Rena
My fingers press against the cool windowpane, a flimsy barrier between me and the boy on the green. The sight of him, so effortlessly alive, sends a jolt through my system that is equal parts agony and ecstasy. This is real. He is real.
The dorm room door clicks open and then slams shut. I don’t flinch. I don’t turn.
“Forgot my crimson lipstick,” Alina’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “The one Chad says makes my mouth look like a weapon. Are you still just standing there? People are going to think you’re a statue.”
I finally turn from the window, my gaze steady. The nineteen-year-old me would have jumped, stammered an apology for existing in her space. The thirty-eight-year-old me just watches her.
“I’m thinking,” I say, my voice even.
She stops rummaging through her makeup bag and narrows her perfectly lined eyes. “Thinking? About what? How much fun you’re about to miss? This is the Sigma Chi kickoff, Rena. It sets the tone for the entire semester. If you aren’t seen there, you don’t exist.”
“Then I guess I don’t exist.”
The words hang in the air. Alina stares at me, her jaw slack. She looks genuinely bewildered, as if her lapdog just recited Shakespeare.
“What did you just say to me?”
“I said, I’m not going,” I repeat, walking over to my desk and pulling out my textbook on AdMorrisd Structural Theory. The weight of it in my hands is grounding. “I have to prepare for Finch’s class tomorrow.”
Alina lets out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. “Finch? You’re blowing off the biggest party of the year for a class you’re barely passing? What is wrong with you today? This is about him, isn’t it?”
“Him?” I ask, feigning ignorance as I flip open the book.
“Don’t play dumb. Travis Dane.” She says his name with a mix of reverence and spite. “You were staring at him out the window like some pathetic stalker. Rena, you have to get over it. Boys like that don’t look at girls like you. They look at girls like me.”
She gestures to her own flawless reflection in her compact mirror, a queen reaffirming her reign. The old me would have withered under that statement. It was a poison she’d dripped in my ear for years, and I had always swallowed it.
“You might be right,” I say, not looking up from my book. “But my grade in Finch’s class doesn’t depend on who Travis Dane looks at. It depends on me.”
“But my reputation depends on you showing up!” she snaps, her voice rising. “I told people you were coming. You’re making me look like I can’t control my own roommate.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t make promises on my behalf,” I say, finally meeting her gaze. My voice is quiet, but it carries no heat. Just a finality that is colder than anger. “I’m not your project, Alina. Or your plus-one. Or your social collateral. I’m done.”
She recoils as if I’d slapped her. The confusion in her eyes hardens into something ugly. “Done? What does that even mean?”
“It means I have work to do. Have fun at the party.”
I turn a page in my textbook, my focus absolute. I can feel her staring at me, waiting for me to crack, to apologize, to revert to the girl she knew how to manage. When I don’t, she makes a strangled sound of fury.
“Fine,” she hisses. “Fail your classes. Be a nobody. See if I care.”
The door slams again, with enough force to rattle the band poster on the wall. I don’t look up. A small, unfamiliar smile touches my lips. The first move has been made. The old queen is off the board.
***
The next morning, the lecture hall buzzes with the low hum of hungover students. I sit in my usual spot, halfway up the tiered seating, but the world feels different. Sharper. I’m not just occupying a chair; I’m observing a battlefield.
Alina is three rows down, pointedly ignoring me, whispering dramatically to a friend. Travis is on the other side of the aisle, sketching in a notebook, his dark hair falling over his forehead. He looks focused, intense. Untouchable.
Professor Finch strides in, silencing the room with his presence. He’s a severe man in his late fifties, with a reputation for intellectual brutality. In my first life, I was terrified of him.
“Good morning,” he says, his voice dry as dust. “Let’s discuss the Vexler Atrium.”
An image of the famous building flashes onto the massive screen behind him. It’s a stunning piece of architecture, a soaring cathedral of glass and white steel that seems to defy gravity. I know it intimately. In seventeen years, I’ll be on the commission that investigates its partial collapse.
“A masterpiece of modernism,” Finch drones on, pointing out the innovative cantilevered lobby and the unsupported glass facades. “A structure that redefines the relationship between interior and exterior space. It is, by all accounts, perfect.”
He pauses, scanning the room over the top of his spectacles. “Comments? Thoughts on Vexler’s use of material honesty?”
Silence. This is the part where everyone avoids his gaze, praying not to be called on.
I raise my hand.
My own action surprises me for a second. A ripple of whispers spreads through the rows around me. Alina’s head whips around, her expression one of pure horror. Travis looks up from his sketchbook, his pen frozen mid-air.
Finch’s eyebrows lift a fraction of an inch. “Ms. Morris. You have a contribution?”
“I do, Professor.” I stand up. My heart is beating a steady, powerful rhythm. “With all due respect to the architect, the Vexler Atrium is not perfect. It’s a catastrophe in slow motion.”
A collective gasp echoes in the cavernous room. Finch’s face hardens.
