, though it hardly felt like one. Delaney struggled to maintain a smile as she muttered an unsteady, “Thank you.”
Beaufort scrutinized her for a long moment, thin lips pinched. “All the same, if you feel the pace of my class is proving too much for you, you’re still well within the drop period. You’re a placement student, correct?”
Delaney’s stomach bottomed out. “Yes.”
“I thought as much.” Beaufort steepled her thin fingers over the paper calendar on her desk. “Scholarship recipients are expected to maintain a 3.5 GPA in order to remain eligible for continued financial aid. Participation comprises a significant portion of your final grade. If you don’t think you can find it in you to join the conversation, then I’d advise you to carefully reconsider your options.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Delaney said, doing her best to keep a quaver from creeping into her voice. “Thank you for your time.”
***
Out in the hall, Delaney stood with her forehead pressed to the plexiglass of the vending machine. Stuck in the coils, the sleeve of cookies she’d selected hung without dropping. She jabbed her finger repeatedly into the button.B-6. B-6. B-6.The cookies didn’t budge.
Adya had promised Delaney it wouldn’t take her long to catch up, and yet with each passing day Delaney felt further and further behind. The days bled one into the other, stuffed full of crowded classrooms and muffled acoustics, sounds that refused to be slotted into place, conversations that refused to be contextualized. She wrote down everything she heard, which, in the end, didn’t turn out to be anything at all—only partially formed concepts and unfinished sentences, broken here and there with angry inksplots.
She sat in the student center and pretended to be a part of the conversation. She sat in the dining hall and pretended to laugh at Mackenzie’s jokes. She felt, as she often did in crowded spaces, trapped along the periphery. One foot in the waking world with everyone else, the other somewhere quiet. Somewhere strange. Somewhere limitless and lonely. Without context to act as an anchor, sound flitted between her ears like dandelion fluff.
When the days were through, she dragged herself back to the neat row of freshman dormitories—to the messy haven of her room—and threw herself down onto her bed to rub away a headache. Her mother called and called and she ignored her, knowing if she answered the phone she was bound to cry.
Little glass Delaney, just a few weeks into the semester and already cracking.
It wasn’t only her classes where she was falling short. Every morning, she woke in the dark of predawn and got herself ready. She arrived at Whitehall’s theater as the sun crawled into the sky. She sat at the very front of the room and set her pens one after the other in a neat ballpoint row, a please-don’t-hate-me coffee perched on the heavy desk at the theater’s carpeted crux.
Every morning, Colton Price showed up like clockwork—five minutes after Delaney, ten minutes before class—his face screwed up in what she could only assume was disgust. He’d take his seat without looking at her. He’d cuff his sleeves without speaking to her. He’d slide a perfectly sharpened pencil behind his ear and set to critiquing papers. The coffee cooled, going ignored. It was a wordless message, its meaning clarion clear:Apology not accepted.
While Whitehall clicked through bulleted slides on the critical theory of diverse observable universes, Colton Price would sort through papers and watch, his eyes like twin thunderheads and a permanent scowl carved across his face. Delaney took her useless notes with her useless pens and tried to wonder what she possibly could have done to make him dislike her so deeply.
Surely, he’d been called an asshole before.
Still propped against the vending machine, she felt the waning patience of another student just over her shoulder. She hadn’t heard him approach. She hadn’t even been aware of him at all until he muttered something under his breath, his register too low to comprehend. A shoe scuffed tile. A sigh bloomed across the back of her neck.
“Can you help me?” she heard him ask.
“I don’t know.” She gave the machine one final, lackluster kick. “It ate my dollar. I think maybe it’s broken.”
But when she turned around, there was no one there.
