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.
