On Monday, James called me three times. By Tuesday evening, I had six missed calls and a handful of messages. And from what Kara told me, he was coming by our room more than I was.

I was leaving for class early and staying late at the library. I was doing everything I could to avoid running into him. But hiding in textbooks didn't stop James from trying to reach me. My phone was constantly abuzz with incessant calls and multiple texts, my heart dropping every time his name lit up my screen. The knots that bundled in my stomach reminded me of the dread I'd felt back when it was Elijah hounding me. But, at the same time, this was different.

At least Elijah acknowledged what he did. James was still feigning innocence.

I vowed to block him, just like I'd blocked Eli. I needed to forget about him, to focus on my work. But there was no need to. Because on the fourth day, the calls stopped for good.

I told myself that it was for the best. That maybe this was the beginning of things returning to normal. I could go back to walking through my dorm unnoticed and invisible, unbothered by the three pesky guys who lived down the hall. I could go back to using my time to study instead of playing matchmaker or wingwoman. I could keep to myself. Wasn't that what I'd always wanted? To be alone?

And so my phone was uncharacteristically quiet when I took off my coat and stepped into the auditorium, the warmth from the heater feeling thick and cloying on my skin. My anxiety resurfaced as I approached the front of the room. Devi wasn't there yet, but she'd laid out our marked assignments on the desk near her podium. My paper was among them. A paper I was sure I'd totally bombed.

A fail. In my first semester. I wanted to be sick at the thought. Maybe I would have been if I wasn't so numb.

I didn't want to look. I really, really didn't want to look. I shoved the whole thing into my purse without a second thought, condemning it to the murky depths alongside an empty packet of gum and a half-eaten candy bar.

I really needed to clean up my shit.

Not just the purse.

A bitter smile twisted my lips. At least, through it all, I still had my sense of humor. Even if it was self-deprecating.

I had every intention of discarding the assignment when I got back to my room. Not throwing it out, per se, just stashing it somewhere so that I wouldn't have to face it for a long, long time. Like at the end of the year, when I cleaned out my room and went home for break. Maybe not even then. Schrödinger's cat, and all that jazz.

I tried to press on with class, throwing myself into my note-taking and casting my mind far, far away from the project. I just wanted to forget about it. Forget about my time with the friends who weren't really my friends and that stupid hypothesis.

Devi wasn't as keen on the idea.

"Miss Watson?" she called at the end of the lecture.

I'd managed to squeeze past my peers, down the row, and was all but headed for the finish line. I was so close to the door that I could hear the students waiting for their next class on the other side. But my professor's voice—both gentle and authoritative—stopped me dead in my tracks.

"A word, please?" Devi was peering at me expectantly, her eyebrows raised over her emerald glasses. Perhaps she'd been expecting me to want to talk to her after class. To beg for a re-sit or some work that I could do for extra credit. Little did she know that I'd merely accepted my fate. Accepted my screw-up.

I tried to regulate my breathing as I approached her podium, weaving through the bodies that were trickling out the door. Luckily, I had a lot of experience in controlling my emotions, in pretending that I was okay when I totally wasn't. I'd managed to save my first breakdown after catching Eli and Lola together until I'd made it to my car and driven down the street. When dad left, I was the one who put on a happy face in public while my mother shut down and my sister fled the country. I'd already embarrassed myself enough in front of Devi in the form of that assignment. I didn't need to break down in front of her, too.

She blinked back at me for a moment, her gaze still expectant. When I didn't say anything, she cocked her head in thought.

"I'm assuming that you haven't reviewed your grade."

God. How did she know everything?

I offered a coy smile, and she nodded to herself, confirming her supposition. I watched as she lowered her gaze to my purse, where I guess she'd assumed—correctly—that I'd stashed the dreaded paper.

"Have a look now, please."

I swallowed hard. I didn't want to. I didn't think that I could face a fail on top of everything else. I certainly didn't think I could deal with it in front of my idol. But what could I do? She was staring at my bag, her eyes practically searing holes into the pretty (but faux) leather as she waited for me to do as she asked.

So I did. I tried to pull my features into an expression that signified indifference. Not just for her sake, but for mine as well. I'd made it through so much. I'd make it through this.

It was times like those that being a raging perfectionist was a curse. One grade below an eighty percent and I felt as if my whole world was crumbling beneath my feet.

I pulled out the paper. Felt my fingertips curl around the edges. Drew it out slowly, avoiding looking down for as long as possible.

Devi averted her gaze politely to write something on her stack of notes, but my heart was still beating so hard and fast. A whole semester—wasted.

I'm going to be okay.

No I'm not.

Yes. I am.

I looked down.

My heart forgot how to beat. It jumped, taking my breath with it.