“That is an exceptionally bold accusation against one of the most celebrated architects of our time,” he says, his voice laced with ice. “Elaborate. Now.”
This is it. The point of no return.
“The flaw is in his material honesty,” I begin, my voice clear and unwavering. It doesn’t even sound like my own. “He was honest about the glass and the steel, but he wasn’t honest about the physics that governs them. The southern facade is a curtain wall of triple-paned glass panels, each weighing nearly a ton, secured by custom-forged steel alloy brackets.”
I walk down a few steps into the aisle, owning the space. All eyes are on me. Especially Travis’s.
“The design doesn’t adequately account for differential thermal expansion,” I continue. “On a hot day, with direct sun, the steel brackets absorb heat and expand at a much faster rate than the glass panels. The specified neoprene buffers are insufficient. The sustained thermal stress creates microscopic fractures at the mounting points of the upper panels. It’s a fundamental engineering oversight hidden by a beautiful design.”
Finch stares at me, his expression unreadable. “The building has stood for five years, Ms. Morris. There have been no reports of structural failure.”
“The reports are there, they’re just being misinterpreted,” I counter, the knowledge flowing out of me, effortless and certain. “They’re calling them ‘settling noises.’ They’re blaming ‘wind shear’ for the strange acoustics in the lobby on hot days. They’ve replaced six panels in the last two years, citing ‘minor manufacturing defects.’ It isn’t a defect. It’s a pattern. The design is fighting itself. Within a decade, one of those upper panels will experience catastrophic failure. The entire facade could follow.”
The silence in the room is absolute. It’s not the sleepy silence of a boring lecture; it’s the tense, electric silence of a bomb being disarmed. I can feel the weight of two hundred pairs of eyes.
I look at Travis. He’s not sketching anymore. He’s leaning forward, his elbows on his desk, staring at me with an expression of such intense, focused appraisal that it feels like a physical touch. He’s not just looking at me. He’s seeing me.
Professor Finch slowly removes his glasses and begins to polish them with a handkerchief. He takes his time. The seconds stretch into an eternity.
Finally, he puts them back on and looks directly at me. “Your hypothesis is… unconventional.” He pauses. “But it is not illogical. You’ve identified a potential stress vector that, to my knowledge, has never been raised in any architectural journal.”
He gives a single, sharp nod. It feels like winning an Olympic medal.
“See me after class, Ms. Morris.” He turns back to the stunned lecture hall. “Well. It appears there is more to discuss about the Vexler Atrium than I had anticipated.”
As I return to my seat, my legs feel slightly shaky, but my mind is perfectly clear. I just changed my own history in this room. The timid girl who hid in the back row is gone forever.
When the lecture ends, the room erupts in chatter. As I gather my things, Alina storms up the aisle.
“What in the world was that?” she hisses, her face pale with fury. “Are you trying to get kicked out of the program? Humiliating yourself? Humiliating *me*?”
“I was answering the professor’s question,” I say calmly, zipping my bag.
“No, you were putting on a show! It was pathetic. You sounded like a crazy person.”
“I thought it was brilliant.”
The voice is low and smooth, and it comes from just behind me. We both turn. Travis Dane is standing there, his portfolio tucked under his arm. He’s looking right at me, completely ignoring Alina.
Alina’s mouth opens and closes. She quickly recalibrates, forcing a dazzling smile. “Oh, Travis! Hi! I just meant it was so… aggressive. So unlike her.”
“Maybe it’s exactly like her,” Travis says, his eyes never leaving mine. He takes a step closer. “That analysis… nobody is looking at thermal stress in curtain walls like that. Not at this level. Where did you find your data?”
I have to be careful. “I didn’t find it. I derived it. The material specifications are public record. The rest is just physics. You follow the math, you find the weakness.”
He shakes his head, a look of genuine disbelief on his face. “I’ve studied those same schematics. I never saw it. I was too busy admiring the form.”
“Most people are,” I say. “That’s the architect’s trap.”
A slow smile spreads across his face. It transforms him from impossibly handsome to utterly breathtaking. “I’m Travis, by the way.”
My heart does a stupid little flip, but I keep my voice steady. “I know who you are. Rena Morris.”
“I know,” he says, and the words are layered with new meaning. He’s known my name, but now he knows me. Or at least, the person I’m becoming.
“Ms. Morris!” Professor Finch’s voice booms from the front of the hall. “My office. Now.”
I give Travis a small nod. “I should go.”
“Yeah.” He doesn’t move out of my way, forcing me to brush past him. The air between us crackles with an energy I haven’t felt in sixteen years. “I’ll see you around, Rena Morris.”
I walk down the steps toward the professor’s desk, my back straight, not daring to look back. I can feel Travis’s gaze on me. I can feel Alina’s burning with a new, dangerous jealousy. The game has changed. Every piece on the board is in a new position. And for the first time in a very long time, I am the one in control.
