It’s during class, so the halls are mostly empty. She hears a few voices lecturing, and her boots clack against the tile floors, echoing off the walls. She’s in here almost every day, but the smell always gets her. Floor polish and old books. She thinks of this building as her home away from home. The oddball professors, the eager random students who talk about writing and movies. The English Department draws them all. Hippies and frat boys, Goths and farm kids. She could completely change her look and wardrobe every day and always find someone to fit in with.

Dr. Nye’s office is at the end of the hall. She sees his door is open, the glow from a lamp spilling out. It’s a gloomy day. There’s not enough artificial light on campus to make up for that.

She steps into the doorway and knocks gently. “Dr. Nye?”

He’s staring at his laptop, and her knock seems to startle him. He lifts his head like he thought he was alone in the building.

“What?” he asks.

“I’m sorry. I can come back.”

“Oh. No, you don’t have to do that. Sorry.”

But he shuts the lid of his laptop like he’s hiding something.

“Are you sure?” Rebecca asks.

“Please. Come on in.”

Rebecca does, taking the seat across the desk from Nye, the one she’s sat in many times while he’s dispensed wisdom. But the way she seemed to interrupt him makes her even more nervous, and she wishes she’d just forgotten the whole thing. Instead of coming inside, she wishes she’d just kept walking around and around the building and then gone to her apartment and her idiot roommate.

But here she is. And Nye looks at her expectantly. Impatiently.

He seems tired, his eyes red. She’s heard some of her classmates discuss how attractive they think he is, but Rebecca never really sees it. She thinks of him more like the cool-dad type. Or maybe the cool uncle, since she has a dad who is kind of cool. She knows Nye’s wife and son died in some kind of weird accident five years ago. A bike? A sled? She thinks of them every time she comes in because he keeps a picture of them on the shelf behind him. A pretty woman, natural-looking with her hair in a ponytail, laughing on a beach. The kid next to her smiling. A cute boy with dripping-wet hair. Probably taken a few years before they died. She stares at the photo a little too long.

“I haven’t finished reading your thesis yet,” Nye says. “I meant to tell you after class this morning that I hoped to be through it by now, but you left before I could speak to you. Things have grown a little hectic with the book and everything. But I’ll get it done by next week.”