Turn 3 of 26

The professor introduces herself to the class and says they are starting notes already as this is an honors class. You think you’re not an honors student, but soon remember the 4.0 high school gpa, valedictorian and the speech. Soon, she pulls up a bunch of notes as the 29 other girls grab the pencils and start writing in the notebook. You produce to do the same without question.

"Good morning, honors section," the woman says, capping her marker with a click that lands in the silence like a gavel. "For those who've forgotten their manners over the weekend, I am Dr. Prewitt. We begin notes today — immediately — because this is an honors class, and honors classes do not ease in. They begin."

Honors. The word snags on something in you. You are not an honors student — you're a business major who schedules her classes around her tan appointments, and you were going to say so, the objection already climbing your throat.

Except it isn't true, a quiet voice points out, and the voice sounds like it lives in your own head. Valedictorian. Four-point-oh. You stood on a stage in a rented gown and gave a speech about momentum and trajectories, and your mother cried in the third row, and — the memory is so complete, so warm, that for a second you can smell the gymnasium. You can't remember choosing your major. You can't remember why you came here at all, except that you were always going to be in this room.

Dr. Prewitt pulls a lever and the projector hums to life, dense lines of notation climbing the screen. Twenty-nine pencils move as one, a soft rustle like wind through dry grass, and your hand moves with them. No hesitation, no decision. Your pencil touches paper and starts copying, your handwriting small and neat and slanted exactly like the girl across the aisle's, and you watch it happen from somewhere just behind your own eyes.

The notation means nothing to you and your hand understands it completely. Ruth writes beside you, serene, occasionally glancing at your page to check your progress the way a gardener checks a row of seedlings.

"Good," Dr. Prewitt says, not looking at you, and the word lands on you like a hand on your head.