Chapter 4

　　She typed the yes, deleted it, put her phone face-down on the desk, and spent the next two hours reading the first three chapters of her biology text with a fake focus.

　　Every fourth sentence she'd realize she knew all these things. That was the problem she had with reading… she always knows these things.

　　How?

　　She doesn't know yet.

　　By ten o'clock she had written another chapter in her secret document, still not certain about what she would do with it yet.

　　Just because, what she had in her mind was wicked.

　　Maybe, evil.

　　Mara knocked on the connecting wall at 10:30 PM, having apparently returned, and opened the room door.

　　"Nia invited us. Did she text you?" "She did."

　　"And?"

　　"I'm reading."

　　Mara leaned on the doorframe. She had changed into something that was casual but was also, Quin noted, extremely deliberate: dark jeans, a cropped top, and her hair down and loose. She looked the way people looked when they wanted to seem effortless and had put significant effort into the appearance of it.

　　Quin recognized the strategy from years of observation. She had simply never deployed it

　　herself.

　　"Come for an hour," Mara said, her tone easy, not pressing. "If you hate it, you leave. No obligation, no social debt."

　　"I don't hate things." "Then you'll be fine."

　　A beat. Quin looked at her textbook. At the number she'd read without retaining it. "Give me ten minutes," she said.

　　Room 212 was three doors down the hall but felt like a different country.

　　It was full, not overwhelmingly, but significantly, with maybe fifteen people, most of them sophomores and a handful of older students Quin didn't recognize. The music was low enough that you could talk over it. Someone had hung string lights around the window and they gave the room a quality that was simultaneously warm and slightly conspiratorial. Quin registered all of it in the first four seconds and then looked for the corners.

　　Nia was the girl who appeared immediately and greeted them with the rehearsed warmth of a host, a natural social architecture to her, welcoming but not overwhelming. She was tall and

　　darker-skinned, with the kind of bone structure that made rooms take note.

　　"Finally," she said, her eyes moving between Mara and Quin, landing. "Here comes the mysterious third roommate."

　　"Quin," Quin said. "Welcome," nia replied to her.

　　She was handed something in a red cup. She held it without drinking and observed.

　　The party, if it could be called that at this scale, operated on its own. People arranged themselves in groups that shifted like cells dividing, conversations beginning, reorienting, and dispersing. Mara was absorbed into one within four minutes. Jade, who had come despite claiming she'd stay for thirty minutes only, was already in what appeared to be a genuinely interesting conversation with someone near the window.

　　Quin stood with her cup and watched.

　　A boy appeared beside her. Medium height, dark skin, and a slow, amused smile she recognized from the orientation mixer.

　　"Marcus," he said, tilting his chin at her. "I know. We met at orientation."

　　"You remember."

　　"I remember most things."

　　He laughed. It wasn't defensive; he seemed to find it genuinely funny, like an interesting start to a conversation rather than a challenge. She looked at him, like she had been looking at the opposite gender these few days.

　　They talked. He was a pre-law second-year from Atlanta. He asked questions that were actually questions and not setups for information about himself, which she appreciated. She answered with more than her minimum. At some point she realized she'd drunk approximately half her cup without deciding to.

　　It was later, maybe midnight, when the room had thinned to its more committed attendees and the conversation had settled into something slower and more deliberate that Mara, sitting cross-legged on Nia's bed and now clearly in a very comfortable position in this room and with these people, turned to Quin and said:

　　"Okay, Nia started something last week and I want to continue it. Everyone must give an honest answer to one question. No passes."

　　A few groans. A few immediate yeses. Marcus raised an eyebrow at Quin from across the

　　room.

　　The question, when Mara produced it, was, "What do you want most that you've never had?" People answered variously. Someone said money, straightforwardly, and got laughter.

　　Someone said a relationship with their father that didn't require them to perform a version of themselves he'd approve of, and the room went briefly, respectfully quiet before moving on. Marcus said something about wanting to build something that would outlast him, which Quin found more interesting than she expected.

　　Then it was her turn.

　　Twelve faces or thereabouts, warm in the string light. Mara watched with that particular patient expression. Quin looked down at her cup.

　　She could say something safe. She had three ready. She was good at safe answers that felt personal but weren't.

　　She looked up.

　　"I want to want something," she said, her voice steady, careful. "The way other people want things. Without anything between me and it, without the glass."

　　The glass was what she had titled her document.

　　And if it really becomes a book like she's leaning towards, she would title it that.

　　The room sat with what she had said. "The glass," Nia repeated, thoughtful.

　　"Like I'm watching from outside. I've been watching things from outside my whole life. I want to be inside one of them."

　　She wanted to be inside her own story, she wanted to be the main character, she was done being the secondary character with her mom as primary or with other people as primary.

　　A silence. Not uncomfortable, the one that forms around things that are actually true.

　　Not falsified.

　　Mara was looking at her with an expression that Quin couldn't entirely classify. Something between recognition and a decision being made.

　　"That's the most honest thing anyone's said all night," Marcus said, quietly. Quin shrugged, composure reassembled over the honesty like a sheet pulled flat. "I said no passes."

　　People laughed. The moment dissolved. The conversation moved on.

　　But Mara's expression stayed. And when Quin caught her eye across the room later, Mara held her gaze for a beat before looking away.

　　Something had shifted. Quin could feel it.

　　She walked back to their room alone at 1 AM, Mara having stayed, and when she got to her bunk, she realized she enjoyed gatherings like that and she wouldn't think twice before attending such again.

　　Her most important realization for tonight was that, she would be the center in her story and the whole world would like her character.

　　Maybe not the whole world, but her readers.