After leaving the academic building, I decided to use the remaining daylight to explore the campus.
Map in hand, I wandered for nearly an hour — past the open courtyards where pigeons congregated on the benches, along the covered walkways connecting the arts wing to the science block, around the back of the gymnasium where someone had planted a row of sad, determined little hedges along the fence line. I noted the library, the cafeteria, the student council office with its bulletin board already dense with flyers. I catalogued it all quietly, the way I did most things — from a careful distance, filing it away for later.
By the time I folded the map back into my bag, the afternoon light had tilted into gold.
Time to go home.
I turned toward the neighbourhood and started walking.
I was halfway there when a voice rang out from behind me.
"Hey! You're Madison Jones, right?"
I turned.
A girl was jogging toward me from the direction of the school — blonde hair catching the light, blue eyes bright with the kind of easy confidence that made strangers feel immediately like they'd known her for years. She slowed to a stop in front of me, barely winded.
"I heard your name when the clerk called you up for your student ID photo," she explained quickly, as if she'd anticipated the question already forming on my face.
"Hi — I'm Emilia Stevens." She grinned. "My friends call me Millie."
I said nothing. She didn't seem to notice. "I didn't realize we were heading the same way home. That's why I called out — I thought we could walk together." Then, as naturally as if she were commenting on the weather, she added, "So, Maddie — let's be friends."
I stopped walking.
"I'm not looking for friends." I kept my voice flat, measured. "And don't call me that. That name is for family and people I'm close to." I paused to make sure she'd heard me clearly. "And don't follow me."
She followed me anyway.
I could hear her footsteps beside mine, perfectly matched to my pace, as though my words had simply passed through her and dissolved into the afternoon air. I stared straight ahead for half a block before I finally stopped and turned to face her.
"Why are you still walking with me?"
She considered this for a moment, as if it were a genuinely interesting question.
"Because I live on the same street as you."
I stared at her. She stared back, pleasant and utterly unbothered.
The realization landed slowly, then all at once. We were neighbours.
"This is awesome," she said, her eyes lighting up like I had just told her something wonderful instead of nothing at all. "That means we can walk to school together every day!"
"That's not—"
"I'll come by your house Monday morning," she continued, with the breezy certainty of someone announcing a plan rather than proposing one. "We can walk together." She gave a small wave — cheerful, final, completely immune to argument — and turned toward the far end of the street.
"Don't come," I called after her.
She didn't answer. Didn't slow down. Just kept walking, her figure growing smaller in the late afternoon light until she turned up a driveway near the end of the block and disappeared.
I stood there for a moment on the empty pavement.
Then I turned and walked the rest of the way home alone, telling myself that Monday would be different. That I would simply not answer the door.
The days that followed passed quickly — quietly, the way time does when you're waiting for something without quite admitting it to yourself.
And then it was Monday.
And Emilia Stevens was on my doorstep
.
Smiling.
Calling me Maddie.
I sighed, picked up my bag, and opened the door all the way.
"Fine," I muttered. "Let's go."
And as I pulled the door shut behind me and fell into step beside her, I told myself it meant nothing. Just two neighbours walking the same direction.
It didn't have to mean anything more than that.