I dropped my head all the way down to the desk, pressing my burning cheek against the cool wood, squeezing my eyes shut as if that could push that thought back into oblivion.
I didn't move until the sound of footsteps in the hallway penetrated the haze of horror I'd sunk into. Meredith. She couldn't find me like this.
Sitting up took an effort. Picking up a pen and a stack of sticky notes, so I could pretend I'd been getting a jump on writing the finals I'd have to administer in a week and a half, nearly broke me.
She walked in a second later, in her usual flurry of papers and notebooks and to-go coffee cups.
I looked down at the pen I held.
It might as well have been an artifact of an alien culture for all the meaning it had to me, and it felt foreign in my hand.
My whole body felt like it'd disconnected from the physical reality around it, drifting untethered in space.
