AURORA
── ? ──
The fluorescent lights in the administrative building hallway are harsh and unforgiving, buzzing with that particular frequency that crawls under your skin and stays there.
The walls are painted an institutional beige that's supposed to be calming but just feels suffocating, like being trapped inside a manila folder.
The floor is polished linoleum that squeaks when you walk, every footstep echoing down the empty corridor and bouncing back at you like an accusation.
I'm here. Standing outside the financial aid office. Again.
I've been here three times this week. Three times I've sat across from the same bored administrator with her tired eyes and clipped responses, her fingers moving across her keyboard with practiced efficiency while she tells me the same thing in slightly different words.
Three times I've asked about the employment system lock on my profile, and three times I've gotten exactly nowhere.
"It's an IT issue," she keeps saying, like those four words absolve her of any responsibility. "You'll need to contact them directly."
Except the IT office is never open when I go.
Their hours are listed as Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM, but every time I show up during those hours, there's a sign on the door: IN A MEETING or BACK IN 15 MINUTES or OUT TO LUNCH.
I've tried calling. The phone rings seven times and goes to voicemail.
I've left four messages. No one has called back.
And when I finally managed to catch someone there yesterday—a student worker who looked about as interested in helping me as he would be in watching paint dry—he pulled up my profile, stared at it for exactly thirty seconds, and told me there was nothing he could do without administrative override.
"You'll need to speak to financial aid," he said, already turning back to whatever game he'd been playing on his phone.
Full circle. A perfect, unbreakable loop designed to make me give up.
I'm being stonewalled. Deliberately. Systematically.
And I know exactly who's behind it.
I press my palms against my eyes and breathe.
In through my nose, out through my mouth, the way Mrs. Calloway taught me when I was fourteen and having panic attacks so severe I couldn't get out of bed.
She'd sit on the edge of my mattress and count breaths with me until my heart rate slowed, until I could remember that panic passes, that you can survive anything if you just keep breathing.
I keep breathing now. But it doesn't help.
Because this isn't panic. This is cold, calculated reality pressing down on my chest like a physical weight.
Liam's school fees are due in two weeks. Fourteen days. $847.
It might as well be a million.
I've been doing the math over and over in my head, trying to make the numbers work, trying to find a solution that doesn't exist. I pull out my phone and open the calculator app even though I know what it's going to say. I've checked it seventeen times today alone.
My savings: $312. Everything I managed to scrape together working at the diner back home, every tip I didn't spend on food or bus fare or the cheap coffee I'd buy just so I could sit in the café and use their Wi-Fi to study.
Diner earnings after two weeks: maybe $400 if I'm lucky.
The off-campus job pays $9.50 an hour plus tips, and the tips from construction workers and truck drivers come in coins and crumpled singles.
If I work every shift they'll give me—5 AM to 9 AM, four days a week—I might clear $300 after taxes.
Maybe hitting that $400 mark if the tips are good and I don't have to split them.
Total: $712.
Still $135 short.
The numbers don't lie. They never do. Math is the one constant in my life, the one thing that doesn't change based on who you know or how much money you have or whether someone decides you're worth helping. Two plus two always equals four. And $847 minus $712 always equals not enough.
I could ask Mrs. Calloway. The thought crosses my mind for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time I push it away.
She'd help if I asked. She always does. She's the one who drove me to the bus station when I left for Ardencrest, who pressed an envelope into my hand with $200 cash inside even though I know she can't afford it.
"Just in case," she'd said, her voice soft and warm.
"You never know when you might need it."
I'd cried in the bathroom of the bus station, clutching that envelope and hating myself for taking it.
I can't ask her for more. I can't keep dragging her into my problems, can't keep taking from someone who's already given me so much. She's already watching Liam, feeding him, making sure he's safe. I can't ask her for money too.
I could call my father.
The thought makes me laugh out loud—a bitter, hollow sound that echoes in the empty hallway.
My father doesn't have money. He has debt.
He has bottles lined up on the kitchen counter, cheap vodka in plastic jugs that he drinks straight from because he can't be bothered to find a clean glass.
