mailboxes, I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a fistful of plastic and metal, more key chains than keys. I fumbled for the tiniest one while eyeing the crush of papers waiting inside, visible through the slit of a window lodged in my mailboxâs face. Through that slit I spotted the bright red envelope the school used to mail out the bursar bills. I had these sent to myself at my campus address because at first, when they went to my momâs apartment, her and Leidy lost their minds over numbers so big, not realizing that most of the figures in one column were canceled out by the figures in another. Iâd switched the delivery address and dealt with it myself after a second monthâs round of panicked calls from home. In the box, too, were flyers for concerts I wouldnât go to, ads for events in the Commons about which I didnât give a shitâpool tournaments, marathon game nights, free popcorn and screenings of French filmsâpaperwork for a housing lottery I might or might not be around to experience, and in the smash of all of it, in that little bin, there was, as Iâd predicted for Omar, a sealed letter from the Office of the Dean of Students.
I dumped the flyers in the recycling bin and shoved the bill and the lottery info and the letter into the mesh pocket inside my jacket. As empty as the Commons was, I wanted to open the letter in my room to guarantee Iâd be alone, in case the reality of the set date made me cry.
I didnât even stop to take off my shoes. I stood on Jillianâs rugâIâd clean up any mud laterâand unzipped my jacket, then the mesh pocket, let the other envelopes drop to the floor, and opened the Dean of Students letter. The paper was thin and beautiful, the schoolâs seal glowing through the middle of the page like a sun. It felt too elegant to be a piece of mail Iâd been dreading. At the end of my hearing, an older white woman waiting outside of the conference room had touched the back of my arm as Iâd leftâIâd almost darted right past herâand walked me through another set of doors and around her desk in the lobby, telling me that sheâd send a notice via campus mail with information about the next meeting once a decision was reached. Iâd nodded but said nothing, staring only at the bright lipstick clinging to her mouth; she wore no other makeup, and the effect was both cartoonish and sad. As she opened one half of the wooden double doors I had come in through over an hour earlier, her mouth added that weâd likely meet in the same place. I saw now that she was right: I was to report to the same office in the same building on Monday at three thirty P.M . There was a phone number listed to call if that time was a problem, but also a sentence (one of only four on the whole sheet) stating that my supervisor at the library had already been notified of the conflict and had agreed to excuse me from the first half of my Monday shift.
I read those four sentences over and over again, bringing the letter closer to my face as I slid off my shoes, then as I sat on Jillianâs bed. I took the meeting being scheduled in the afternoonâafter a full day of classesâas a bad sign, thinking it meant that the committee wanted to give me one last day to enjoy being a Rawlings student: one last morning bathroom rush among dozens of the countryâs brightest students; one last hundred-year-old lecture room with heavy, carved desks; one last glasses-clad professor in a real tweed jacket at the chalkboard; one last walk across the snow-covered quad. Let her have at least that , I imagined the lone woman on the committee telling the four men. Letâs at least give her that. It didnât feel like enough, and I thought about calling the number and saying that I wouldnât be there, that I was still in Miami and involved in a local protest about a boy whoâd come from Cuba, that as eager as I
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