"There you go," Devi said. She was still going over her notes, but her lips had twisted into a crooked smirk. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

My mouth was dry. I needed water. But I was frozen in place, my hands shaking so much that the red ink on my page was starting to blur, the grade itself blurring more with every motion.

But I didn't need to be able to read it. I already had. It was etched into my mind. I could see it even when I blinked.

Eighty-seven percent.

"Professor ..." My voice caught in my throat, the latter suddenly so coarse. I cleared it, licking moisture onto my lips. "I don't understand—"

"You know how I despise titles, Madison." She peered up at me over the rims of her glasses, still smiling to herself. "How I despise orthodoxy."

I blinked back at her rather dumbly, confusion no doubt seeping through my skin to furrow my brow.

Devi cocked her head patiently, narrowing her eyes as though she was waiting for me to catch on to her cryptic inference. But she was so wise, and I so wasn't. Clearly.

"In your reflections," Devi prodded, waving her pen at my paper as curiosity crept over her features. "You expressed regret. Regret over your decision not to get informed consent, in particular."

Heat bloomed on my cheeks, dancing there in a mixture of guilt and, yes, regret. Not regret that I hadn't thought to get consent, but regret that Ivy had talked me out of thinking it necessary.

"At the time," I started, already shaking my head at the explanation to come, "we reasoned that getting consent would undermine the experiment. That if we told our subjects our hypothesis, they could simply avoid an adverse outcome. It wasn't until I was writing my conclusions that I realized how paradoxical that concern was in the first place." I rolled my eyes at myself, perplexed at how I'd allowed emotion to cloud my common sense. "Because, if heartbreak truly is inevitable, then nothing can undermine that inevitability. If something is inevitable, then it's destined to be whether or not a subject attempts to interfere with it."

When I'd summoned enough nerve to look back up to Devi, she was nodding her head in thought—confirming her silent musing.

"I said that I despise orthodoxy." She paused to smile, shaking her head at herself the same way I'd done seconds before. "My first year as a graduate assistant, I, too, made the mistake of foregoing informed consent. I thought that I could somehow convince my subjects to give it after the fact, after I impressed them by successfully proving my self-proclaimed brilliant hypothesis. And while I may have done the latter, I failed to achieve the former. Rather than being impressed, as I thought they'd be, my subjects were outraged. They felt betrayed. Ultimately, it rendered my research useless."

I felt my forehead creasing more and more the longer that she went on, my esteemed professor's admission stealing the last slither of composure I had left. Devi made mistakes? Devi admitted to making mistakes?

It was like learning that the Queen drove her own limousine.

"I could attempt to drill in the importance of ethics and legality to you all until I'm red in the face," she explained. "Just as I'm sure all of your other professors do over and over again. But I understand that you're human. That, at some point, even the most honest of you will allow blind ambition to overshadow seemingly stifling morality. It's only through making that mistake that you'll come to understand the logic behind the lesson. As your teacher, I'd rather you make your mistakes sooner rather than later. I'd rather you make them in my classroom than out in the field, as I did."

Devi was right about a lot of things. About our other teachers constantly preaching about the sanctity of ethics in scientific research. About that small part of us as academics that put our ambition above our sense of duty. Hell, even I'd fallen victim to that trap. But it was the last thing that she said—about making mistakes—that stood out to me most of all.

Maybe, just as Devi had said, our time at university wasn't simply about getting the highest marks or the most impressive internship. Maybe it wasn't about being perfect at all. Perhaps it was about making mistakes, about letting those mistakes shape us into better academics.

Or better people.

She let the silence settle before she removed her frames from over her eyes, folding them up and placing them down on the podium. She clasped the latter, leaning over it with that coy smile restored.

"You're the only student who handed in a null result. Do you know that?"

I shook my head, though I'd assumed as much. Surely no one else was stupid enough to have picked a hypothesis as ambitious as mine.

"The others must think I'm foolish," she continued. "But I'm aware of the risks associated with running an assignment like this. The rest of the faculty thought that I'd overlooked them, too. They warned me that I was affording you all with too much freedom. Too much trust. But that was the entire point.

"You're all brilliant young minds, but you are young. Ambitious. Not yet ... learned enough to structure your thinking in a manageable way. You're the only one to have admitted it, Madison, but you can't have been the only one to have proven your hypothesis flawed. Still, you didn't lie. You could have; I never would have been able to prove otherwise. But you stood by the integrity of your research and your methodology. You respected the outcome enough to be honest."

She was right in a way. The entire purpose of my assignment had been to build the perfect relationship and to show how even perfect relationships are doomed to fall apart. But Holly and Dex hadn't even made it past first base. And while they ended things on bitter terms, I ultimately decided that my original definition of heartbreak hadn't been met. Which meant that I hadn't proved my hypothesis. It never crossed my mind to simply ... lie.

