Spring semester began the way it always did, a flurry of syllabi and cold hallways and the particular energy of a campus shaking off winter break, and Zarina found herself, for the first time in longer than she could remember, walking into it without the low, constant hum of dread that had defined nearly every semester start since September.
She found Margaret and Reese in their usual library corner before her first class, both of them deep into laptops that, she noted with some amusement, were not currently displaying anything related to their actual coursework.
"You're both procrastinating," she said, dropping into the third chair.
"We're strategizing," Margaret corrected, without looking up. "There's a difference. Strategizing has a deck attached to it."
"Strategizing about what?"
