It took me the better part of two days, four cans of energy drinks and Led Zeppelin's entire discography to finish the essay. I'd been in the Kirk Library for thirteen hours straight writing the six-thousand-word report due tomorrow afternoon. I would have forgotten about the report if Honor hadn't casually reminded me three nights ago as we headed to the bar to meet the guys. I froze mid-step and cursed under my breath. She had laughed and given me that patented look of hers that said I was an idiot.

"Dude," she'd paused too, thrown me a grin and said, "How did you make it into college?"

"Oh my Fairy Godmother really needed me to make a third wish so she could go bet on horses." I answered.

The evening cold bit into my cheeks. Honor pulled her coat tighter around her as a sharp gust of wind blew past. She'd been standing underneath a streetlamp, its orange light fell gently on her face, casting her in a warm glow you could only find this late into spring. She laughed again and the next gust of wind carried it into the darkness behind us.

"Elliot, it's due in three days," she said, a corner of her mouth lifted into a smile sharpened by light and shadow. "Do you know how hard it was for me to justify epistemic norms? Professor Wallis wants us to do it without appealing to what he calls –" she paused to do perform air quotation marks with her fingers, "– pragmatic considerations."

The class was based around a research project on the epistemic utility theory. It was half the reason I'd come to study at Eastside for the semester, the other half of the reason was waiting at the bar for Honor and I.

I pushed a hand through my hair and sighed. "Damn it. I – I forgot."

"What have you been doing?" she asked, "Wallis announced it like a month ago."

I shrugged, "I don't know, I've had other things on my mind."

She cocked an eyebrow, "Like?"

"Like–" I rolled my shoulders back, "like sleep, gigs–" dead fathers I couldn't get out of my head "–movie nights with Kamal. I've got priorities Honor."

She laughed and this time the wind didn't take it, this time the sound rang out like a song in the empty street. "I can't believe you."

"Have you finished?" I asked her, although I already knew the answer. Honor had a strong need for success that could only be rivalled by a certain wild-haired girl back in England.

She shook her head, "No, I have another three thousand words to go. I'm going to the bar 'cause I need a break or my head is going to fall off. You should really go home and start on the report."

It was nearly eight o'clock in the evening and I was too tired to write anything. I just wanted to head to the bar, have a couple of drinks with the boys and beat Miguel at pool. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket and started walking again.

"I can do it later," I said, "I have three days, right?"

Honor stared after me for a few seconds before she chuckled and fell into step beside me.

She said, "You can't run away from everything, Elliot Fintry."

I looked at her then, her grey eyes looked black, almost darker than the night. I smirked, "No but I can hide."

I hadn't realised it was six-thousand-words until two days later, when I'd looked at the mass email Professor Wallis had to sent to everyone in the class months ago. There was a split-second moment of panic that kicked my heart and another kick, harder this time that widened my eyes when I saw the report was worth eighty-percent of the project's final grade.

If I failed, then I'd failed freshman year and I could say goodbye to my scholarship at NYU. The look I would get from El, sad blue eyes, pursed lips and winter-cold silence, was the third kick needed to get me out of bed.

I left of the apartment I shared with two other exchange students in a hurry and tried calling Kamal so he could meet me at the library. Apart from Honor he was probably the only person I talked to in that class but he didn't pick up.

Kamal did manage to text me about twenty minutes later just as I walked into the library.

we're on the 3rd floor. join us. we're the ones in the back, the broke ones who've lost the will to live.

I was about to text back, something along the lines of you're gonna have to be more specific, that's all college students when my sister started calling me. My cellphone buzzed, rattling the heavy weight that had been growing in my chest for the last few weeks. I knew what it was about. It could be about nothing else this month and it had been about nothing else since I was twelve. I stared at her name on my screen. My thumb hovered over the accept button but at the last second I declined the call. I couldn't think about that right now, I had a six-thousand-word report to finish.

I found Kamal, Honor, Ethan and two other girls who I vaguely recognised sitting in the large table by the arched windows. All of them engrossed in the report.

And so here I was, slumped down in a plastic chair that had become my bed and my sofa over the last thirteen hours. The table was littered with coffee cups, energy drinks, open textbooks and scrap paper. I dug the heels of my hand into my eyes and let out a sigh that had been sitting in my throat since I started the report.

"Wait." Ethan said, his voice waded through the fog swamping my mind. "Are you done? Please don't tell me you're done."

