Chapter 2

The next afternoon, Rowan was waiting outside the west entrance of the library. He had traded the baseball cap for sunglasses, but the same worn camera bag hung from his shoulder. A small video camera sat on a tripod beside him.

“You came,” he said.

“You gave me a time and place.”

“I wasn’t sure that would be enough.”

I couldn’t tell whether he was joking.

Rowan looked me over once—not in the slow, appraising way that made me want to adjust my clothes. He seemed to be checking how my white shirt and jeans worked against the stone library walls.

“This is good,” he said.

“I didn’t dress for a campaign.”

“That’s why it’s good.”

He handed me a small microphone and showed me where to clip it beneath my collar. His instructions were brief and practical. He asked before moving a strand of hair away from the mic and kept his attention on the equipment, not my body.

Once the camera was ready, he pointed toward the library steps.

“Walk up, stop near the doors, then look back.”

“That’s all?”

“For now.”

I made it halfway up before looking directly at the lens. My shoulders tightened.

“Keep going,” Rowan said.

“I already messed it up.”

“You looked at the camera. That isn’t a federal crime.”

I glanced back at him.

“Again. This time, think about where you’re going.”

Chase would have told me where to put my hands, how far to turn my chin, and which expression looked least awkward. By the time he lifted the camera, I would have been trying to remember six different instructions.

Rowan only said, “Slow down.”

The second take felt less stiff. On the third, he asked me to open the library door, then pause as if someone had called my name.

I turned.

“That one,” he said.

“What did I do?”

“Nothing. You stopped trying to look right.”

He moved the tripod closer to the railing. “Now we test sound.”

I stared at the camera. “You want me to talk?”

“It is a video campaign.”

“I thought today was only about movement.”

“I lied.”

I almost smiled.

Rowan stepped behind the camera. “Tell me why you chose Westbridge.”

The answer should have been easy. I had written versions of it for orientation brochures and photography club captions.

Strong academic programs. Welcoming community. Opportunities for personal growth.

The kind of language that sounded polished and meant almost nothing.

“I liked the campus,” I said.

Rowan waited.

“And the communications program.”

He continued waiting.

“That’s all I have.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You spent four years here. Either something happened to you, or Westbridge should give you some tuition back.”

A laugh escaped before I could stop it.

He adjusted the focus. “There. That’s closer.”

“To what?”

“A real answer.”

I looked away from the lens.

“Forget the campaign,” he said. “Imagine a high school senior asked whether coming here was worth it. What would you tell them?”

That was different.

I thought about my first semester, when I had called my mother from a bathroom stall because everyone in my orientation group seemed more confident than I was. I thought about the first article I wrote for the student magazine, and the night Leah and I stayed in the library until three in the morning while the custodians turned off the lights around us.

“I’d tell them it doesn’t feel like your life at first,” I said.

Rowan raised the camera again.

“You arrive, and everyone else seems to know who they’re supposed to be. They have friends already. They answer questions in class without rehearsing first. You think you’re the only person who got admitted by mistake.”

My fingers loosened at my sides.

“But eventually, you find one place where you don’t feel like an outsider. Then another. One day, you realize you stopped planning how to leave.”

Rowan stayed quiet for several seconds.

“Was that terrible?” I asked.

“No. That’s your campaign.”

Before I could answer, someone called my name from across the quad.

Chase stood near the fountain with Madison. She wore a pale yellow dress and held a stack of textbooks against her chest. A second-year club member was managing the reflector while Chase crouched behind his camera.

Madison smiled when she saw me. Chase didn’t.

He crossed the lawn. “You’re filming here?”

Rowan checked the audio levels. “That was the plan.”

Chase looked at the camera, then at the microphone clipped to my shirt. “You’ve already started?”

“We’re testing,” I said.

He turned to Rowan. “Have you shot admissions material before?”

“Yes.”

“For Westbridge?”

“A few things.”

“What things?”

Rowan adjusted the tripod. “Things with deadlines.”

I looked down so Chase wouldn’t see me smile.

His attention returned to me. “Madison’s shooting her campus scenes today. I thought you were going to help with the reflector.”

“You didn’t ask me.”

“I mentioned it at the club.”

“You said you needed someone. You didn’t say it had to be me.”

Chase frowned as though there had always been an understanding I had failed to honor. “You usually help.”

Usually, I did. I carried his equipment, checked Madison’s hair between takes, watched their bags, and helped him sort files until midnight.

“I have my own shoot,” I said.

His gaze flicked toward Rowan. “This is more important than the club’s campaign submission?”

“It’s my submission.”

Chase lowered his voice. “You don’t have to prove anything because you’re mad at me.”

Before I could answer, Madison called from the fountain.

“Chase? The light’s changing.”

He turned immediately. “I’ll be there in a second.”

His voice softened without effort.

He went back to Madison and repositioned her beneath the trees. When she laughed at the wrong moment, he lowered the camera.

“No rush,” he told her. “We’ll do it again.”

The words carried across the lawn.

My throat tightened.

Rowan glanced at me. “Want to move?”

“No.”

I watched Chase take another photograph.

For years, I had told myself he was impatient because he was tired, or the light was bad, or we were running late. The simpler truth was harder to admit: he had patience. He simply spent it elsewhere.

“I’m sure,” I said.

Rowan stepped behind the camera again. “Walk toward me and tell me one thing you’ll miss after graduation.”

“The library coffee.”

“That coffee tastes like burned cardboard.”

“You asked what I’d miss, not what was good.”

“Fair.”

I laughed, and this time I didn’t look away when I noticed the camera.

We recorded three more takes around the library and the arts building. Rowan never told me I looked beautiful. He told me when my pace was too fast, when my voice dropped at the end of a sentence, and when I was hiding my hands behind my back.

By the end of the hour, the camera no longer felt like an accusation.

We sat on the library steps while he reviewed the footage. In the final clip, I walked beneath the trees and talked about the way campus felt just before sunset. I hardly recognized the ease in my own voice.

“You didn’t change anything?” I asked.

“I adjusted the exposure.”

“My face?”

“Still yours.”

I watched the clip again.

Rowan packed away the microphone. “Do you want to submit?”

The question made my stomach tighten. Applying meant people would see it. Chase and Madison would see it. Strangers could pause the video and decide whether I belonged there.

But fear was no longer the only thing I felt.

“Yes,” I said.

Rowan zipped the camera bag closed. “Good. Tomorrow we stop testing.”