Chapter One: Rain
1046 Words
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Josie threw up at 6:17am.
The tile bit into her knees. The dorm bathroom smelled like Cassie’s strawberry shampoo and something sour Josie didn’t want to name. She flushed, then gripped the sink.
Again? It’s not even finals week
Josie glanced into the mirror and saw something that looked like a monster. No. It was her.
Brown skin gone ashy, eyes rimmed red, bonnet askew. She splashed water on her face and wiped it down just to see it clearly. Still her. Still dying.
Cassie pounded on the door. “You breathing? Dr. Iro takes attendance!”
“Breathing,” Josie said to the drain. “Unfortunately.”
She shoved things into her bag. Servo diagram. Meds.
The black notebook she never let anyone touch. Her hands shook too badly to check which went where. Doesn’t matter. Just move. Dad didn’t raise a quitter.
Outside, the quad had been mowed. The smell of fresh cut grass hit her like a promise.
For three seconds, Josie let herself believe she was just another 19-year-old engineering student who liked the smell of wet grass and robots.
Not a girl with a clock ticking in her chest.
_Grass and gears. Hold onto that._
Dr. Iro’s class was already starting. Josie slipped in late, head down, and dumped the first notebook she felt onto the submission pile. She didn’t look.
Her tongue still tasted like acid and her vision was doing that fuzzy thing it did when she stood too fast.
“Submit and sit, Ms. Adebayo,” Dr. Iro said. “This isn’t Poetry 101.”
Josie froze. Then sat. Then looked in her bag.
The servo diagram looked back at her.
The black notebook did not.
No.
No no no.
Her poems. The ones about faulty wires. About mothers who didn’t come home. About wanting one more summer. They were on his desk.
About to be graded for load-bearing capacity.
Josie ran.
She didn’t remember deciding to. One second she was in her seat, the next she was in the hall, nearly bowling over a first-year. She had to get it back. If Dr. Iro read _Dad thinks I’m strong but I cough up blood_, it would get back to him. And Dad couldn’t break again. Not for her.
She rounded the corner to the department office and collided with a wall. A warm, breathing wall that smelled like engine grease and clean laundry.
Hands caught her elbows before she hit the floor.
“Whoa.”
Josie looked up. And up. And up.
The guy was unfairly tall. Pale, frayed hoodie, dark circles under his eyes like he hadn’t slept since enrollment. Not muscular, just… long. Lanky in a way that made Josie, who was slender but not skinny, feel like she’d been built at the wrong scale.
Who the hell—
“Running from Dr. Iro?” he asked. His voice was low, like he didn’t use it much. “He’s scary, but not chase-you-down-the-hall scary.”
Josie yanked her arms back. “I submitted the wrong thing. I need— I need to get it before he—”
The words clogged. _Can’t say poems. Can’t say dying. Can’t say anything._
His brow pulled together. He didn’t step closer, which she appreciated. He was already too much room.
“Wrong thing like…?”
“Personal,” Josie managed. Her heart was doing that fluttery, bad thing. “It’s personal and it can’t—”
Don’t cry. Don’t you dare cry in front of Tall, Pale, and Nosy.
He studied her for a second. Not like she was a specimen. Like she was a circuit he was trying not to short. Then he sighed and moved past her, toward the office.
“Wait here,” he said over his shoulder.
Josie wanted to argue. She didn’t. Her knees felt like wet paper.
He was back in under two minutes. Her black notebook was in his hand. Closed. He held it out like it might bite.
“You Adebayo?” he asked.
Josie nodded, snatching it to her chest. “How did you—”
“I’m the course rep,” he said. “Orwell Ferguson. I was dropping off the attendance sheet. Saw your name on this. Figured it wasn’t your robotics spec unless you’re building a very emotional servo.”
He didn’t open it. The relief almost buckled her. He didn’t read it.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Orwell shrugged. The motion made him seem even taller. “Don’t submit your diary to Iro. He has no soul. Also…” He reached into his beat-up messenger bag and pulled out a stapled stack. “You dropped this in the lab last night. After you left.”
Her servo diagram. With notes in the margins. Red ink, all angles. Current calc wrong. Fixed. You’re 0.3A off. —O.F.
Josie stared. “You were in the lab last night?”
“We have the same class, Adebayo. Tuesdays and Thursdays.” He said it like it was obvious. Like she should’ve noticed him before. “You always take the corner by the window. Smells like grass after it rains.”
He’d noticed. He’d noticed the seat. The grass. He’d fixed her work.
Dangerous. This is dangerous.
“I—” Josie started, then coughed. Hard. She turned away, curling into herself.
She didn’t see him move, but she felt him there. Not touching. Just… present. A wall that wasn’t closing in.
“You good?” he asked.
No. I’m dying and you’re tall and you smell like safety and I can’t.
“Fine,” she lied. “Wrong pipe.”
Orwell didn’t call her out. He just nodded toward the hall. “Lab’s open. Smells like the quad today.”
Grass and gears. He’d said it like a password.
Josie clutched the notebook tighter. “Yeah,” she said. “It does.”
He walked off, slouching, hands in his hoodie pocket. Like he was trying to take up less space and failing.
Josie stayed against the wall for a full minute.
Orwell Ferguson. Course rep. Noticed the grass. Didn’t read the poems. Fixed the circuit.
Her heart, the faulty, traitorous thing, skipped.
Don’t. You don’t have time to fall for tall boys who rebuild things.
- Writer