Devi re-capped her pen and placed it down on her desk before continuing. "Science isn't clean. It isn't straightforward. Philosophy, too, is messy. Our own philosophies can be the messiest of all. And if you remember—exploring, creating, challenging—that is what I asked you to do."

"Get personal," I muttered under my breath, repeating Devi's instructions from our first week. "Get messy."

My professor nodded reassuringly, and I felt my beating heart relax. "I told you not to be afraid to prove yourself wrong. Not to fear science doing what it does best. You were the only student, I think, who was afraid, but who faced that fear head-on."

My heart started beating so wildly that I was afraid that she could hear it. I truly had to steady my breathing now—more than I did before. Because, in her own way, I think Devi was telling me that she was proud of me.

And maybe I was proud of me, too.

I'd always been afraid. Afraid to fail, afraid to feel, afraid to love. But despite that voice in my head warning me against living, despite even my better judgment, Devi was right. I never ran from my fears. Not even when I created resolutions commanding me to do so.

I saw the best in people. I saw the best in Eli and Lola and James and Holly. They all hurt me, all betrayed me in the end. But despite the red flags, I chose to see the best in them, and maybe that was foolish. In a lot of ways, I was right; when you gave your heart away as much as I did, heartbreak becomes inevitable. And maybe I was even right to fear that inevitability.

But I never ran from it. I always had hope. I always tried again.

Deep down, I think I always knew that life wasn't about running from fear, about running from its triggers or causes. That maybe life was about facing them—facing the risk and the inevitability of heartbreak—so that we can build enough strength to actually live.

Because it's only through risking it all for love that we ever have a chance of finding it.

"I wonder if those skills—bravery, honesty—are ones you could pass on to Melody. Maybe even to Jack."

When I looked up again, Devi was scanning over another paper. Her expression was cryptic, like my mother's often was. Like she expected me to unravel the inference tucked into her words all on my own.

My eyes fell to the paper. And, though it was upside down, I was able to make out the two words in the upper left-hand corner.

Ivy Hampton.

My features fell into a frown, but ...

Familiar words rang in my ears.

Do you think it's too late to change our assignment? Maybe switch out our lab rats?

I looked back up to find Devi studying me closely. Her lips were pursed, her expression slack. But her deep brown gaze dripped with insinuation.

Melody and Jack.

M and J.

That burning heat returned to my cheeks, my frown wilting with sudden realization. I was hit over the head with too many emotions to identify, though I imagined they felt remarkably similar to those Dex had felt when I'd revealed that I was using him for an experiment.

But, still, despite the inevitable sting of betrayal, I felt a smile lift the corners of my mouth. I wasn't happy, but I wasn't angry, either. Most of all, I wasn't surprised.

I shook my head to myself. Maybe Ivy had a point with the whole leaving assignments to the last minute thing, after all.

"I can't offer you the internship, Madison. A technicality, I'm afraid."

I should have been disappointed. All semester long I'd been dying for that internship. I'd all but bent over backward for it. But even after seeing my grade, it couldn't have been further from my mind.

Perhaps I'd found something more valuable.

"But I am taking another class next semester," she went on, piquing my interest once more. "It's reserved for second-years, but I would be more than happy to make an exception."

I tilted my head. "Why, professor?" Why are you telling me all of this, I wanted to ask. Why do you care so much?

"Why ..." She smirked, as though she could read my mind. As though she was answering the thousands of questions rattling around in my head instead of the mere one that I'd asked. "You're honest, Madison. You're not afraid to be proved wrong. And you're not afraid to learn from your mistakes. So, I think the why is quite obvious." She shrugged—a simple gesture that looked so very human in comparison to her otherworldly demeanor. "I want to keep an eye on you, of course."

My heart pricked. That time, it pricked with pride.

The precinct outside of campus was brimming with quaint coffee houses. I never knew that, because I'd never wandered far enough to check them out. I hadn't needed to before. But I wasn't totally in love with the idea of running into Holly when I craved a spot of caffeine, nor anyone else that I knew on campus. Especially the three guys that I had spent most of the semester with.

And one in particular.

I picked out a fresh blueberry muffin from the counter of a new café I was trying out. I tried to pair it with my regular lactose-free cappuccino, but the barista quickly informed me that they didn't have lactose-free milk.

Noted.

I was about to back out of the café with my muffin when I caught sight of a familiar head of lovely, cascading blonde hair secured back with bright pink clips. Kara was sitting at a table by the window. Seeing her startled me slightly; there was no need for students to leave campus for a cup of coffee or a mouth-watering mid-afternoon snack. No need, unless, like me, they were hiding.

