By the time he walks in, the room is already humming with the kind of anticipation that makes my skin itch.
Hawthorne Hall 301 is packed—latecomers pressed against the back wall, the air overheated from too many bodies and too little ventilation. There’s a scatter of laptops, the occasional clack of keys, but mostly it’s low murmur and the soft rustle of printed syllabi.
Then the sound dips, almost imperceptibly, like someone just turned the volume knob down three clicks.
That’s how I know Caleb Blackwood has arrived.
I look up because everyone else does. It’s involuntary, like staring at an eclipse even though you know better.
He’s in the doorway talking quietly to Professor Cole, polished in a navy blazer that probably costs more than my entire FAFSA award. Dark hair swept back in this irritatingly effortless way, jaw clean, tie straight. He carries exactly one notebook and a pen, because of course he doesn’t need a laptop; people like him don’t take notes so much as decide reality.
I hate that he’s beautiful. It feels like a design flaw in the universe.
“Is that him?” whispers Noah from the seat beside me, breath brushing my ear. The cheap pens in his hoodie pocket rattle when he leans closer.
“That’s him,” I murmur, gaze locked and unkind. “Crown prince of compound interest.”
Noah snorts, then ducks his head quickly when Caleb’s eyes sweep over the room. They pass right over me.
Good, I think, even as something in my chest tightens. Stay oblivious. Be a concept, not a person.
“Settle, please,” Professor Cole says, her voice cutting cleanly through the noise. She’s small and sharp in a black dress and cardigan, gray hair clipped back with the ruthless precision of someone who has no time for nonsense. “Take your seats. This is Ethics and Institutional Power, not a donor gala.”
A ripple of nervous laughter moves through the room.
Caleb takes the empty chair at the end of the horseshoe-shaped seminar table, directly across the open space from me. Of course. We’re two magnets forced onto opposite poles.
I flip my notebook open, my hand already cramped from yesterday’s shift at the café. In the margins, I’ve doodled a tiny guillotine.
“Welcome to the first meeting of our capstone seminar,” Cole continues. “Some of you are also applying for the Leadership & Ethics Fellowship.” Her eyes flick, deliberately, to me and Caleb in turn. “Some of you are here to complete a requirement and leave with your worldview unruffled. I’m sorry for you in advance.”
A few students chuckle; a few shift uneasily.
“This term,” she says, “we’re going to ask one big question: What does it mean to wield power ethically when the institution that gave you that power is itself compromised?”
Her gaze lingers on the Blackwood crest printed discreetly near the bottom of the syllabus—Hawthorne’s favorite benefactors stamped in tasteful serif.
My throat goes dry. Behind my eyes, a hospital room flashes: the soft beep of a monitor, my mom’s hand wrapped in mine, the crisp white of a billing envelope with a logo just like that.
Professor Cole lets the silence hang, then smiles thinly. “We’ll start with case studies. Who read the Blackwood Capital whitepaper I assigned?”
A murmur of assent, some raised hands. My copy is a forest of neon sticky notes.
