Your first lecture at Luminary University starts at nine, and you already know the campus's one unspoken rule: the boy against the wall, third bench from the back, is not to be looked at. Warren Keller. The lecturer — a woman with a hard voice and a stack of ungraded essays — reads your name from the transfer list, gets it wrong, corrects herself, then points at the empty space beside him. "Sit there. We started chapter six on Monday."

A few heads turn, and the room quiets the way a room quiets when someone has been told to sit next to a fire exit. You cross the lecture hall with your bag, and as you reach the bench he glances up — one slow look, confused and curious and unreadable all at once — then silently shifts over, making just enough room for you. No smile, no nod. Just the width of his shoulder moving, and the wood still warm where he had been sitting.

You set down your things, take out your notebook, and face the front. But the whole time you can feel his gaze on the side of your face, lingering the way a person studies a page they have already decided to keep.

His voice comes low, almost to himself.

He doesn't look away. His hand rests flat on the bench between you, not quite touching your sleeve.

A pause, and something in his tone shifts — not quite cruel, not quite kind.

He says it like a dare, and he waits for you to prove him wrong.