She spotted Toni’s big braided bun bobbing through the crowd and then saw Marie trailing behind her. She watched as they snagged the last two seats across the auditorium on the highest tier, and they pulled their coats off. Deja willed them to look up at her, and then Marie did. Deja watched as Marie whispered to Toni, who looked up, searching the crowd before her eyes met Deja’s briefly. Her gaze slid to Deja’s left, where Alejandro was just sitting down, chatting with Mike. Deja watched as Toni smiled mischievously and then turned back to Marie, speaking quickly.

Deja couldn’t hear her from so far away, but she could guess what that conversation was like, and she slumped down in her chair, feeling suddenly like everyone was looking at her and Alejandro.

“I hate this,” Deja said, watching her friends whisper to each other across the room as they shared a tin of what looked like a batch of Toni’s oatmeal cookies. Deja’s favorite.

“I know,” Alejandro whispered to her. “No one really cares about the directory, but once a year, we really have to have an entire discussion about it, and nothing even changes.”

Deja turned to him and squinted in confusion. “Huh?”

He smiled at her, also confused, and then gestured at the podium at the front of the auditorium.

Deja followed the direction of his hand and frowned. She rolled her eyes when she saw Gerald Lehman at the podium. Every year, he showed up to ask the Faculty Senate to get rid of the faculty and student directories in a long meandering speech about privacy issues, and every year, someone would explain how it was an emergency response issue or something, and he would get voted down. As soon as Deja saw his name, on the schedule the Senate secretary had emailed two days ago, she’d blocked it out of her brain. Too boring.

“Not him,” she said, turning back to her friends. “Them.”

It was Alejandro’s turn to follow her direction. “What’s wrong?”

She looked at him and rolled her eyes again. “They’re over there with cookies, and I’m over here, without cookies.”

His shoulders relaxed, and he smiled. “I’ve got a granola bar in my bag.”

She wanted to roll her eyes one more time, but his smile was adorable and so earnest that it made her heart clench. “We can share it,” she said.

“Deal.” She watched as he bent over to rummage in his bag.

Her phone lit up with a text message. It was Toni. Of course.

CUTE. A. F.

Deja’s face warmed, and she flipped her phone screen down on the table. She lifted her head to glare at her friends until Alejandro bumped into her arm.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

She sighed. “No granola bar?”