Chapter 7: Classes
The stale air in Damian’s dorm room tasted like confinement and instant noodles. Three days. Seventy-two hours of Dakota pacing the limited floor space like a caged panther, flipping through his textbooks with exaggerated sighs, rearranging his already sparse belongings into aesthetically pleasing but functionally useless piles. Her initial bravado had eroded into a restless, buzzing energy that vibrated through the cramped quarters.
"Okay, listen," she announced on Monday morning, blocking his path to the door as he gathered his backpack. Her eyes, wide and intense, held none of their usual playful glint. "I cannot spend one more minute trapped in this… shoebox smelling of desperation and old socks. Seriously, Damian. I’m going feral."
Damian shouldered past her, aiming for the door. "Tough. We have no ID, no plan, and the world thinks you’re a ghost. You’re staying."
She planted herself firmly. "No. I’m coming to class with you."
He froze, backpack dangling from one hand. "What? Absolutely not."
"Why not? Who’s gonna know? I’ll just… blend." She gestured vaguely at her outfit – borrowed jeans, one of his slightly-too-big band tees she’d knotted at the waist. "I look like every other slightly hungover sophomore."
"It’s not about looking the part!" Damian hissed, lowering his voice. "It’s about being the part! What if someone talks to you? What if the professor calls roll? What if campus security asks for your ID?
Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "Risk it. Please. I’ll be quiet. I’ll be invisible. I won’t talk to anyone. I’ll just… sit there. Absorb. Exist outside these four walls." The desperation in her voice was raw, scraping against the usual confidence. "I need air, Damian. Real air. People air. Not… this." She gestured around the room, encompassing the lingering scent of lemon cleaner and existential dread.
He stared at her. The dark circles under her eyes were faint but real. The restless energy vibrating off her felt almost physical. He’d created this. He’d brought this hurricane into his life, and keeping it bottled up was tearing the bottle apart. The sheer logistical terror warred with a reluctant pang of guilt. "Fine," he muttered, the word tasting sour. "But you stick to me like glue. Don’t talk. To anyone. If anyone even looks at you sideways, we bail. Immediately. Got it?"
A brilliant, genuine smile lit up her face, momentarily banishing the shadows. "Got it! Scout’s honor! Well, not really, since I was never a scout, but you know what I mean." She bounced on the balls of her feet, grabbing the worn hoodie she’d claimed as her own. "Lead the way!"
Stepping onto campus felt different with Dakota beside him. Not just because of what she was, but how she was. Damian moved with the practiced invisibility of someone who actively avoided notice – head slightly down, shoulders rounded, merging with the flow. Dakota walked with her chin up, shoulders back, her long black hair catching the morning sun. She absorbed everything: the chatter of students, the scrape of skateboards, the distant chime of the campus bell tower. Her eyes were wide, flicking from the imposing stone facades of lecture halls to the sprawling lawns dotted with lounging students. She looked… awed. And painfully obvious.
"Stop staring," Damian mumbled, nudging her elbow. "Just walk."
"Look at that building!" she whispered, pointing at the ornate Gothic library they’d fruitlessly searched days before. "It’s like a castle! And the trees! Are those… squirrels?" She sounded genuinely delighted by the squirrels.
"Yeah, squirrels. Keep moving." He steered her towards the Brutalist concrete slab housing his Intro to Ethics lecture. The familiar dread of a Monday morning class mixed uneasily with the new dread of his impossible companion.
Inside the lecture hall was worse. The cavernous space buzzed with pre-class chatter. Rows of worn seats sloped downwards towards the lectern. Damian usually slid into a seat near the back, off to the side. Today, Dakota followed him, her presence like a spotlight. He felt eyes – imagined or real – flickering towards them. A guy two rows down glanced at Dakota, did a slight double-take, then looked away. Damian’s palms started to sweat.
"See? Blending," Dakota murmured, settling into the seat beside him. She pulled out a notebook and pen Damian had begrudgingly supplied, mimicking the students around them. She looked absurdly eager, like a kid on their first day of school.
