By week three of the semester, the flyers for the Creative Mentorship Initiative had already started to curl at the corners.
I passed one on the English building corkboard, sunlight glaring off the glossy university logo, and resisted the childish urge to draw horns on the silhouetted professor figure.
“Transform your writing with one-on-one faculty guidance!” it chirped. “Build your portfolio! Forge lasting professional relationships!”
Yeah. Hard pass.
I adjusted the strap of my bag higher on my shoulder and kept walking, counting the tack marks from the old posters that used to be there. Visiting poet. Trivia night. Missing bike. Before my face was the unofficial bulletin everyone carried in their heads.
Don’t be alone with her.
The third floor hallway smelled like old paper and lemon cleaner, the kind of institutional sterility that tried way too hard to cover sweat and fear. Classroom doors yawned open as students spilled out, loud, comfortable, deliberately not looking at me. I threaded through them like smoke.
Someone’s laughter broke, then dropped half an octave when they noticed me. A girl nudged her friend. They leaned together, whispering. I caught the word professor and my own last name and the familiar static buzzed behind my eyes.
Instead of reacting, I dug my phone out of my pocket and made a show of scrolling, like I had somewhere to be and people to disappoint.
My inbox notification glared up at me.
SUBJECT: Mentorship Assignment Confirmation
I stopped walking.
No. No, no, no. I hadn’t even applied. I flicked the email open with a thumb that suddenly didn’t feel like it belonged to me.
Dear MAYA LOCKE,
We are pleased to confirm your acceptance into the Fall Creative Mentorship Initiative. You have been matched with:
FACULTY MENTOR: Dr. Theodore Arden
My heart tripped over itself, then slammed into my ribs hard enough that the hallway tilted. I blinked down at the screen again, as if the name might rearrange itself into literally anyone else.
It didn’t.
I knew who he was. Everyone did. Dr. Arden, the department’s rising star: all sharp cheekbones and sharper comments, reviewers’ darling, rumored to read undergraduates’ workshop submissions on the treadmill for extra cardio. He was famous for two things: his devastating critiques and his obsession with ethics.
And he was the one professor who had never, in two years, so much as looked in my direction unless forced to.
“Locke?”
I flinched.
Professor Hart was leaning in the doorway of 312, tie-dyed scarf draped over one shoulder like she’d stepped out of a different building entirely. Her eyes—wide, warm, annoyingly perceptive—flicked to my phone and then back to my face.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
I shoved the phone into my pocket before she could see the screen. “Peachy.”
She raised a brow. “You’re pale.”
“Sterile lighting.” I gestured up at the buzzing fluorescents. “Very flattering.”
Her mouth twitched in that almost-smile she gave me sometimes, like we were in on a joke other people missed. Before the scandal, she’d been the only faculty member I’d considered emailing for advice.
Before.
“Have you checked your email today?” she asked, casual and not at all casual.
“Hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically,” she said, ignoring a pair of students loitering by the water fountain to listen in, “if you were accepted into a program you didn’t apply to, that would be because we had more faculty step up than we expected. We decided to match a few promising students who hadn’t completed applications.”
