I WANT THEM ALL THREE

The sidewalk ahead of me is a minefield. Every seam between the slabs makes my rolling suitcase go clack-clack-clack, like teeth chattering and refusing to stop. My backpack weighs down my right shoulder, an anchor with a cable digging into my muscles. It’s already hot on this late-August morning, and the air smells of freshly cut grass mixed with something more artificial—expensive perfume, probably. Lots of expensive perfume.

I stop at the curb, let go of my suitcase handle, and breathe.

Hawthorne University spreads out before me like a movie set too carefully designed to be real. To my left stands a gray-stone building with windows divided by stone mullions—the kind of architecture that says we’re old, we’re rich, and we don’t care if you know it. To my right, a glass-and-steel structure reflects the sky at improbable angles, aggressively modern. Between them lies a lawn. Not just any lawn: an expanse of green so perfect it looks artificial, trimmed to the millimeter, with weathered wooden benches placed at mathematically precise intervals.

Yellow-and-blue banners—the university colors, I assume—hang between the lampposts. WELCOME, STUDENTS. Above the words, a stylized squirrel brandishes what looks like a quill. An intellectual mascot. Adorable.

Groups of students dot the campus like islands of animated conversation. I watch them from a distance as I pass. Girls in floral dresses who look as if they stepped out of the same catalog, boys in pastel polos, white sneakers that have never seen mud. They kiss each other’s cheeks, throw their arms around one another, laugh too loudly—like cruise passengers reunited after a storm they alone didn’t know had happened.

I’m wearing faded jeans that have survived three years of intensive washing, scuffed leather ankle boots with the right sole worn a little thinner than the left, and a white tank top beneath a khaki jacket from a thrift store. None of it screams I belong here. It doesn’t even whisper the possibility.

I tighten my grip on my backpack strap. My jaw clenches without permission, and I force it to relax. It’s a habit—that tension in my neck, the feeling that I have to be ready to leave at any moment. Eighteen years in an orphanage teach you that: keep your belongings close and never get attached to the walls.

I pull the map from my pocket. It’s crumpled, the center fold half torn, its edges stained with coffee I spilled this morning while drinking too fast. Building C, room 114. Humanities. I highlighted the route in yellow last night in my cheap hotel room two bus stops away.

I start walking, head lowered, map held at chest height. Around me, circles of students form and dissolve with a social fluidity as natural to me as a foreign language. I skirt a group of girls comparing schedules on state-of-the-art tablets. I detour around three boys repeatedly high-fiving, as if celebrating the simple fact of existing in the same space as their friends.

My shoulders curl inward slightly. I can’t help it—my body makes the decision, not me. Like a turtle drawing its head in at the approach of a predator, except here the predator is ordinary life. Ease. The right to be somewhere without having to justify it.

“Building C, room 114,” I mutter through my teeth. There’s something soothing about the repetition. Numbers, a place. Pure logistics. If I focus hard enough on logistics, everything else—the grass too green, the laughter too easy, the way no one seems to wonder whether they really deserve to be here—stays at the edges. At a safe distance.

I pass a coffee stand beneath a blue canopy. A sign lists the prices: latte, $4.50; cappuccino, $4; matcha tea, $5. Too much for my new-student budget. I think about my monthly expenses—the budget I’ve calculated down to the last cent, with ridiculously narrow safety margins—and keep walking.

To my right, a black SUV pulls up at the curb. The doors open, and a boy climbs out, followed by a father in a suit talking on his phone. The boy opens the trunk and hauls out two suitcases—hard-shell, burgundy, with gold monograms on the sides. His initials, I assume. Or maybe his parents’. Doesn’t matter. What matters is how he sets them on the sidewalk: as though they weigh nothing, as though someone else will take care of them within the next five minutes.

Someone probably will.

I pass a girl sitting on a bench with her phone pressed to her ear, talking with the energy of someone who wants to be overheard.

