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It’s a ritual. Start of every week, things shifted as the schedule changes. A physical act of control that tricks my nervous system into thinking I have my life handled. This week I’m adding Ethan’s qualifier rehearsal schedule. He sent it at eleven p.m. on Friday. The man does not believe in business hours. I’m also adding the LSAT prep session I’ve rescheduled twice. I cannot reschedule it a third time. And the note that the ethics project defense is in three weeks. Which means the draft needs to be done in two. Which means Theo and I need to be further along than we are.

I know his schedule without looking it up. That’s the part I notice, standing at the corkboard with a pushpin in my hand. Practice ends at five. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. Film sessions after Adler on Tuesdays and Thursdays. His Wednesday nights run late because his coach runs late. I know this the way I know the parking spot closest to the humanities building. The way I know which dining hall cuts off breakfast at nine-thirty. Absorbed by proximity. Carved in by repetition. The way a calendar item stops being something you check and becomes something you simply know.

I don’t put it on the board.

I’m not ready to give it that much reality.

I pin Ethan’s schedule in the Wednesday slot. I step back and look at the week in color. My chest does the thing it’s been doing since Burlington — a low warm pull. The kind that doesn’t hurt. The kind that’s worse than the kind that hurts, because there’s no procedure for it. No step I can take. I can manage pain. I am excellent at managing pain. I have no idea what to do with this.

This, I tell myself, firmly. This is what it is. It doesn’t have to be anything else.

My therapist would take one look at my face and produce a very gentle follow-up question. I am extremely glad she’s not in my bedroom.

Monday, six-oh-three a.m. My phone lights up on the nightstand.

Theo

delaney’s going to be the death of you or herself. one of those.

I read it half-asleep, squinting. Then I’m awake. Nobody texts me at six in the morning except Priya, when there’s a cheer emergency. And Theo, apparently. When he’s been up since five doing whatever that man does before the sun commits. I know what this is about. I told him last week about Delaney’s spiral. The way she’s been internalizing every timing error as personal failure. He listened the way he listens to things he’s actually interested in. Which is different from the way he listens to things he’s pretending to care about. I’ve learned to tell the difference.

Practice isn’t until 3,

How do you know she’s already going to be the death of me?

Theo

she texted the squad group chat at 5:45 asking if anyone wanted to run the sequence before morning skate

that’s not possible

Theo

Cash added wyatt to the group chat as a joke and no one removed him. he screenshotted it.

I sit up in bed.

I’m going to need more coffee than currently exists on earth.

Theo

you’re welcome

for what?

Theo

the warning. now you can have your coffee ready and your face on before she implodes.

I stare at the phone in the early gray light of my room. My face does the thing I’ve been trying to stop it from doing. A slow, involuntary smile. The kind that starts in my chest before it reaches my mouth. The kind that’s been showing up without permission for three weeks now. I’ve gotten very good at catching it before anyone sees. I have not gotten good at stopping it. I type back:

you are occasionally tolerable

I put the phone down. I lie there a moment in the quiet. I let myself have it — just for a second, just until I have to get up and be a person with a schedule. The warm low pull. The specific ridiculous reality of a boy who texts me at six in the morning to warn me about my teammate.

Then I get up. I have a routine. The routine is the point.

The seminar is a study in performance art.