Chapter 3: Dora
1005 Words
Two days passed before I saw Prisca again.
They were not comfortable days. They were the kind of days where you check your surroundings more than usual — scanning lecture halls before sitting down, taking slightly longer routes across campus, finding sudden interest in areas you had no prior business being in. I was not proud of it. But I was doing it.
Peter called it "tactical positioning."
Abdullahi called it "inefficient."
I called it nothing, because naming it made it worse.
---
It was Thursday when it happened, and it happened without any tactical positioning whatsoever.
I was at the campus library, second floor, trying to locate a copy of *Contemporary Social Theory* that the university website claimed existed but the shelves seemed to disagree with. I was crouched in the aisle between two tall shelves, reading spine after spine with increasing frustration, when I heard voices from the reading tables around the corner.
Two of them. Distinct. One lower and focused, one brighter and quicker — the kind of voice that moved through sentences with energy, like it was enjoying the ride.
I wasn't listening intentionally.
Then I heard the name.
"Prisca, I'm just saying—"
I stopped moving.
"—you could have at least gotten his number. You said he was cute."
A pause. Then the other voice — quieter, a little amused. "I said he seemed nice."
"Same thing."
"It really isn't, Dora."
*Dora.* So that was the other voice.
"Nice and cute are not mutually exclusive," Dora continued, with the confidence of someone who had thought about this extensively. "In fact, the combination is ideal. Nice-and-cute is the whole goal. Pure cute with no nice is just a headache with good bone structure."
Prisca laughed. I had not heard her laugh before. It was quiet and genuine — the kind that escapes before you decide to let it.
"I didn't get his number," she said, "because it was a thirty-second conversation about course registration."
"Thirty seconds is enough time to say *hey, what's your number.*"
"For you, maybe."
"For any functioning human adult—"
"Dora."
"I'm just saying."
I became very suddenly aware that I was crouched in a library aisle, completely still, listening to a private conversation. This was not a flattering position — morally or physically. I should have stood up, made some noise, announced my presence through the natural sounds of a person existing.
Instead, without fully deciding to, I stood up and turned the corner.
---
There were two of them at the reading table.
Prisca was on the left, textbook open, highlighter in hand, looking exactly as composed as she always seemed to be. She glanced up when I appeared and her expression shifted — recognition, then something that might have been surprise, then something more neutral settling over it quickly.
The girl beside her — Dora — turned around with open curiosity. She was bright-eyed and expressive, the kind of face that broadcast every thought before the mouth got to it. She looked at me, then at Prisca, then back at me, and the smile that followed was immediate and completely unsubtle.
"Hi," I said, aiming for casual. "Sorry — didn't realize anyone was over here. I'm looking for a social theory textbook."
"Giddens or Ritzer?" Prisca asked.
I blinked. "Ritzer. *Contemporary Social Theory.*"
She tilted her head slightly. "It's not in that section. It gets misshelved — usually ends up in the sociology subsection, aisle nine, bottom shelf."
"You've had this problem before."
"Three times," she said. "The library system has opinions."
Dora was watching this exchange with the barely contained energy of someone physically preventing themselves from saying something. Her eyes were bright. Too bright.
"I'm Dora," she said, extending a hand across the table. "Dora Mitchell. Prisca's best friend and, apparently, invisible."
"Daniel," I said, shaking it. "Sorry — I wasn't ignoring you."
"You absolutely were," she said pleasantly, "but I forgive you." She glanced at Prisca with an expression that communicated an entire paragraph. Prisca responded with a look that said *don't.*
Dora did not appear to receive it.
"Are you in Social Sciences?" she asked me.
"Junior year. You?"
"Same. Prisca too." She propped her chin on her hand. "Funny we haven't crossed paths before this week."
"It's a big faculty."
"It really isn't though."
---
I found the book in aisle nine, bottom shelf, exactly where Prisca said it would be.
When I came back past their table she was highlighting again, head down, focused. But as I passed she looked up briefly.
"Did you find it?"
"Bottom shelf," I said. "You were right."
"I usually am," she said simply. Not arrogant — just honest. The corner of her mouth moved slightly.
I laughed. I couldn't help it.
Dora made a small sound that she disguised, not very successfully, as a cough.
"I'll see you around," I said.
"Probably," Prisca said. And went back to her book.
---
I replayed the conversation twice on the walk back across campus and then made myself stop.
That night Peter listened to the full account and delivered his verdict.
"Dora is going to be either your greatest ally or your biggest problem," he said. "Possibly both simultaneously."
"She seems harmless."
"She seems like someone who asks questions that aren't harmless." He paused. "What did Prisca say when you left?"
"*Probably.*"
Peter was quiet for a moment, considering. "*Probably*," he repeated. "Not *sure* or *definitely.* But not *maybe.* Probably is confident. Probably means she's already decided she will."
I stared at him. "That is an unreasonable amount of analysis for one word."
"One word is all you gave me." He shrugged. "I work with what I have."
---
Abdullahi, when informed, had a single question.
"Does she know you're interested?"
I thought about it. "I don't know."
He nodded slowly. "Make sure she knows," he said. "Not aggressively. Just — clearly."
I wrote that down later.
*Clearly.*
Below it, without overthinking: *She usually is right. And she smiled again.*
- Writer
