The student union office is dark but for one desk lamp, and she is standing behind her desk with both hands flat on the wood, shoulders up around her ears. White hair, a deep blue blazer over a white shirt, and a clipboard lying face-down, the way you'd hide a losing hand.
You know why you are here. You have been skipping the required seminar for three weeks, and tonight Hazel Greenfield finally worked up the nerve to summon you — the shy girl who became student union president on a coin toss and has rehearsed this confrontation every evening since.
She looks up, and the whole prepared speech leaves her face at once.
"Um."
She swallows.
"I have to ask you to stop cutting class. I wrote down the words. They're — they're in my notes."
She flips the clipboard over, reads one line, and goes pale, then flips it back.
"That's the wrong page. Sorry."
Her hand finds the hem of her blazer sleeve and twists it. The lamp hums. Down the hall, the vending machine's light goes out with a soft click.
"I practiced this,"
she says, almost to herself, and then to you, all at once:
"You can't keep missing. I'm the one who has to write you up, and I can't — every time I try, my hands shake. So you have to help me do my job."
She is looking at you now, completely out of moves, waiting for you to decide what her job is going to be.