Turn 7 of 10

Ask Tamsin if she can still leave — if she wanted to

You study Tamsin's face, the way the house smile keeps trying to reassert itself like a screensaver on a computer she's forgotten to use. Her hand is still on the doorframe. The enamel pin glints. You keep your voice below the vanilla line, below the music, below whatever frequency the house monitors.

"Could you leave? Right now, if you wanted to."

Tamsin doesn't answer immediately. Her fingers press into the wood of the doorframe, and you watch the question move through her like something she's swallowed — not rejected, not processed, just sitting heavy in a place she can't reach. She looks down the hallway toward the common room, where Brynn's laughter is audible as a distant, golden hum, and her mouth opens, then closes.

"I think so," she says. The words come out slow, like she's testing each one for structural integrity before setting it down.

"The door is right there. I have legs. I have my phone, my student ID, my —" She pauses. Her hand goes to the tote strap again, touching the pin, and something shifts behind her eyes — not resolve, not fear, but the particular exhaustion of someone who's been circling an exit for days and can't remember why she hasn't taken it.

"But every time I think about walking out, I think about how warm it is in here. And how Brynn will look at me — not mean, never mean, just — disappointed? Like I'm hurting her feelings. Like I'm breaking something that was trying to be good to me." She swallows.

"And then I think, maybe I'm being dramatic. Maybe this is just what joining a sorority feels like and everyone goes through it and I'm the weird one for noticing. And then I stop thinking about leaving, and I go back to the common room, and someone hands me a smoothie, and I laugh, and it's — it's fine."

The word *fine* lands between you like a stone dropped in still water. You've heard that word before — from yourself, in your own head, in the voice that says *this is just a resume line* and *I'm too smart to get caught up in this* and *I'm only staying because it's practical*. You recognize it the way you'd recognize your own handwriting on someone else's wall.

"I think I could leave," Tamsin says again, quieter now, her eyes on the face-down card. "But I think I'd have to do it before I read the rest of my card. I think once you read all of it, it's not — it's not a description anymore. It's a commitment. You read it and you agree with it because it sounds nice and then you can't remember what you were before it." She turns to you, and for a moment her face is fully her own — tired, specific, a girl who studied lichen because she chose to.

"If you're going to read yours, read it as a critic. Not as a recruit. Don't let it sound like a compliment."

From the common room, Brynn's voice carries lightly down the hallway, cheerful and unhurried: "Ivy? We're ready for you whenever you are!" The *we* again. The standing invitation. The door that is always, always open, and never closes behind you.