“No, can you believe it? Cavo Tagoo! In Mykonos! Three weeks, and I came back with the most amazing tan. It was totally insane.”

She laughs—that particular laugh, a little too high-pitched, a little too aware of its own casualness. I don’t slow down. I have no idea what Cavo Tagoo is, and I couldn’t care less.

The strange thing is, I’m not jealous. Not really. That tightness in my chest isn’t envy—it’s something else. Recognition. The unspoken recognition that I belong to a parallel world, one where suitcases don’t have monograms, hotels in Mykonos are as abstract as space travel, and every dollar spent on a latte is a deliberate choice rather than a reflex.

I don’t resent them. I don’t envy them, either. I simply observe them with the detached curiosity of an anthropologist in unfamiliar territory. We may speak the same language, but we don’t inhabit the same universe.

Building C finally appears at the end of the walkway—a rectangular block of red brick, less impressive than the stone structures, more modest in its arrogance. I fold my map, slip it into my pocket, and adjust my backpack. My suitcase gives one final clack against a misaligned paving slab, and I yank it free.

I’m here. That’s all that matters.

The glass door of the humanities building catches my reflection for a fraction of a second—gray-green eyes, chestnut hair already beginning to curl in the humidity, lips pressed into a line too severe for a twenty-two-year-old. I don’t smile at myself. I push open the door and go inside.

The humanities building smells of cold coffee and photocopied paper—that particular blend of cheap ink and overheated machines. The floor is beige marble, worn down the middle by generations of students in a hurry. On the left wall, a bulletin board overflows with multicolored flyers: welcome parties, debate clubs, charitable organizations recruiting “passionate and committed” volunteers. Nobody has bothered to remove last year’s notices. They’re still there, yellowing at the edges, layered beneath the new ones like archaeological strata of student despair.

I walk briskly, map unfolded at chest height, eyes fixed on the room numbers scrolling past on the doors. 102, 104, 106... I count silently, jaw slightly clenched, focused on the task as if finding room 114 were the sole purpose of my earthly existence.

That’s when the world stops. Or rather, when my world crashes headfirst into something considerably bigger than me.

The impact knocks me backward. My books—three paperbacks clutched against my chest—hit the marble with dull thuds. My map flies loose, spins through the air like a clumsy butterfly, and lands six feet away, face down.

I stumble back, hands out to regain my balance, and look up.

He’s tall. That’s the first thing I notice—not merely tall but imposing. The kind of man who changes the geography of a hallway just by standing in it. He’s wearing a navy-blue university T-shirt, the fabric stretched across shoulders almost too broad for it—as if the shirt had been designed for someone smaller and had simply decided to do its best. His hair is black, short, with curls just pronounced enough to show at his forehead. His jaw is strong and square, the kind of jaw an artist would give a hero without a second thought.

And he’s smiling. Not shyly, not awkwardly—a crooked grin already in place, as if he’s rehearsed this scene in his head and has just been waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. The right corner of his mouth lifts slightly higher than the left, creating an asymmetry that, I suspect against my better judgment, must wreak havoc in the women’s dorms.

Behind him, two guys have stopped dead. They’re wearing similar outfits—gray sweatpants, white sneakers, fresh-from-practice expressions. One of them, shorter, with close-cropped blond hair, lets out a muffled chuckle—the laugh of someone watching a show he’s seen a hundred times.

The man—because with a build like that, he’s not quite a boy anymore—bends down before I can. He picks up one of my books, lying near his feet, and turns it over with idle curiosity.

My Sylvia Plath collection. The cover is dog-eared at all four corners; a coffee stain resembling a rough outline of a continent marks the spine. He studies the title—Ariel—then raises an eyebrow at me. That eyebrow says several things, most of them variations on Seriously?

“Sorry,” he says, his voice deeper than I expected. Low and resonant, with a rumble I can almost feel in his chest. “Wasn’t watching where I was going.”

I hold out my hand. “My book.”

