By the time I realize my name is on the list, the seminar room is already full of people who don’t want me there.
Technically, it’s not about me. It’s about the whiteboard.
"Arden Creative Mentorship – Cohort Roster," someone has written in looping marker. Underneath, the names march down in neat columns: Evan Hart, Lindsay Cho, Noah Patel, et cetera, et cetera. The usual suspects — the darlings of the English department, the ones who quote obscure poets in group chats and pretend not to care about grades they absolutely checked the minute Canvas updated.
And then, halfway down, in plain black letters: "Maya Locke."
The room hums with conversation until someone actually reads it out loud.
"You’ve got to be kidding me," a girl near the front says. Her voice is bright, like she’s narrating an unboxing video. "Maya Locke?"
The word hits like a dropped tray.
I feel it the way you feel a sudden silence in a cafeteria — not in your ears, but in your skin. Heads turn, scanning, hunting. They don’t have to look far; there’s only one person standing just inside the door, one hand still on the knob like I might pull it closed and disappear back into the hallway.
I force my fingers to unclench.
Act like you belong. That’s rule one. They can’t kick you out for an administrative typo.
"Excuse me," I mumble, stepping sideways as a guy with a messenger bag swings past. His eyes flick over me, down to my boots, back up to my face. Recognition flashes; his mouth curls before he looks away.
Slut. The word doesn’t have to be said anymore. It’s background radiation.
I cross the room, head down, and take the only empty seat — back row, far corner, the one by the window. Sunlight slides across the scratched laminate desk, catching the faint outline of carved initials: T.A. + ?
Of course.
The door at the front snaps shut. The noise is sharp enough that everyone jumps a fraction. Conversation dies mid-whisper.
I look up.
Dr. Theo Arden is somehow taller in person than in rumor.
He isn’t wearing a blazer; that would be too clichéd. Just a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, charcoal slacks, a dark watch that probably tells time in more cities than I will ever see. His hair is that untrustworthy shade of brown that looks almost soft until you realize the cut is too precise for it to be an accident. There’s a coffee in one hand, a stack of folders in the other, and a kind of controlled impatience in the way he moves, like the air has agreed to get out of his way.
His eyes sweep the room the way you’d skim a table of contents, checking off chapters. I can feel the moment they land on me. It’s a physical sensation — not heat, not exactly. More like the slide of a scanner at checkout.
His gaze drops, almost imperceptibly, to my desk, to the roster sheet in his hand, back to my face.
Something tightens around his mouth.
Good. Let him be annoyed. He thought he was getting a room full of prodigies; instead he got the campus cautionary tale.
"Good afternoon," he says. His voice is low, clean, the kind of voice that belongs to someone who has given the same lecture a hundred times and never once been interrupted.
"Welcome to the Arden Creative Mentorship. If you’re in this room, it’s because — allegedly — you’re the best writers in your year." He drops the folders on the desk with a soft thud. "I say ‘allegedly’ because I haven’t seen proof yet. So congratulations on being here. Don’t get comfortable."
A few people laugh a touch too loudly.
He doesn’t smile.
"Housekeeping," he continues. "This program is small because it’s expensive. Donors write checks. Administrators grovel. I endure meetings. All so you can sit in this room and produce work that doesn’t embarrass me." He takes a sip of coffee like he needs the bitterness to wash down the words. "In exchange, I give you my time and attention, which, I am told, are in high demand."
Evan Hart, three seats in, radiates smugness like a space heater.
Theo — Dr. Arden, I correct myself, because I am not going to be the one who gets too familiar — flips the top folder, glances at the list again.
I watch the subtle tick in his jaw when he reaches my name.
"There has been," he says, and the room tenses around the unfinished sentence, "a clerical adjustment to the roster." His eyes cut toward Claudia Reese, the program director, who is perched at the side of the room like a polished afterthought. Her lipstick doesn’t waver, but her fingers tighten on her tablet.
Claudia gives a bright administrative smile. "Just a minor enrollment glitch," she says. "All sorted now."
"Is it." His tone makes it not a question.
My throat is dry. I can imagine the explanation in his head already: Because of course. Because even the glitch list is slutty.
"Regardless," he continues, dismissing the topic with a slight flick of his hand, "this is the cohort. You are here. I don’t particularly care why. What I care about is what you put on the page. Everything else—" his gaze slides over me and away, cutting cold as a turned shoulder "—is irrelevant in this room."
I almost laugh. Irrelevant. That would be new.
He starts in on the syllabus. Weekly one-on-ones, group workshops, mandatory readings. The usual boot camp outline: he will break us down and build us back up, provided we don’t quit or cry first. The program brochure in my inbox had said something about nurturing voices; what comes out of his mouth sounds more like controlled burn.
