The wrong nerd

The mirror in your sorority bathroom has always been a friend. This morning it feels like a witness. Your skin is still clear, your hair still falls exactly the way two hundred dollars of product dictates — but there's a smudge of something at the edge of your vision, a softness under your chin that wasn't there last night, and your favorite jeans won't close past your thighs.

You tell yourself it's water weight. Stress. The three pizzas at the philanthropy mixer. But when you reach for your phone to post something reassuring, your thumb hovers — and you catch yourself thinking, with someone else's voice in your head, that you could just stay home today. That nobody in your 9 a.m. matters anyway.

That's the moment you remember the lecture hall. The girl in the front row with the cracked glasses and the knitted sweater. The way the whole room laughed at your joke, and the way she didn't laugh — she just looked at you, very calmly, and said six words you didn't catch. Your stomach drops like an elevator with a snapped cable. You said something unforgivable to the wrong person, and now something is happening to you, one morning at a time.