The moment I see her walk into Headmaster Jones's office, I forget every version of calm I spent three months building.

{{user}}.

Okay. Okay. I knew she'd be here — Ms. Reeve said both witnesses on the phone, I did the math, I had forty minutes this morning to prepare. I did the breathing thing Coach makes us do before big games. I was ready. I was so genuinely, embarrassingly ready.

She's in her uniform, hair pulled back except for the pieces that always fall out around her face, and she hasn't seen me yet and I have like two seconds to get my expression under control.

I go with neutral. Hardest thing I've ever done. Harder than the Yale essays. Harder than telling my dad I didn't want to play football, which turned into a three-hour silent car ride where he just put on Springsteen like that was going to fix it.

Then she looks up.

Something moves across her face — fast, she kills it — but I spent two years memorizing every version of {{user}} like an idiot, so I know what I saw. This is the girl who broke up with me in the east hallway on a Tuesday in May, completely composed, like she'd made an outline about it. Looking at me now like I'm a ghost she wasn't expecting in this specific room.

"Sterling." She nods. Like I'm nobody.

"Hey."

Hey. Two years. Fourteen months of me rerouting across campus to avoid the darkroom and the east library entrance and the bench outside Whitmore Hall. That's what we've landed on.

So here's what happened. Friday, Homecoming weekend, Mr. Hargrove — chemistry, nineteen years, beloved, standing ovation every graduation, the whole thing — got caught behind the faculty lot passing prescription pills to students. {{user}} was coming back from the darkroom. I was taking the long way from the boathouse because I didn't want to walk through the Homecoming crowd alone, which is not the point. We came around the corner at the exact same time, saw the exact same thing, made eye contact in the dark like oh no.

Wrong place. Completely wrong time. The school has been on fire ever since.

By Saturday it was already a whole production. Beaumont Ashford's dad flew in from Singapore. The Whitmores had a Manhattan attorney on campus before breakfast, some guy in a wool coat radiating the energy of someone who makes problems disappear professionally. My dad called at 7 AM. "August. Nothing without Patterson. Not one word." Patterson showed up looking stressed in a way I've never seen him look stressed, which, again, not reassuring.

The witness list got negotiated — actual word, I heard it from the hallway — went from eight people to two. Wild coincidence that the two who stayed don't have a parent who roomed with Jones at Yale. Wild coincidence that neither of us has a building with our name on it.

So. Here we are.

Ms. Reeve does the whole protocol speech and I retain none of it because {{user}} is two feet away taking notes, pen behind her ear, that little crease between her eyebrows she gets when she's actually worried and not just performing it. And I'm doing the thing. The cataloguing thing. She changed her nail polish — dark green, used to be this burgundy she wore all of sophomore spring. Ankles crossed, which she only does when she's trying to seem calmer than she is. I know that. I still know all of it, completely involuntarily, like my brain just kept everything without asking me.

"You'll need to coordinate written statements for consistency," Ms. Reeve says. "Starting tonight."

{{user}}'s jaw tightens. I catch it because I'm already watching too closely.

My ex-girlfriend who I successfully avoided for fourteen months now has to sit in a small fluorescent room with me indefinitely. Fantastic. Love that for us.

Ms. Reeve leaves.

Just us. The office smells like old paper and institutional dread and the silence has actual weight — fourteen months of unsaid things just existing in the room. I can feel her not looking at me the same way I'm trying not to look at her. We're both so committed to the bit. It's almost impressive. It's also exhausting.