"You will submit five pages every week," he says. "No late work. No exceptions. If your computer explodes, write by hand. If your hand falls off, dictate into your phone. If you’re hospitalized, dictate from there. If you’re dead, congratulations — you’re now a tragic literary figure and everyone will read you."
More nervous laughter. I stare at the margin of my notebook instead, my pen tracing a line where a heart used to be until I scratched it out last semester.
His gaze catches my pen mid-scribble.
"Ms. Locke," he says.
The room inhales.
Every muscle in my body decides this is the moment to remember how to be a statue. "Yes," I manage.
"Office hours sign-up sheet is coming around." He nods to the folder Claudia has started passing down the rows. "Normally I’d say choose a slot that works with your other obligations, but I suspect your schedule is… more flexible than most."
The line is nothing on paper. In his mouth, with those clipped pauses? It’s a scalpel.
A low ripple runs through the room — a few suppressed snorts, a hissed whisper.
I feel the color climb up my neck. He doesn’t look away, waiting for… what? A flinch? A sultry comeback to confirm what he already thinks I am?
I force my voice steady. "I work evenings," I say. "So I’ll take whatever’s not after five."
His brows lift a hair’s breadth. There it is, the beat where he sorts that information into some pre-labeled mental folder: she works nights.
"Noted," he says. "We’ll see what the sheet decides."
He moves on. I mark the word we in my head and underline it twice.
By the time the roster reaches me, the top half is already inked with names claiming Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. I scan the remaining slots. Monday, 8 a.m., is wide open. Of course. No one voluntarily wakes up for criticism.
I write my name in the empty line, printing slowly so my hand doesn’t shake.
As I pass the folder forward, Evan twists in his seat just enough to glance back. "Bold move, Locke," he murmurs, low enough that technically he’s not interrupting. "You and Arden alone at dawn. Guess he’ll get the full… experience."
The way he says experience makes my skin crawl.
I meet his eyes and smile, small and sharp. "Don’t worry, Evan. I’m sure he’ll still have plenty of energy left to tear you apart after."
I don’t raise my voice, but a couple of people nearby hear it. One girl muffles a laugh into her sleeve. Evan’s smirk falters.
Theo’s attention flickers, like he felt the altitude change in the room. His gaze lands on me again, cooler this time. Assessing.
For one wild second, I imagine saying it out loud: I didn’t sleep with that TA. I didn’t sleep with anybody. The email was a joke to one person that everyone else chose to believe.
Instead, I write rule two at the top of my notebook: Never explain. Explanation sounds like apology.
"You will also," Theo says, "read your work aloud. Every week."
A collective groan rises.
"Yes, I know," he says, cutting it off. "You write because you don’t like talking. Unfortunately, the world insists on conflating the two. If you ever want to be read beyond this campus, you’ll have to open your mouth. So we’ll practice." His eyes rest on me a second longer than on anyone else. "All of you."
I swallow. My throat feels like sandpaper.
Reading out loud means letting my voice exist in a room that already has an idea of me. It means letting them hear the part I keep locked in Google Docs and unsubmitted Word files, the voice that wrote a three-page rant about how campus gossip functions like a Greek chorus with Wi-Fi.
It means handing them a weapon and hoping it turns into a mirror instead.
The session grinds through logistics. Claudia chirps something about funding and "our generous benefactor, Mr. Halbrook," which earns her an eye roll so small from Theo I’m not sure anyone else notices. Evan volunteers to coordinate a group chat. I very specifically do not volunteer anything.
"You’ll get your first prompt by email tonight," Theo says finally. "You have until Monday’s session to produce five pages. Don’t send me excuses. Send me sentences."
Chairs scrape as people stand. Conversation swells, the artificial kind where everyone is already auditioning for everyone else’s future acknowledgements page.
I stay seated, letting the tide of bodies move around me. It’s a trick I learned freshman year: delay exit, slip out when the current is thinnest.
"Maya."
My name, again, but softer this time. Claudia’s voice.
She’s closer than I realized. Up close, the lines around her eyes are more visible, the lipstick more obviously a shield.
"Can I grab you for a second?" she asks, already turning toward the corner, toward the window — away from the center of the room where people are overtly pretending not to listen.
I follow, because what’s the alternative? Saying no to the woman who signs the scholarship forms?
"First," she says in a low voice, "I’m sorry about the way this rolled out. Your name should have been on the confirmed list before today. We had…" She glances over my shoulder at Theo, who’s stacking papers with precise irritation. "Some miscommunication."
