The text from the unknown number glowed on Chloe's phone, a cryptic SOS from a sinking ship. She read it twice, her brow furrowed in a mixture of confusion and dawning understanding, before crossing the dorm room and holding the screen out to Amelia, who was hunched over her laptop, her face illuminated by the blueish light of a document filled with the thorny, stream-of-consciousness syntax of a Faulkner sentence.
"Ames. You need to see this," Chloe said, her voice uncharacteristically quiet, all traces of her usual dramatics gone.
Amelia glanced up, her expression instantly guarded. The intense, almost monastic focus she had built over the past weeks was a fragile construct, a fortress wall erected against the world, and she resented any intrusion, any reminder of the emotional chaos that lay outside its boundaries. But the solemn, almost grim look on Chloe's face made her set her pen down with a sigh and take the proffered phone.
