Chapter 27 Adela
My phone lights up. Beckett.
I turn it face down and open my laptop.
The cursor blinks at me from an empty document. I type three sentences of the response paper, delete two of them, and then reach across the desk without thinking and pull The Prince toward me.
I've done this four times tonight.
I’m not sure whose annotations these are.
That's the thing I keep snagging on. The handwriting is dense and deliberate, pressed hard into the margins like whoever held the pen had something to prove.
I've been reading the notes more than the text — trying to build a picture of the person who sat with this book and argued with it, agreed with it, questioned it in the same breath.
Someone who grew up around people who think they run things.
I turn to a page I've already read twice and find a note beside a passage about the nature of loyalty:
Loyalty given freely is the only kind worth having. Everything else is just fear with better manners.
I read it three times.
My phone lights up again, reminding me of the messages from Beckett.
I close the book and stare at my laptop screen. The cursor is still blinking. The document is still mostly empty. It's 11:47 PM.
The deadline is midnight.
I open The Prince again.
My alarm goes off at seven-thirty, and I lie there for a full minute before I remember why I set it.
The extra credit talk. Psychology department. Eight AM.
Professor Aldridge had mentioned it at the end of Thursday's lecture, almost as an afterthought — there's a senior thesis presentation in the psych building tomorrow morning, if any of you want to attend and write a response connecting the material to political behavior, I'll add five points to your midterm.
I'd written it in my planner without thinking much about it.
Five points felt like a lifeline, given the deadline I missed by four minutes last night.
I get up, wash my face, pull on jeans and my camel coat, and go.
The psych building is a ten-minute walk across campus in the early morning cold.
I find the right room — a mid-sized lecture hall, maybe sixty seats, already half full with students who also apparently needed the extra credit.
I'm three minutes early. I find a seat in the middle, set my notebook on the desk, and look toward the front of the room where a professor is arranging papers at the podium.
And then the door beside the whiteboard opens, and Theo walks in.
I go completely still.
He's in dark trousers and a black shirt, without a hoodie, which makes him look… different. He sets a single notecard on the podium and says something quietly to the professor, who nods and steps aside.
He hasn't looked at the room yet.
I should leave.
The thought is immediate and clear. I could stand up right now, walk back up the aisle, slip out before he turns around, and find another five points somewhere else.
I could pretend I was never here. I could go back to the comfortable, controlled version of this, where I decide when and where I encounter him.
I don't move.
He looks up.
His eyes find me in approximately four seconds. His expression doesn't change. He holds my gaze for one beat, two, and then looks back down at his notecard.
I open my notebook and click my pen.
He's good at this.
That's the first thing I think when he starts talking, and the thought doesn't leave for the entire hour.
His thesis is on compliance — specifically, why people follow authority figures they know to be wrong.
He opens with Milgram. He moves through Zimbardo.
He talks about the psychological mechanisms that allow ordinary people to participate in systems they privately object to — the diffusion of responsibility, the power of uniforms and titles, the way institutions create moral distance between a person and the consequences of their actions.
He doesn't pace. Doesn't fidget. Doesn't look at his notecard more than twice.
He talks, and the room listens, and I completely understand why, because there is something about the way he holds a room that has nothing to do with volume.
He's not loud. He's not performing. He speaks like someone who has thought about this for a long time and arrived at conclusions he's completely certain of, and that certainty is more compelling than any amount of enthusiasm.
He says: The most dangerous thing an institution can do is make compliance feel like virtue. Once people believe that following the rules is the same as being good, you no longer need enforcement. They police themselves.
He says: Authority doesn't need to be legitimate to be effective. It just needs to be believed.
He says: The people most likely to comply with a corrupt system are not the weak ones. They're the ones who have the most invested in believing the system is just.
I am writing so fast my hand aches.
At some point, he makes a dry observation about the psychology department's own institutional structure that makes half the room laugh, and I watch his mouth curve into something that isn't quite a smile and feel it hit somewhere in my chest.
He makes eye contact with me twice more during the talk.
The first time is when he's discussing the psychology of people who break from compliance — who decide the cost of going along is higher than the cost of resistance. He's mid-sentence, and his eyes move across the room and land on mine and stay there for just a fraction too long before moving on.
The second time is at the end, when he says, “The question worth asking isn't why people obey. It's what it costs them to stop.”
He looks at me.
Then he looks away, and the professor stands up to thank him, and the room starts moving.
I close my notebook, gather my things, and leave before the applause finishes.
I have twenty minutes before my first class.
I walk fast, head down, not entirely sure what I'm trying to outpace. The cold air helps. I focus on the sound of my boots on the path, the weight of my bag on my shoulder, and the very ordinary, manageable task of getting from one building to another.
I end up at the library because this is my go-to place now.
Third floor. Political science section. My carrel by the window.
I drop my bag, sit down, and pull out my laptop. My heart is beating too fast for someone who just walked across campus at a normal pace. I open my Comparative Government notes, stare at them, and think about compliance, authority, and what it costs to stop.
Then I hear the elevator.
I don't look up. I look at my screen and keep looking at it while the footsteps come closer and stop.
My heart pounds.
He pulls out the chair across from me and sits down.
I look up.
Theo sets a coffee cup on the table in front of me — black sleeve, no label — and wraps both hands around his own. He looks like he has nowhere else to be and has never once in his life been anything other than completely certain of where he is.
"You left," he says.
"I have class."
"But you’re here."
I look at the coffee. "Is that for me?"
"Depends."
"On what?"
"Whether you're going to keep pretending you were there for the extra credit or––"
I pull the coffee toward me and take a sip. "What else would I be there for?"
He looks at me steadily. "You tell me."
The library is quiet around us. Morning light coming through the window. My class is in — I check my phone — fourteen minutes.
My phone lights up on the table between us. Beckett's name on the screen because I finally replied to him this morning, apologizing for not responding.
I turn it face down.
Theo watches me do it and doesn't say anything. He looks back at his coffee and takes a slow sip.
"The question worth asking," I say quietly, "isn't why people obey."
He looks up.
"It's what it costs them to stop." I hold his gaze. "Was that for the room or was that for me?"
Something moves across his face. So fast I almost miss it.
"Why would that be for you?" he asks.
I don't answer. I pick up my bag and stand, and his eyes follow me up without moving anything else.
"I have class," I say.
I get three steps away before I hesitate.
There’s something about him that has me hooked.
I don’t want to stop talking to him, but I also can’t get away fast enough.
I don't turn around. I walk to the elevator, press the button, stare at the doors, and feel my heart doing something completely inconvenient the entire way down.