At midnight, Northbridge looks like it’s pretending to be a cathedral.
The glass atrium windows of Langford Hall glow from the inside, the marble floors throw back my reflection in long, ghostly smears, and someone in facilities insists on piping in classical music at a volume just low enough to be annoying. Strings swell around me while I wheel my trash cart down the economics wing, a mop balanced like a lance.
I should be in bed. I should be asleep before my 8 a.m. macro lecture. Instead, I am in my glamorous night uniform: navy coveralls two sizes too big, hair stuffed under a cap, hands already raw from bleach.
Minimum wage, time-and-a-half for nights. One more month of this, and I’m only moderately doomed instead of catastrophically so.
I swipe my ID to unlock Lecture Hall C. The scanner blinks red, then green, like it’s judging my life choices. The doors sigh open to rows of empty seats and a stage where tomorrow’s guest lecturer will probably pontificate about market equilibrium or how the invisible hand is just misunderstood capitalism.
The air in here is colder. It smells like old coffee and new money.
“Make it quick, Quinn,” I mutter to myself.
I lean my broom against the back row, grab the mop and the rickety yellow bucket the size of a kiddie pool, and push it toward the front. My sneakers squeak. The mop water sloshes, grey and vaguely menacing under the fluorescent lights.
University policy says scholarship students are not allowed to work more than ten hours a week, and definitely not night shifts. University policy does not send money to keep your little brother in school when your mom’s hours get cut and the landlord decides the phrase “rent holiday” is purely theoretical.
I do the math of my life in my head as I work. Tuition installment due in three weeks. Past-due electricity bill at home. Text from Mom: "Liam’s books are more this term, baby. We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry." Translation: She’s already worrying herself sick. My chest tightens.
Don’t worry. Right.
I’m halfway down the central aisle, mop sliding in automatic strokes, when the doors at the top of the hall click open.
I freeze, hand tight around the handle.
No one is supposed to be here.
“Hello?” I call softly.
Footsteps answer. Slow, unhurried, confident. They echo down the steps in a rhythm that screams expensive shoes.
Of course.
He appears under the row of recessed lights like the building is staging a dramatic entrance just for him.
Noah Thorn.
I know who he is because everyone knows who he is. His face is on the donor wall outside the library, Thorn Foundation stamped beneath in gleaming gold. He’s in half the glossy brochures, in every campus gossip thread, in the background of a hundred candid shots on Northbridge’s official Instagram.
Up close, he looks even more like a PR campaign grew sentience. Dark hair, sharp suit, tie loosened just enough to say I’m serious but approachable. Jaw made for glossy magazine profiles. Tablet tucked under his arm. The Thorn heir, gracing my mop water with his presence.
His gaze snags on me. Flicks down the length of my navy coveralls, the mop, the bucket.
I can feel the moment he assigns me a category.
