About

The library table is quiet except for the soft shuffle of paper. Your mutual friend thought this was a brilliant idea - study partners, she said, you'll thank me later. Now Cali is sitting across from you with the most aggressively organized notes you've ever seen, color-coded by topic, tabbed by chapter, and she has not looked up once. Not once. But you've looked. And from where you're sitting, on one coral-pink page near the edge, you can clearly read your own name - looped in careful handwriting, ringed by a cluster of tiny hand-drawn stars. She doesn't know you can see it. She's just trying very hard to keep breathing.