Page 63 of Ruthless Court

“Come on. We’ll show you our side of campus.”

I glance once at the half-unpacked boxes.

They can wait.

We head downstairs linked at the elbows, three girls moving badly as one unit while the old staircase complains beneath us.

Outside, the late sun turns the stone buildings gold.

For the first time since I arrived, Stanford doesn’t feel like a place I’m trying to escape.

It feels like somewhere I might fit.

* * *

My new life fits like it was waiting for me.

Briar Hall groans when the heat comes on, the bathroom faucet never stops dripping, and the third stair from the landing squeaks loudly enough to expose anyone attempting a late-night entrance.

I love every flaw.

Lila reads murder mysteries in the bathtub. Noor steals my sweaters, then returns them washed and folded better than I manage. We spend Sunday mornings hunting through used bookstores and Wednesday nights drinking cheap coffee while arguing over which historical figures would have been unbearable in real life.

Even my classes surprise me.

Archaeology sounded like a respectable excuse to move across the country when I selected it on my application. Now I find myself leaning forward through entire lectures while professors reconstruct vanished cities from broken bowls, burial sites, old trade routes, and whatever people threw away.

Professor Shah can hold up one piece of chipped pottery and build a whole civilization around it.

Meals. Migration. War. Religion. Power.

For the first time, being fascinated by obscure details doesn’t make me strange.

It makes me good at something.

Then my academic advisor ruins the glow.

“You’ll need statistics next semester.”

I stare at her across the desk.

“Statistics?”

She turns her monitor toward me and points at the requirement.

“It fulfills the quantitative reasoning component.”

“I came here to study dead people.”

“Dead people still produce data.”

“They’ve been through enough.”

Her mouth twitches.

“You’ll also need a lab science.”

I sink lower in the chair.