He has rage that comes in waves, unpredictable and violent.
He has excuses and apologies that mean less than nothing.
He has nothing I can use.
I'm out of options. Completely, utterly, totally out of options.
I lean back against the wall and slide down until I'm sitting on the cold floor, knees pulled up to my chest, arms wrapped around my shins. The position is defensive, protective, like I'm trying to make myself smaller. Like I'm trying to disappear.
The hallway is empty. Silent except for the buzzing lights and the distant sound of voices from somewhere deeper in the building, muffled by closed doors and institutional indifference.
I pull out my phone. The screen lights up with messages I've been avoiding looking at.
Liam: can we call tonight
Liam: i miss you
Liam: mrs c made cookies but theyre not as good as yours
My throat tightens. Constricts until breathing feels difficult.
I type back quickly, before I can think too hard about it.
Me: yes. ill call at 8. promise
His response comes immediately. He must have been holding his phone, waiting.
Liam: okay
Liam: love you
Me: love you too baby
I set the phone down on the floor beside me and press my forehead against my knees. The position makes my back hurt, makes my neck ache, but I don't move. I just sit there, curled up on the floor of an empty hallway, trying to figure out how to solve a problem that has no solution.
I can't fail him. I can't. He's counting on me. He's always counting on me.
Since Mom died, I've been the only constant in his life.
The only person who makes sure he eats breakfast and gets to school on time and has clean clothes and a safe place to sleep.
The only person who checks his homework and reads him stories and tucks him in at night with the nightlight on because he's scared of the dark.
I'm all he has.
And if I can't come up with $847 in fourteen days, his school is going to kick him out.
They'll send letters. Make phone calls. Eventually they'll involve social services because a seven-year-old who isn't enrolled in school is a red flag, and red flags mean investigations, and investigations mean people asking questions about why our father can't be bothered to take care of his own kid.
And then Liam goes into the system. Foster care. Strangers' homes. The kind of lottery where you hope you get placed with someone decent and cross your fingers that decent doesn't turn dangerous when no one's watching.
I know the statistics. I've read the reports. I know what happens to kids who disappear into foster care and come out broken. Or don't come out at all.
I'm trying to figure out my next move—maybe another loan application, maybe selling something, maybe begging the school for an extension—when I hear it.
Footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Echoing down the hallway with the kind of measured rhythm that suggests someone who's in no hurry, someone who knows exactly where they're going and doesn't care how long it takes to get there.
I look up. And my stomach drops.
Evander Laurent is walking toward me.
He's wearing all black again—button-up, tailored slacks, sleeves rolled to his elbows like he couldn't be bothered with the full formal look.
Or the sub-zero temperature. His hair is slightly tousled, like he just came from outside.
From the wind, no doubt. It's been howling all afternoon, the kind of cold, relentless freeze that turns the campus into a maze of echoing stone and wind-scoured alleys.
His eyes lock onto mine. Cold. Focused. Predatory.
I scramble to my feet, pressing my back against the wall. My hands are shaking, so I shove them in my pockets where he can't see.
He doesn't stop walking until he's right in front of me. Close enough that I can smell him—expensive cologne layered over cigarette smoke and rain. Close enough that I have to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact.
"Aurora." My name in his mouth sounds like a verdict. Like he's already decided what's going to happen next and he's just waiting for me to catch up.
I don't respond. Don't trust my voice not to shake.
He tilts his head slightly, studying me with that same calculating expression I've come to recognize. Like I'm a problem he's solving. A puzzle he's piecing together. "You look stressed."
The understatement makes me want to laugh. Or scream. I'm not sure which.
"Fuck off, Laurent." The words come out steadier than I expected.
His lips twitch. Almost a smile. "So hostile. And here I came to help."
I let out a harsh laugh that sounds more like a bark. "Help. Right. Like you helped in the library when you paid those girls to corner me so you could play savior?"
"That was different." He reaches into his jacket—an inner pocket, deliberate and unhurried—and pulls out a thick manila folder. The kind lawyers use for contracts and official documents. "This is a gift."