Chapter 15: Ellis
1199 Words
Professor Ellis's office was on the fourth floor of Calloway Hall.
Small, organized with the specific order of someone who thought clearly and needed their environment to reflect that. Books arranged by subject along two walls, a desk facing the window, two chairs across from it that had clearly hosted many students over many years.
Prisca told me about it Tuesday evening over text.
*Her office smells like old paper and Earl Grey. I felt immediately at home.*
I smiled at my phone.
*How did it go?*
*Better than I expected. She asked what I wanted to make and actually listened to the answer.*
*What did you tell her?*
*The truth. That I want to make things that change how people see situations they thought they already understood.*
I looked at that for a moment.
*What did she say?*
*She said that was the only reason worth doing it.* A pause. *Then she gave me the New York contact's email and told me to reach out directly.*
---
I was genuinely happy for her.
Not the performed kind — the real kind, the kind that arrives quietly and sits comfortably. Watching Prisca move toward something she wanted, step by deliberate step, without fanfare — it was one of the most straightforwardly good things I had observed in recent memory.
I told her so.
*I'm glad you sent the email,* I wrote.
*You made a persuasive case,* she replied.
*You made your own case. I just named what it wasn't.*
A longer pause than usual.
*That's a distinction worth making,* she said finally. *Thank you for making it.*
---
Wednesday Peter found me in the campus café working on an overdue response paper.
He sat across from me without asking and stole a piece of my muffin and looked at me with the expression of a man who had something to say.
"I need to tell you something," he said.
"About what?"
"About a girl named Sophie."
I put my pen down. "Who is Sophie?"
"A girl I met at Marcus's party Saturday." He leaned back. "While you were on your extremely successful date, I was at a party, which is where I usually am when not monitoring your romantic development."
"And Sophie?"
"Sophie Chen. Pre-med, second year, from Seattle." He paused. "She laughed at something I said and then argued with the next thing I said and I found both of those things equally interesting."
I looked at him. Peter did not talk about girls this way. Peter talked about girls the way he talked about most things — lightly, in passing, never with this particular quality of careful attention.
"You like her," I said.
"I'm gathering information," he said.
"Peter."
"I like her," he said.
---
I gave him the same advice Abdullahi had given me, delivered in my own words.
Be consistent. Be clear without being forceful. Show up in the ordinary moments, not just the arranged ones.
Peter listened with unusual focus.
"This is what happens," he said when I finished. "You fall for someone and suddenly you're dispensing wisdom."
"I'm repeating Abdullahi."
"Abdullahi is wise." He picked up his coffee. "I'm going to text her today."
"What will you say?"
"I have no idea." He looked at the ceiling. "Something honest, probably. Novel concept."
---
Thursday class.
Ellis returned a short response paper — lower stakes than the fifteen percent exercise, but she had written comments on every one. Mine came back with a single line at the bottom: *Stopped one step early again. Find the edge and step over it.*
Same feedback as before.
I stared at it.
After class Prisca read it over my shoulder without asking, which had become a natural extension of the shorthand we had developed.
"She's consistent," Prisca said.
"Annoyingly."
"It means she sees something specific in you." She handed it back. "What's the edge she wants you to cross?"
I thought about it. "The place where the argument stops being safe and starts being actually mine."
She looked at me steadily. "Then cross it next time."
"Easy to say."
"Yes," she agreed. "Most true things are."
---
Harlow Brew. Window table. The Thursday rhythm continuing its reliable course.
She was telling me about the New York contact — a woman named Rachel Voss who ran a mid-sized documentary production company and had replied to Prisca's email within twenty-four hours with three questions and a proposed call time.
"Three questions," I said. "What were they?"
"What have you made so far. What do you want to make next. Why does it matter to you personally." She paused. "No pleasantries. No warm-up."
"Did that feel like pressure?"
"It felt like respect," she said. "She assumed I could answer directly." A small pause. "I could."
"What did you say for the third one?"
She was quiet for a moment — not hesitating, more like selecting the right version of something she had clearly thought about.
"I said that I come from people whose stories were told by others, usually incorrectly, and that I want to be part of changing the direction of that." She looked at her cup. "That the camera should belong, sometimes, to the people in the frame."
The café moved around us.
I looked at her across the small table.
"Rachel Voss is going to want to work with you," I said.
"You don't know that."
"No," I said. "But I know what you just said and I know that it's true and real and specific, and that is what people who make things are looking for in other people who make things."
She looked at me for a long moment.
"You do that," she said quietly.
"Do what?"
"Say the thing that lands exactly where it needs to." She paused. "You told me to send Ellis the email. You told me it wasn't presumptuous. Now this." She tilted her head slightly. "You see things in me clearly."
"You make it easy," I said. "You're not hidden."
"Most people find me difficult to read."
"Most people aren't paying attention."
---
The afternoon light had gone completely by the time we left.
On the sidewalk outside she stopped and turned to face me directly — not the half-turn, not the glance back. Fully turned, looking at me in the cold evening air.
"I want to ask you something," she said.
"Ask it."
"What are we doing?" Not anxious — genuinely curious, the way she asked everything. "I want to know how you're thinking about this."
Direct. Prisca.
I looked at her in the cold and thought about Abdullahi's word and Ellis's feedback and the edge that needed crossing.
"I'm thinking that I want to be with you," I said. "Not casually. Not as a thing that happens around the edges of other things." I paused. "I'm thinking that clearly and I wanted you to know it clearly."
The night was quiet around us.
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then she stepped forward and took my hand.
Her fingers were cold from the November air.
She held on anyway.
"Okay, Daniel," she said.
For the third time. The same two words.
But this time they meant everything.
- Writer
