By Monday morning, Alicia had developed a system.
She kept her chin level and her expression neutral. She didn't slow down near groups of students. She didn't look at phones when they appeared in her peripheral vision, and she didn't acknowledge whispers unless someone was speaking directly to her. It was the same system she had used during the first days after the press conference, and it had worked reasonably well.
Today it was not working.
The moment she walked through the main gates, the campus shifted in a way she felt before she heard it — conversations cutting off mid-sentence, movement redirecting, the particular charged stillness of two hundred people deciding simultaneously to pay attention to the same thing. Phones appeared. Groups turned. Someone nearby said something in a l