Professor Armitage, a man whose tweed jacket seemed permanently fused to his stooped frame, began droning about Kant’s categorical imperative. Damian tried to focus, scribbling half-hearted notes. Dakota, however, leaned forward, rapt. Her brow furrowed in intense concentration as Armitage dissected moral duty. She actually took notes. Neat, surprisingly legible ones. Damian stole glances at her profile: the focused intensity, the soft curve of her jaw, the freckles dusting her nose. It was bizarre. This vibrant, chaotic entity he’d somehow summoned was sitting in Ethics 101, seriously contemplating Kant.
Ten minutes in, the inevitable happened. A girl in the row ahead dropped a pen. It rolled under Dakota’s seat.
"Oh! You dropped this," Dakota said brightly, leaning down to retrieve it, her voice cutting through Armitage’s monotone. She handed the pen back with a friendly smile.
The girl blinked, surprised. "Uh… thanks." She looked Dakota up and down, a flicker of confusion in her eyes. "Are you new? Haven't seen you in this section before."
Damian’s blood turned to ice. He kicked Dakota’s ankle under the seat. Hard.
Dakota winced but kept the smile plastered on. "Just auditing! Getting the vibe, you know?" Her voice was smooth, effortless. The lie came easily. Too easily.
The girl shrugged, appeased or just uninterested. "Cool." She turned back to the front.
Damian let out a shaky breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He shot Dakota a furious glare. She just winked, then turned back to Armitage, her expression instantly shifting back to studious concentration. Damian felt lightheaded. The close call rattled him more than he wanted to admit.
The rest of the lecture passed in a blur of anxious tension. Damian flinched every time Armitage paused, half-expecting him to call on the unfamiliar face beside him. Dakota, however, seemed to thrive. She absorbed the arguments, her pen flying across the page. When Armitage posed a rhetorical question about universal maxims, Dakota actually muttered a thoughtful "Hmm..." under her breath. Damian wanted to throttle her.
The bell finally rang, a harsh electronic buzz that felt like salvation. Students surged towards the exits. Damian practically dragged Dakota out of her seat and into the crowded hallway.
"What the hell was that?" he hissed, pulling her into a marginally quieter alcove near a bulletin board plastered with flyers. "You talked! You lied! Auditing? Seriously?"
"It worked, didn't it?" Dakota retorted, her eyes bright, energized by the experience. "She bought it! And the lecture was fascinating! That whole thing about treating people as ends, not means? Deep."
"Fascinating? Dakota, this isn't a field trip! That was reckless!" The adrenaline was making him shaky. He pictured campus security, confused administrators, Dakota blinking out of existence in a puff of logic.
"Reckless?" She squared her shoulders, that familiar defiance returning, but tempered by the spark of something new – intellectual excitement? "Sitting in that dorm was killing me. This? This is living! I felt… real. Like I belonged somewhere. Even if it's just pretending to listen to some old guy talk about moral philosophy." She gestured towards the throngs of students flowing past. "I need this, Damian. More than ID. More than money. I need to be here."
He stared at her. The raw hunger in her eyes was undeniable. It wasn't just about escaping the room anymore; it was about claiming a sliver of existence in this world she'd been dumped into. He remembered her awe at the squirrels. Her intense focus on Kant. The terrifying ease with which she'd lied.
His own resentment warred with a reluctant understanding. Keeping her hidden wasn't sustainable. It was suffocating them both. But letting her loose felt like juggling nitroglycerin.
"Fine," he said, the word heavy with resignation and a strange, unwelcome thread of reluctant admiration. "One class. Maybe. But we need rules. Serious rules. And…" He sighed, the weight of the impossible settling back onto his shoulders. "…and we still need to figure out how you actually exist."
Dakota beamed, the tension dissolving into pure, unadulterated relief. "Deal! Ethics was awesome. What's next? Physics? Art history? Ooh, drama? I could totally rock drama!" She bounced slightly, already scanning the hallway for their next destination, the ghost girl ready to haunt another lecture hall. Damian just stared after her, the echo of Kant’s imperative ringing in his ears alongside a single, stark thought: What have I done?
The momentum of her energy pulled him forward, into the bustling current of students, carrying the impossible weight of her existence with every reluctant step.