The satellite campus is smaller than I expected, quieter, tucked between rolling hills that look nothing like the sprawling brick buildings I have spent the last week learning to navigate. My advisor walks me through the admissions building with practiced enthusiasm, pointing out the library, the dorms, the small coffee shop tucked into the corner of the student union, and I nod along at all the right moments, saying all the right things, while some separate part of my brain keeps drifting two hours away, back to a kitchen, a hospital hallway, a boy sitting alone on a staircase watching me walk up to my room without fighting for me at all.
"The transfer process is quite simple, if you decide to move forward," my advisor says, sliding a folder of paperwork across the desk toward me. "You w
