Amy
Iknow something is wrong the moment I step through the gate. It starts in my gut, that low frequency that fires before the mind has language for it.
An internal alarm that says whatever this place is, it’s not what it appears to be.
Kenyan University doesn’t feel like a campus. It feels like something preserved.
The buildings stretch upward in cold gray stone, their windows tall and narrow as if designed for surveillance rather than light. Ivy climbs the walls in thick, dark veins, suffocating the architecture rather than adorning it.
Even the air feels different, too clean, too controlled. The kind of air money buys. The kind of place where the rich send their children to secure generational wealth.
Not long ago, they began admitting scholarship students too.
I shift the strap of my bag higher on my shoulder and walk deeper into the courtyard. My boots ring against the stone. Students move past in clusters, voices low and polished, coats expensive.
They don’t stare openly. But I feel it all the same, that quiet, collective recognition. As if this place and its people already know something about me that I don’t.
I check my paperwork. Two words rise from the page.
Scholarship student.
Back home, that meant survival. Here it feels like a label pressed into my skin.
A category.
A reminder of exactly who I am and who I’m not.
I stop near the central fountain and grip my bag strap, steadying my breathing. My thumb finds the cracked seam in the leather and I dig.
Once.
Twice.
Hard enough that the edge bites beneath my nail.
Then I do it again.
You’re fine, Amy. You got out. You made it here. They can’t touch you now.
But the thought won’t settle. Because leaving New York hadn’t felt like freedom. It had felt like running, and I’d only been given a head start.
A flash of lightning splits the sky so suddenly I nearly stagger. The air thickens, humid, cold, and heavy.
And then his voice is in my ear, clear as if he were standing behind me.
Low. Controlled. Angry.
“You think you can just leave?”
I drag myself back into the present. Cold stone underfoot. Cold air in my lungs.
“You look lost.”
The voice comes from directly behind me, and I turn too fast, unprepared for how close he is.
He’s been there the entire time, I can tell by his stillness. Tall. Dark coat. Shoulder-length curls. Expression unreadable. His honey-colored eyes settle on me, cold and assessing.
“I’m fine,” I say. Too quickly.
