Detroit Metro Community College Library, Second Floor, Friday Evening
CJ Bennett had learned how to blend in with students a decade younger than her — which mostly meant staying quiet and keeping her hoodie up. She didn’t do keggers. Didn’t join clubs. Didn’t go to tailgates or trivia nights or any of the other things that her roommates insisted were “peak college experiences.”
CJ liked libraries.
Not just for the quiet — though that helped — but because they didn’t expect anything from her. No smiles. No small talk. No need to perform. Just space. Space to think. To disappear, if she needed to.
And lately, she needed to.
Home wasn’t where she spent her time. Not really. Her apartment was only two blocks from campus, but it felt further — like a place she passed through instead of living in. Three roommates. Thin walls. A living room that always smelled like takeout or cologne. It was loud in the wrong ways. Tense in the quiet ones.
So CJ stayed late on campus. At work. At the library. On walks that doubled as resets. She had learned the rhythms of this building like a second language — which floorboards creaked, which outlets actually worked, which corners stayed warm in the winter. She knew which overhead lights flickered, and which sections of shelving had just enough shadow to let you vanish without actually leaving.
Some part of her liked that. The almost invisible feeling.
Her usual spot — corner table, back window, one leg of the chair shorter than the rest — was waiting for her like it always did. She dropped her bag beside it with a soft thunk, the kind that carried more mental weight than physical.
Unpacking had a sequence. A small ritual.
Laptop. Articles. The same mechanical pencil she kept telling herself to replace. A protein bar with one bite taken out. A travel mug half full of something herbal and bitter. Two notebooks — one messy, one precise. And there — slipped between annotated printouts like it didn’t mean anything — the glossy flyer for Zeke Halloway’s Fordham lecture.
She hadn’t meant to bring it. Definitely hadn’t meant to look at it again.
Zeke mid-stride, mid-sentence, mid-smirk — all curated chaos, selling itself like a trailer:
Zeke Halloway: TikTok’s Rogue Archaeologist. One Night Only.
CJ flipped it over. Blank.
Of course it was blank. It didn’t need to say more.
She slid it back between the papers before she could feel weird about it.
Out came the notebook. The good one — spiral-bound, edges soft, the paper breaking in just the right way. Her hand moved before her brain even caught up. Fragments of Graves’ lecture spilled out — a quote, a loose timeline, a doodle born of autopilot and caffeine.
A spiral.
She stared at it.
Didn’t remember drawing that.
Didn’t know why it made her stomach shift half an inch off-center.
She turned the page.
Paused.
Then turned it back.
Still there. Still wrong.
A beat passed.
“Still going analog, huh?”
Matt dropped into the seat across from her like gravity had invited him.
CJ didn’t look up right away.
“Hey, Matt.”
He sprawled back in the chair, all elbows and entitlement, like he thought posture was proof of intelligence.
“You know you type faster than you write, right?”
CJ flipped her page again.
“I retain more this way.”
Matt smirked. “Yeah, but do you really need to take notes in Graves’ class? Dude’s just Wikipedia with tenure and trauma.”
CJ finally glanced up. “Maybe I like trauma.”
He paused, trying to parse it. She didn’t help him out.
Matt opened his laptop with a little too much flourish.
“You going to that Zeke thing?”
No answer.
He kept going. “He’s probably gonna fake a scroll or livestream a ghost. I bet it’s all scripted.”
“He’s a published researcher,” she said. Even. Calm.
Matt scoffed. “Barely. Guy’s academic cosplay for people who think Wikipedia is a primary source. You know how much you can fake on TikTok?”
CJ turned the page again, unbothered. “Do you?”
Matt blinked. Again.
She didn’t look back.
The silence was final. Not harsh — just conclusive.
Matt packed up his laptop with the subtlety of a door slam.
“Gotta fake-study for stats.”
CJ watched him go.
Then turned back to her notes, finally alone again in the way that mattered.
The spiral in the corner still caught her eye.
She didn’t like it. Couldn’t explain why.
This time, she didn’t cross it out. Just… traced it once. Lightly. The tip of her pencil followed the shape in quiet loops — center to edge, edge to center. The rhythm calmed her. Until it didn’t.
She shut the notebook. Let her hand fall still.
The HVAC hummed overhead. Pages turned quietly behind her. Somewhere downstairs, a printer sputtered to life. Rain tapped against the windows, soft and persistent. The world moved on, unaware.
CJ leaned back and let her gaze wander the room. Her shift at the library desk started in an hour. Until then, this was hers. Her sanctuary.
This was the part of her week she looked forward to — not the lectures, not the commutes, not the late-night writing center shifts. Just this: a window seat, a notebook, and a moment without noise.
Graves had said something in class earlier that stuck with her. About the way history gets rewritten until it doesn’t look like itself anymore. About how memory gets reshaped, if you just repeat it enough.
CJ wasn’t sure if he meant it philosophically or personally.
Either way, it hit.
She checked the time. Still enough margin to wrap up her reading and maybe — maybe — double-check the Fordham event listing.
Not that she was excited.
Just curious.
Zeke Halloway had that kind of effect — somewhere between ridiculous and magnetic.
CJ didn’t watch everything he posted. But sometimes, late at night, when she couldn’t sleep and the apartment was too loud, she’d find herself scrolling. Tombs. Ruins. Witty captions. Dumb stunts in places that should’ve had permits. He was a walking contradiction — swagger wrapped around something sharper. Smarter.
And underneath it all, there was something real. Something that knew what it was talking about.
She respected that.
And maybe — though she’d never say it out loud — she liked the way he smiled when he thought no one was watching. The off-camera moments that slipped through the persona.
She didn’t have a crush.
Not really.
But she had… a curiosity. And sometimes, that was worse.
Then — a shift.
Not in her. In the room.
The kind of awareness that prickled under the skin before your brain knew why. Not sight. Not sound. Just… off.
She glanced toward the front desk.
Empty.
Then her eyes caught the shape near the back stacks — a man, standing too still, coat gray, posture too rigid. He wasn’t browsing. Wasn’t moving. Just there.
Trying not to be seen.
And failing because of it.
CJ didn’t react.
Just noticed.
Filed.
She closed her notebook. Slid it into her bag.
Phone in hand. Earbud in.
She moved toward the exit like she always did.
Calm. Neutral. Controlled.
At the front desk, she knocked a pen off the counter on purpose. Picked it up slowly. An excuse to look back.
The man was gone.
But something creaked near the stacks. Fast. Like a chair being pushed back too quickly.
CJ didn’t speed up.
Outside, the air smelled like rain and cold metal. The kind of fall evening that made everything feel more cinematic than it was.
She walked like someone with somewhere to be — not rushed, not slow. Just enough pace to disappear into the street.
To Be Continued…