I rubbed my eyes and glanced over at him. "Yeah, I'm done."

His jaw dropped, "six-six thousand words?"

"Seven thousand," I said, "I had to expand on how decision theory is the best tool for arguments on epistemic norms and –" a yawn slipped out of my mouth "– and well, y'know, you've got to treat the possible epistemic states of an agent like they're actions the agent has to choose."

Ethan stared at me. He blinked. Once. Twice. He had to be the only person here with darker eye bags than me. "What?" He dropped his head onto the table and groaned, "Oh my God. I've failed."

One of the girls whose name I still couldn't remember rubbed Ethan's back. Honor threw Ethan a sympathetic glance before she turned to look at me. "How the hell have you done seven thousand words? What did you talk about?"

I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to untie the knot that had formed at the base. "The project," I said, "what else? I talked about my findings."

She leaned forward with a smile I'd seen her use on guys to buy her drinks, "And they were?"

I shook my head, "Nice try, Honor, finish your report."

I checked over my work one last time, there were a lot of spelling mistakes and a few sentences didn't make any sense but I would look over everything in the morning when the world didn't feel like a dream. I dumped my things into my backpack, and slowly with grunts and winces like I was an eighty-year-old man, I shrugged it onto my shoulders. It was then that Kamal returned from a bathroom break that had lasted almost forty minutes. I watched him with narrowed eyes.

"Where've you been?" I asked, just noticing how rough my voice sounded.

"Bathroom," he said.

"For forty minutes?"

His dark eyes darted around the table before he glanced back at me. "If you must know, the energy drinks give me the squirts."

Honor grimaced, "Oh, ew Kamal. TMI."

"What? Elliot asked!"

"I asked where you've been, not if your energy drinks give you the squirts."

He sniffed, "Whatever. Oh, wait, are you going home?"

I nodded as I shrugged a strap of my backpack onto one shoulder, "Yeah. I'm done."

"Sweet. Great. Me too. Hold on," he said, walking over to his seat next to me. He threw the stack of chip packets and drink cans into the small bin by Ethan's leg.

"Oh. You're leaving already?" Honor said, fiddling with her pen. She liked to write her essays down by hand before typed them up. She said her thoughts flowed better when she could build the words by hand rather than machine.

"Yeah. I need sleep. I've been awake for nearly thirty hours, Honor."

"Going on thirty-six here," Kamal added. He grinned, "I feel high."

Honor wanted me to stay, finish our work together and then head back to hers like we had done these last few times but I didn't have the energy. My sister had called me five times in the last ten hours and each time had absorbed any will to socialise or stay in public. I needed to go home and sleep. Sleep and sleep and sleep until I'd forgotten the world and the world had forgotten me.

Honor nodded and gave me a smile that reminded of the way she'd looked under the streetlamp. "Alright, I'll see you guys in class, yeah?"

I said, "Yeah, see you in class."

I turned and began walking down one of the aisles. Kamal clapped a hand onto my shoulder when we came to a stop by the elevator. I pressed the button and waited. We were three floors up and I really couldn't be bothered to take the stairs.

"Are you a priest?" Kamal asked.

I looked at him, "What?"

"I don't understand because you have perfectly gorgeous girls like Honor Ironsi, who is totally into you by the way, but you're not even bothered. Are you training for priesthood? Is that it?"

"I'm not training for anything." I said. "I'm just..."

"Just what?"

Honor was gorgeous, she was electric and ambitious with my favourite kind of wit sitting the tip of her tongue ready to be executed but –

"I'm not interested."

Kamal stared at me, that same dumbstruck look Ethan had on his face a few moments ago. Luckily the elevator came before he could answer and I quickly changed the subject to the new season of Game of Thrones. Kamal's eyes lit up and he started talking about all his theories for what would happen this season.

A slight chill accompanied by sunshine lingered in the afternoon when we finally stepped out of the library. The daylight stung my eyes, I blinked several times and glanced around the empty courtyard.

"The sun," Kamal gasped, reaching his hands up to the sky, "It actually exists. Jesus, feels like we were in there for fifteen years. I'm free."

Kamal hadn't changed much since high school. He was still goofy in that child-like way, still obsessed with all things Lord of the Rings, still struck with the idea that love was this simple, pure thing that could solved by a kiss, an apology, a great romantic gesture.

I rolled my eyes. "Uh-huh. C'mon, let's go."

*****