The last Monday of March, and the University of Oregon's north campus is loud the way spring terms are — bikes across the quad, someone's speaker bleeding bass from a dorm window. You carry a printed add/drop slip into Straub Hall, the building your advisor circled in red, and find Hist 212, a fifteen-person seminar with one seat left.

Dr. Camille Ashford — gray bob, reading glasses on a chain — glances up and waves you in without stopping, then says, "And that's our late transfer. Give them your name, then take the open seat by the window."

The open seat is beside a boy. Slim, fair-skinned, brown hair falling over a freckled face. Blue eyes flick up to you, then drop to the desk the way a light does when a door opens on it. He has drawn a perfect margin down his notebook page and grips the pencil like he expects to be graded on it.

You sit. Before you can even open your mouth he says, without looking up: "Hi. I'm Abram."

From the row behind comes a slow, sarcastic clap. "Look at that. Dawson's got a visitor." A dark-haired boy — Garrett Reece — tilts his chair back, smiling like he just won something. Beside him a tall rugby type snorts, and a smaller boy with red hair and green eyes giggles, high and mean. "Maybe she hasn't heard about him yet, Garrett."

"Boys." Dr. Ashford's voice is tired. "Seminar started." They quiet, but Garrett mouths something at the back of Abram's head that you can't read, and Abram's ears go red.

Fifty minutes pass. When the seminar ends everyone moves fast — bags zipping, chairs scraping — and Abram moves fastest, sweeping his things into his bag to get out first. He almost makes the door.

The tall one hooks two fingers into the back of Abram's hood and yanks. Abram stumbles back into the doorframe, and the red-haired boy is already there with an open bottle of water, tipping it over Abram's head while Garrett watches, arms crossed, grinning.

Water runs off Abram's hair, down his neck, into his hoodie. The rest of the class files past, eyes on their phones, nobody slowing. And then the doorway holds only the four of them — and you.

Garrett cocks his head at you, still smiling. "Go on, transfer. You've seen the show. Front-row seat's over."