“I mean, you should just tell us scholarship students who get into FATE that this is all make-believe, and that as soon as the ties and blazers are off, what matters is the same thing that’s ever mattered: who you know and how much dough your parents have.”

“Henri, I understand yo—”

“I’ll see you later, Mr. Vu,” I say, tumbling out of his office.

The rest of the day is spent in a funk. I don’t have a Smile, smile, or smile™ left in me for anyone in the halls of the Fine Arts Technical Education Academy. And when you’re not smiling in a school like FATE, everyone thinks you’re sad, upset, or, worse, angry. This alone is, in fact, sad, upsetting, and angering. I spend lunch and my following free period completing my midday walks, careful to take a well-known path through which I know for sure I won’t run into anyone from school. The dogs help my mood because dogs were designed by a benevolent universe to help with moods. But after stuffing my Uptown Updogs hoodie into my backpack, it’s back to the purple and navy humdrum. The last two periods of class that follow drag on particularly slowly.

After taking care of my evening dog walks, I swing back to FATE after hours to finish a Biology lab assignment that’s worth 30 percent of the final grade. Tiny little monsters, those things. On the way out that evening, exhausted and ready to crash, I spot Corinne again, seated alone at the center of an empty seminar classroom, staring at the projector. Right: her weird slides-studying thing.

I watch her for a moment, her gaze focused and her lips inaudibly repeating the content of each slide before clicking on to the next one. I discreetly walk away before I’m noticed, or so I thought.

“Halti? Halti!”

I choose to keep walking, pretending not to have heard her until a text arrives on my phone a few seconds later: YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS?

After assessing all my reply options, I backtrack toward the darkened classroom. Corinne has twisted around in her seat and is waiting, phone in hand, looking very much like the textbook definition of “intense,” especially under the projector’s lights.

“You’re seriously avoiding me?” she says. “What, am I back to being a social pariah?”

“No! I just didn’t see you!” I lie.

“Bull,” she says flatly. “I saw you and Ming earlier.”

There’s an earnestness to her intensity today. She’s staring at me, genuinely thinking she’s done something wrong. It’s strangely destabilizing.

“I’ve just been in my head a bit,” I say.

“Oh.” The slideshow seems to have been paused. “Is it Evie?”

I shake my head to say no.

“College?”

I shake my head to say yes.