He doesn’t give it back immediately. Instead, he steps toward me, still smiling, and offers his free hand.

“Marcus Williams.”

There’s a tiny inflection in his voice—almost imperceptible—that betrays expectation. He expects his name to do something. Bring a smile of recognition, a nod, an Oh, you’re him. Something.

I look at his hand. I look at his face. I say nothing.

The silence lasts three seconds, maybe four. Long enough for Marcus Williams’s grin to lose a fraction of its confidence.

“Marcus Williams,” he repeats, adding this time, “You know. Number twelve?”

Number twelve. As if those words ought to summon an entire constellation of meaning. I see his teammates exchange a look behind him—the sort of conspiratorial look that usually precedes a joke I’m not in on.

I reach for my book again. “Congratulations on your number. My book?”

Something shifts in his expression. Not all at once—subtly, almost imperceptibly, like a lens coming into focus. His smile doesn’t vanish, but it changes. The corners of his mouth soften. His eyes—brown, I notice now, warm brown flecked with lighter color near the pupils—narrow slightly, as though he’s trying to see through frosted glass.

He looks at me. Really looks. For the first time since we collided in this hallway, Marcus Williams stops performing and looks at me as a person rather than an audience.

“You’re new,” he says. Not a question.

“Sharp observation.”

He laughs—a genuine laugh this time, short and surprised, as though his body reacted before his brain had a chance to censor it. “And you’ve got a sense of humor. Two points for you.”

“I don’t need your points. I need my book, and I need to get to class on time.”

He’s still holding Ariel, his thumb absently brushing its battered spine. “Sylvia Plath, huh? Heavy reading for your first day.”

“It’s just poetry.”

“Just poetry.” He repeats my words with a touch of irony that, against my will, makes me smile slightly. Not enough for him to notice. I hope.

One of his teammates clears his throat behind him. “Marcus, we’re gonna be late.”

Marcus doesn’t turn around. His eyes are still locked on mine, and there’s something new in that gaze—curiosity, yes, but also a kind of quiet determination. As though he’s stumbled across a more interesting problem than he expected and decided to give it his time.

Finally, he hands me the book. His fingers brush mine as he places it in my palm—a brief, barely perceptible touch, but enough for me to feel the warmth of his skin against mine.

“We’ll see each other again,” he says. Not a prediction. Not a threat. A certainty. Calm and assured, as casually as if he were predicting the weather.

I tuck Plath under my arm, gather my other books from the floor, and straighten up. I don’t look back. I head the opposite way, straight toward room 114, and toss over my shoulder:

“Sorry. You’re not my type.”

I don’t hear an answer. What I hear is his teammates laughing—that loud, knowing laughter fading down the hallway. Then nothing. Just silence, and a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach that I’ve done something unexpected.

I glance behind me, just before turning the corner.

Marcus Williams is still there. Standing motionless, thumbs tucked into the pockets of his sweatpants, jaw slightly tight. His teammates are walking away ahead of him, their laughter echoing off the marble walls, but he isn’t laughing. He isn’t moving. He’s watching me go with an expression I can’t quite read—not anger, not amusement either. Something between the two. Something more complicated.

Something that looks, against all odds, like interest.

I turn the corner and disappear from his sight. My heart is beating a little too quickly against my ribs, and I tell myself it’s because of the collision. Nothing else. Just the adrenaline of a physical impact, the surprise of running into a living wall in a hallway too narrow for it.

Nothing to do with his eyes. Nothing to do with the way his smile changed, as if he’d decided on impulse that I was worth truly seeing.

I push open the door to room 114, take a seat at the back, and open my Plath collection to a random page. The words dance before my eyes without settling. I am vertical / But I would rather be horizontal.

I close the book. I breathe.

It’s only the first day. There are hundreds more ahead.

Hundreds more days to avoid Marcus Williams, his number twelve, and that look that has somehow lodged itself somewhere behind my ribs like a splinter whose shape I can’t quite feel.