Kara was on her own. That was the first thing that struck me as odd. That girl had more school spirit in her pinkie than I had in my whole body, and I knew for a fact that her schedule was brimming with events and club meetings and student fundraisers.

The second thing that I thought was odd was what she was doing—sitting quietly, stirring a spoon mindlessly in her latte, resting her hand on her face as she watched the people on the street pass her by. Her pink nail polish was chipped. I didn't think I'd ever seen her so quiet. Not even when she slept.

I felt a pull toward her. And maybe it wasn't just the strangeness of her mood that caused it. Maybe it was because I wanted the company. When I first started at Camden, all I wanted was to be alone. Suddenly, I was afraid of it. Afraid that it would make me remember everything I'd lost.

Before I knew it, I was hovering by her table.

"Is this seat taken?" I clasped the back of the chair across from hers, plastering my lips in a small smile while her eyes met mine.

When they did, I realized for the first time that they were decorated with tiny, glistening tears.

I fell into the chair instantly. "Kara, what's wrong?"

She sniffled into her hand, clearing the mascara-stained streaks from her face. "Oh, nothing."

Kara was always such an open book. That was an understatement. Whatever was weighing on her must have been serious if it was clamping her tongue the way it was.

"Are you sure?" I felt inclined to comfort her, but I of all people understood wanting to keep some things private. I was the queen of building walls to keep others out. "Because I'm here if, you know, you need someone to talk to."

She peered up at me through her perfect platinum bangs, her red-rimmed eyes darting between mine. She seemed hesitant. Dubious. Honestly, I couldn't blame her. I'd been a brick wall.

Despite our many differences—like the fact that she was the embodiment of sunshine and I felt like the personification of a rain cloud—I couldn't help but think that in another life, Kara and I could have been best friends. And maybe it was that feeling that made me wary of her in the first place, that made me wary of letting her in.

But why? Because her striking, sharp features and long platinum hair reminded me of Lola? That wasn't fair. Lola's betrayal was my burden to carry, not her obstacle to overcome.

I was about to stand and retreat, to give her the space that she seemed to be begging me for, when she drew me back in with a slow exhale.

"It's Jarrod."

"Your boyfriend?" I guessed. I settled back into my chair, breaking off a bit of my muffin.

"Ex-boyfriend."

I tensed, the realization hitting me. "Oh. I'm sorry—"

"He broke up with me over the phone." She scoffed, lowering her eye line to her untouched coffee.

I mirrored the sound, outrage swelling in my chest. "That's horrible."

"That's not the worst part." Her eyes flickered up to meet mine again, outrage of her own brimming inside. She shook her head from side to side, almost as if she was refusing to believe the words on her tongue. "He knocked up some other girl. Some girl he's been screwing on and off for weeks."

I felt my jaw hit the floor. How on earth could Jarrod find the time to screw another girl? He was always screwing Kara.

I should know.

"Oh, Kara." I regained my composure, shaking my head like she was shaking hers. I don't know why I was surprised. Wasn't this the kind of thing that I believed always happened? That I believed was inevitable? But Kara and Jarrod had always seemed so happy. So ... in love.

Then again, he was always checking out my ass.

"With this girl called Millie from my accounting class," she continued, choking on a dry laugh. "I've only spoken to her a couple of times, but she always gave me vibes ..."

Kara's voice faded into incomprehensible noise, my mind stuck on the name she'd spat out like it was laced with acid.

"Millie?" I repeated, unintentionally cutting her off. "Did you say Millie?"

She nodded. "Millie Kingston. Do you know her?"

"I don't think so—" And yet ...

"She's majoring in theatre. Can you believe it? Theatre. She definitely deserves an Oscar for the act she pulled on me. Both of them do..."

Millie. Why did I recognize that name?

A memory tugged at my brain like bits of frayed thread. One I'd already associated with another revelation.

Ruby and Pearl from biology, gossiping loudly about their friend.

Their friend Millie, who kept sleeping with some jerk of a guy who was continually ghosting her afterward.

Tall, blond, abs that could grate cheese. An ocean-eyed babe magnet who lived in my building.

Jarrod was tall. Jarrod was blond. He was objectively attractive with a piercing blue gaze. And while he didn't live in my building, I could see why people would think that he did. He was there basically every second night, keeping Kara (and me) awake until the early hours of the morning.

Nausea rose in my stomach, tiny shards of ice pricking at my skin. I thought that Ruby and Pearl were referring to James. I assumed it. Feared it. I allowed my assumption to overwhelm me until it compounded with everything else, until it erupted and caused me to say those awful things to him in front of everyone in the hall.

I'd painted a picture in my mind of the type of guy that I thought James was. A picture using paint from somebody else's tray.

Uh oh ...