Age 13
The week after we submitted the project felt heavier than the weeks before it. There wasn't a reason I could point to. The schedule looked the same on paper, lectures, problem sets, labs. The weather was the same kind of thin Texas winter that pretends to be spring in the afternoons and reconsiders at night. Still, something in the air had weight. After the speed and clarity of a defined task, ordinary days can feel like the space between heartbeats stretched too long.
I noticed it first in how Paige turned pages. She usually flipped with the tip of a finger, quick and precise, never losing her place. Now the pages dragged under her touch, catching a little. She was tired. Everyone was, but she didn't wear it on purpose. It had settled on her like dust.
Dr. Li didn't slow down. She never does. She filled the board with a chain of implications that looked like rails laid straight across a valley, then backed up two lines and rewrote a symbol without apology. Somewhere behind me someone sighed. I copied the bones of the argument and left the rest to reconstruct later. When the lecture ended, I stayed seated a moment longer than usual. The chalk smell clung to my shirt.
"Library?" Paige asked.
"After lunch," I said.
She nodded without looking at me, already calculating which corner of the stacks would be empty.
The cafeteria was a study in stochastic processes whether anyone meant it to be or not. The Monday crowd was thin. I ate quickly and left early, the noise startling after a week of working in quiet rooms. On the way out I saw a hand-lettered sign taped crooked near the exit doors. LONGHORN BOXING CLUB Tues Thurs 6 pm Rec Annex Basics Welcome. The black marker had bled through the paper in places. Someone had drawn a small star next to Basics.
I read it twice and kept walking.
Back in the library, the usual table had a dent from someone's elbow pressed too hard into the wood. I set my notebook over the mark and started the next set of problems. Paige arrived ten minutes late, hair pulled back, sweater sleeves pushed past her elbows. She sat, opened her book, and didn't say hello.
We worked for an hour without speaking. It wasn't unusual. Silence between us had a shape we both understood. But today it had an edge. Halfway through a proof she erased the same line three times and wrote it again, harder each time.
"Wrong approach?" I asked.
She exhaled through her nose. "Bad notation."
"Want to switch problems?"
"No," she said, then softer, "Thanks."
At four she checked her watch and closed her book. "I can't today," she said. "I have to meet with Kim for the compiler assignment."
"We can do it later."
"Right."
She hesitated, as if deciding whether to say more, then stood and left without adding anything.
The quiet after she walked away made the table look larger. I worked on another problem because that's what I know how to do. When I finished, the page looked calm. I didn't.
I ran at dusk, half an hour before curfew. The air had cooled enough to sting at the back of my throat. The track behind the rec center was lit in uneven pools. My legs felt heavy for the first quarter mile and then remembered their job. I counted breaths, matched them to strides, and let the day dissolve into motion. On the last lap, the wind pushed against my chest and the world narrowed until there was only the line of the lane and the sound of my shoes hitting the ground.
Through the glass doors of the rec center I caught a steady thud thud thud, gloves against heavy bags. The boxing room looked like a warehouse glued to a gym, a line of bags swinging slightly out of sync. The sound pulled at me, a simple machine noise, force meeting resistance and becoming order. I stopped long enough to read the posted schedule for the Longhorn Boxing Club, then kept moving. I made it back to my floor just as the resident assistant started rounds.
The week tightened. Dr. Li assigned an additional problem set "for your own good." Professor Kim handed out a three-day compiler task with the kind of grin that means he'd broken it himself and wanted to see who could put it back together without making something worse. I planned the next seventy-two hours in ten-minute blocks and then rewrote the plan with a margin for error. Systems fail quietly before they break. You watch for the quiet.
Paige missed our next morning session. At noon a note appeared under my door. Caught up with Kim. Library at seven. The handwriting looked rushed, the line of the y in library dragging lower than the others.
At seven I was there. She arrived at seven-fifteen, cheeks flushed, hair loose.
"Sorry," she said. "Got stuck."
"It's fine."
She dropped into the chair. We opened our books. For twenty minutes the world aligned the way it should, definitions, lemmas, the satisfaction of the next true line. Then her pencil froze.
"He moved the due time up," she said. "Kim did. By twelve hours."
"Tomorrow morning?"
"Yeah."
"We can adjust," I said. "Cut the test suite in half. Make the coverage defensible."
She shook her head. "I already promised a different approach."
"You can change your mind."
"Not how I like to do it."
"You also don't like missing sleep."
"That's not." She stopped. "I'll manage."
We worked until eight-thirty. She packed up fast and left with a tight "Thanks." I watched her go, closed my notebook, and decided to clear my head before curfew. The air outside had cooled again. I ran the loop behind the rec center, keeping an eye on my watch. Through the window I caught the rhythmic sound of gloves on bags, steady, mechanical. I stopped for a minute, read the flyer again, then kept moving. I reached my floor just as the RA turned the corner, clipboard in hand.
The week pressed on. Midterms stacked like weights on a bar. Paige's handwriting grew smaller. Mine stayed the same out of habit. We spoke less, and when we did it was about numbers. I ran more and thought less.
By Thursday night, her absence from study sessions had become normal. I didn't like the word normal applied to that, but it fit. I finished the compiler assignment early and left it in Kim's office drop box before heading back across campus. The sky was heavy with low clouds that swallowed sound. I made it to my dorm at 8:59 p.m. and smiled at the small precision of the clock.
Friday, the last day before spring break, the air on campus felt light, like everyone had agreed to breathe again. Paige looked steadier but worn down.
"Break," she said.
"Finally," I said.
"Going home for a few days. You?"
"Staying. Campus is quieter."
She smiled. "Of course you are."
"Of course."
We went to math. Dr. Li handed back our problem sets with faint pencil check marks. At the door she said to me, "You run."
"Yes."
"Good. It makes the line straighter."
I didn't ask what she meant.
That night I cleaned my desk, sorted notes, and packed a small bag I didn't need to pack. Habit. If you put objects in order, sometimes thoughts follow. I set the bag by the door and sat on the floor with my back against the bed and my legs stretched straight. I wrote a plan for the week: reading to catch up, running in the morning, library in the afternoon, maybe the boxing room twice if my hands stopped complaining. The skin across my knuckles had a faint redness that would darken by morning. It hurts in a clean way, pain with edges. I prefer that kind.
At ten, there was a knock. Paige stood there with a folded sheet of paper.
"Li moved the reading list up," she said. "You probably already saw it."
"I didn't."
She handed me the paper. "I also wanted to say I was wrong about the proof. Your version was cleaner."
"It worked," I said. "That's what matters."
She shook her head, then stopped herself. "Anyway. Spring break."
"Right."
"See you after?"
"See you after."
She hesitated, then said, "Night."
"Night."
When the door clicked shut, the room felt two degrees colder. I added Send Missy a note to my list and underlined it. Then I crossed it out. I didn't need a written reminder. I stretched until my shoulders stopped talking and my hands felt like my hands again.
The next morning the dorm emptied by increments. Doors closed. Laughter echoed once and faded. I went to the track early, before the sun got serious. The run felt right. Afterward I passed the rec annex again. The flyer was still there, the ink faded a little. Someone had underlined Basics with a different pen.
I kept moving. Tomorrow I'd come back with time to spare.
Spring break was a line on the calendar. Fault lines don't care about calendars. They care about pressure and release. I didn't know yet which one we were getting. I just knew I was ready to keep things from breaking if I could, and to let them bend if they needed to.
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