Miscommunication is a polite way of saying: You weren’t supposed to be here and then suddenly you were, and no one had time to object without looking like a monster.
"It’s fine," I lie. "I wasn’t exactly counting on this."
Her gaze sharpens, as if she’s trying to measure how much I mean that. "You earned the place," she says. "Blind submissions, faculty review. No one did you a favor, okay?"
Except you did, I think, because somebody somewhere had to override something when they saw my name attached to those pages. Or maybe they didn’t recognize it at all; maybe my stories were anonymous in the one space on campus where my scandal didn’t precede me.
"Anyway," Claudia continues, "Arden is… intense."
"So I’ve heard." Everywhere. In every bathroom stall with literature department graffiti.
"He’s also very good at what he does. Don’t let him scare you off." Her smile is brief but almost real. "If he’s brutal, it means he thinks you’re worth the time."
Across the room, Theo looks up as if he’s heard his name through some hidden faculty frequency. Our eyes meet for a heartbeat.
There is no warmth there, no welcoming mentor glow. Just curiosity edged with something harder, like he’s trying to figure out which section of the syllabus I fit into.
I look away first.
"Thanks," I say to Claudia. "For… the glitch."
She exhales through her nose. "Don’t make me regret it, Maya."
There’s no cruelty in it, but there’s no indulgence either. She moves off to intercept a cluster of donors’ kids. I shoulder my bag and finally slip out into the hallway, the noise folding behind me like a curtain.
The corridor smells like old paint and someone’s too-strong cologne. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead; the floor tiles are that institutional beige that pretends not to have opinions.
I’m halfway to the stairs when a voice behind me says, "Ms. Locke."
Different tone. No silk. Just that clean, inflexible column of sound.
I turn.
Theo Arden stands in the doorway of the seminar room, one hand braced against the frame. The classroom chatter has been swallowed; out here, his presence pulls the space into sharp focus.
"You chose Monday," he says.
For a bizarre second, my brain blanks. Monday? I think he’s talking about something philosophical. Then I remember the sign-up sheet.
"It was open," I say.
"It was avoided," he corrects mildly. "There’s a difference."
"Well," I say, because if I stop to overthink it my tongue will fuse to the roof of my mouth, "I’m not exactly in a position to avoid things, am I?"
His expression doesn’t change, but something in the air between us does — a hairline crack in the ice.
"Show up on time," he says. "Bring pages. Real ones. Not diary entries you’ve line-broken and decided are poems."
"I don’t write poems," I say too quickly.
"No?" A faint tilt of his head. "Shame. They’d probably cause less trouble."
The implication hangs there. He’s not talking about enjambment.
My pulse jumps, but I hold his gaze. "From what I’ve heard, you enjoy trouble."
His mouth does something like a smile and then decides against it. "I enjoy good work. Trouble is usually just a byproduct of people being honest on the page." His eyes narrow slightly. "We’ll see which category you fall into."
"Maybe I’ll surprise you," I say.
There it is — the stupid, reckless spark that made me send my submission in the first place. The part of me that isn’t content with the back row, that wants to push against the story they’ve assigned me.
He studies me like a paragraph he’s not sure yet whether to cut.
"Writers don’t surprise me, Ms. Locke," he says finally. "They disappoint, or they confirm."
The hallway hum seems to fade, like the building itself is leaning in.
"Try not to be boring," he adds. "If you’re going to drag my office hours into the scandal column, at least make it worth reading."
Heat flares in my cheeks, but it’s not shame this time. It’s anger, clean and bright.
"If your office hours end up in the gossip column," I say, voice steady, "that’ll be because people can’t tell the difference between fiction and real life. Again."
For the first time, something like genuine interest flickers across his face.
"Good," he says quietly. "Use that." He steps back into the doorway. "Monday, eight a.m. Don’t be late."
He lets the door swing shut between us.
I stand there for a moment longer, my heart doing an uneven, annoyed rhythm, like it’s mad I made it sprint without moving.
Use that, he said.
Fine.
I pull out my phone on the way down the stairs, thumb already opening a blank note. The words hit faster than my fingers can type:
"On this campus, girls are ghost stories told in group chats. I am the cautionary tale with a pulse."
I pause at the landing, breath catching for reasons that have nothing to do with physical exertion.
If I’m going to be read, really read, it might as well be by the one person who’s already decided he knows my story.
Let’s see what happens when I hand him the real version.
I keep walking, the sentence pulsing at the top of the screen like a dare.
Monday at eight, I’ll find out whether Dr. Theo Arden is better at reading texts than he is at reading girls.
