Burke’s Little Secret

C-2 P-4

The concrete steps of Honnold Mudd Library were still radiating the day’s trapped desert heat when I sat down, dropping my canvas tote bag between my sneakers. It was 6:58 PM.

The sky over Claremont was fading into a bruised purple, and the air smelled like dry dust and eucalyptus. All around me, Pomona students were drifting past in oversized flannel shirts and thrifted corduroy, their voices low as they debated literary theory and walked toward the dining halls. I blended right in. I’d only been a student here for seventy-two hours, but I already had the "anxious, hyper-focused transfer student" look down to a science.

I leaned back, gathering my waist-length brown hair over one shoulder to keep it out of my face, and pulled out my legal pad, a fresh pack of pastel highlighters, and my syllabus for Intermediate Microeconomics.

By 7:04 PM, my foot was tapping a frantic rhythm against the concrete. Four minutes late. In 5C time—the unspoken chronological law connecting the five Claremont Colleges—four minutes wasn't just tardy; it was an insult. If Issac Callahan thought he could treat a Pomona library session like a casual walk-through at a CMC soccer practice, he was sorely mistaken. I needed that rare book vault keycard tonight, or my reverse-engineering literature project was going to be an absolute trainwreck by Tuesday.

Then, I saw him.

He was hard to miss, even if he was trying desperately to look invisible. He was walking across the grass from the direction of the Claremont McKenna campus, wearing a heavy charcoal hoodie with the hood pulled up high, overshadowing his face. But you couldn't hide a six-foot-two frame or the broad shoulders of a varsity team captain. He was practically vibrating with a tense, paranoid energy, his head darting side to side as if he expected my brother Levi to tackle him out of a bush at any given second.

Which, honestly, was a very real possibility.

Issac jogged up the final three steps and collapsed onto the concrete next to me, exhaling a heavy breath. Up close, I could see dark circles under his eyes and a stray lock of dark hair falling across his forehead. He didn't look like the confident star athlete whose face was plastered on the banners at Roberts Pavilion. He looked terrified.

You're late," I said, my voice flat as I uncapped a yellow highlighter. "And you look like a fugitive."

Issac pulled the hood back just enough for me to see his jaw tighten. "Nice to meet you too, Anna-Beth. And I look like a fugitive because if Levi sees me sitting here with you, he’s going to slide-tackle me into the concrete. He was pacing the locker room twenty minutes ago muttering about 'family boundaries.'"

"Then we should probably move fast," I replied, sliding the legal pad toward him. "Noah gave me the rundown. You have a D-minus, a Friday morning deadline from the athletic board, and an absolute inability to grasp basic market structures."

Issac winced, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Look, I’m not stupid, Burke. I just... I missed the lectures on elasticity and consumer surplus because of our away-game schedule, and the professor talks in pure math. Noah said you aced this exact class when you cross-registered last semester."

I did," I said, tapping my pen against the paper.

"Because I actually read the case studies. But before we open a single book, let's talk about our own transaction. Noah mentioned a master keycard."

Issac looked around nervously, then reached into the pocket of his hoodie. He pulled out a sleek, black plastic card with a silver donor emblem stamped on the front. He didn't hand it over; he kept his thumb firmly over it.

“The Gould Rare Book Archives," Issac murmured, his voice dropping an octave. "My grandfather's name is on the wing. This card bypasses the library's main security desk and opens the restricted basement vaults after 8:00 PM. You can get to the 19th-century folios you need for your literature project. No questions asked, no Pomona bureaucracy."

My chest tightened with pure, academic greed. That card was the golden ticket. With those folios, I could map out the structural lineage and linguistic framework of the text for my reverse-engineering assignment by tomorrow morning.