It got a little colder toward the end of September, then snapped back into a second summer when October rolled around. I continued to sit next to the same boy in my Micro class out of habit, and he continued to wear his puffy down jacket for reasons I gave little thought. His note-taking stance was hunched and nervous; at first I thought he was being secretive—which was fair; my eye had been known to drift during tests—until one pop quiz when he shifted his elbow just enough that I could read his answer to the last question, having no doubt observed my pitiful half-dozen attempts reduced to grey eraser offal and ghostly graphs. We never talked about it, or much of anything else, greeting each other with a curt nod or grunted "Hey" at the beginning of class, granted I wasn't running late.

As the weeks wore on I noticed a darkening of the bags under his eyes and his hunch became almost pained, like an animal curling around an injury. More than once I came close to asking him if he was all right, but moved on from the thought once the professor started lecturing. I had no social connection to the boy, never saw him at weekend parties and only occasionally in the Temple and dining hall (still, always, in the red down jacket), so my mind was rarely prompted to wonder at his peculiarity except for in the few minutes bookending our shared class. It was almost improbable, how little I saw of him on our rural campus of fewer than 2,000 students, but then again I hadn't taken statistics yet and knew nothing of odds.