NumberEleven: goodnight, little detective.
I set my phone down and let the quiet settle around me.
Somewhere on this campus, he’s doing the same thing.
Somewhere on this campus, there’s a boy who can’t sleep and makes jokes to survive it.
And today, I talked to a boy in real life who made the world feel a little less hard for just a second.
Two separate thoughts.
Two separate lives.
That’s what I tell myself as my eyes finally start to drift closed. Because if my brain tries to connect them, it becomes something else. Something I’m not ready to carry.
Not yet.
10
HARLOW
By Wednesday morning, my brain has already decided we are behind.
Behind on homework, behind on adjusting, behind on learning how to exist on a campus where nobody warns you before they bump into you and say “sorry” like it’s punctuation instead of a whole interaction you’re supposed to respond to.
Behind on being normal.
Whatever that means.
I wake up before my alarm because my body loves betraying me and then lie there for ten minutes.
Get up.
No.
Get up anyway.
Fine.
My phone lights up on the nightstand.
A text from Kai.
Kai: breakfast?
I stare at it.
It shouldn’t make me feel anything.
It does.
It makes me feel fifteen in the worst way—monitored, measured, like my body is a problem that needs supervision. I know why he does it. I also know I’m allowed to hate it.
I type back the safest truth I can manage.
Harlow: Going to class. I’ll get something later.
Three dots appear for a second, then disappear.
