~🌺 Chapter nine🌺~
The email hits my phone on a Tuesday morning, before I'm fully awake. One line in the subject pulls me upright.
Research Fellowship Nomination.
It's from the department chair. Short. Formal. Clear.
I've been nominated for a fellowship money, resources, the kind of line that changes how people look at you. Deadline in two weeks. Submitted by Professor Harrington.
I read it again, slower this time, like the words might rearrange themselves.
Maya my roommate still asleep. I get dressed, tugging on whatever's warmest, and step outside. The air bites. Frost makes the walkways look dusted in glass. My breath follows me in pale clouds as I head for the humanities building.
Harrington is already in his office, lights on, coat hung neatly on the same hook as always.
"I got the email," I say from the doorway.
He glances up. "And?"
"I don't get why you nominated me."
"Come in. Close the door."
I do. He points to the chair across from him. I sit.
He keeps quiet for some minutes as if he's studying, not unkindly. Then he said "Why do you think you shouldn't have been nominated?"
"I'm a first-year," I say. "There are people who've been here longer. People who...."
"Time isn't the same thing as readiness," he says. "You've done the work."
You produce something solid and immediately try to talk it down."
The truth of it lands with a dull sting.
He leans back. "Why?"
I look at the bookshelf behind him because it's easier than looking at him. "Because being wrong has… consequences."
He nods once, like I've confirmed something he suspected. "Someone trained you to doubt your own judgment."
"Yes."
"And you've kept their voice."
That one sits heavier.
He slides a printed packet across the desk. "The fellowship has criteria. Your application will be judged against those. Not against whoever you think deserves it more."
"And if I don't get it?"
"Then you'll have written a serious application," he says. "That alone is practice most people avoid until they're forced."
His steadiness is annoying in the way steady people can be like he refuses to dramatize the things that feel dramatic to me.
"You have two weeks," he adds. "I'll read drafts. But it needs to sound like you."
"I understand."
I leave with the materials tucked under my arm .
Back at my desk, I spread everything out: requirements, evaluation points, sample applications. The pages look official in a way that makes my throat tighten.
Then I start reading, and something shifts not the world, just my grip on it.
They want a proposal, an ethical analysis, a reflection on leadership. The work is hard, but it isn't foreign. It's what I've been doing, quietly, while pretending it didn't count.
The next two weeks compress into drafts and edits. Harrington marks up my writing with a blunt pencil.
"This paragraph is your best point. Put it first."
"You're hiding behind 'perhaps' and 'somewhat' again. Remove them."
"Stop apologizing in your own work."
I revise. I cut. I rewrite. Not perfectly, but cleaner each time.
Maya watches me at night, perched on her bed with her laptop open.
"You're different," she says one evening.
"How?"
"You're not floating half a mile above your own life," she says. "You're here."
I huff a small laugh. "That's a weird compliment."
"It's true."
During all this, Rowan fades into the background. She shows up when she has to, speaks when asked, then disappears. No sharp "helpful" notes. No little power plays.
At first I'm braced for something. Then I realize I'm waiting for a pattern that might already be ending.
One afternoon I run into her in the library. She's alone at a table, books spread wide, hair pulled back too tight like she did it in a hurry. Her eyes look tired.
"Hey," I say, careful.
She looks up, guarded by habit. "Hi."
Silence stretches. I almost walk away.
"Are you okay?" I ask.
For a second she seems surprised the question is real.
"No," she says, and the word comes out flat. "I'm not. I'm behind on everything. And it feels like if I slip once, everyone will notice."
"That sounds exhausting," I say.
"It is." She gives a short laugh that isn't amused. "I keep thinking the next accomplishment will make me feel safe. It never does."
I know that feeling well enough to keep my mouth shut for a moment.
Finally I say, "Maybe the safety isn't in proving it. Maybe it's… elsewhere."
She studies me like she's deciding whether I'm mocking her.
"Maybe," she says, quieter.
It's not a truce, exactly. But it isn't war, either.
A few days later I submit the application. I don't feel triumphant. I feel emptied out, in a good way—like I've finally set something heavy down.
Harrington reads the final version, nods once. "Well done."
"Now what?"
"Now you wait," he says. "Six weeks."
Six weeks is long enough to invent a hundred endings. I try not to.
Finals come. Paper deadlines. The campus thins as people leave for break. Maya leaves three days before I do, hugging me hard in the parking lot.
"You're getting it," she says like it's a fact.
"You don't know that."
"I know you," she says. "Let that count for something."
After she's gone, the residence feels hollow. I pack slowly. The room looks different than it did when I arrived—less like a place I'm surviving, more like a place I've lived.
My parents pick me up on a gray afternoon. My mom hugs me like she's checking I'm real. My dad takes my bags and says nothing, which is his version of tenderness.
On the drive home my mom asks, "How was the semester?"
"Hard," I say. "But good."
My dad glances at me in the rearview mirror. "We're proud of you."
It's simple. It still does something to me.
Home is strange in the way old places get strange when you've changed. My room feels smaller. The things on the shelves—photos, souvenirs—look like props from someone else's story.
I don't unpack fully.
Over break I keep my world small. I see a couple old friends, polite conversations with careful edges. No one mentions him. I'm grateful.
I run into his mother once at the grocery store. She looks like she's been carrying a sentence for months.
"I'm sorry," she says. "About what happened."
"It's okay," I reply automatically, then regret it.
She shakes her head. "No. It wasn't."
I stand there with a cart full of groceries, suddenly unable to find a good lie.
"You seem… better," she says, softer. "Are you?"
"I'm getting there."
She squeezes my hand once, then walks away.
I don't cry in the aisle. I wait until I'm in the car, parked, staring at the steering wheel, breathing like it's something I have to remember how to do.
The fellowship decision arrives three days before I'm supposed to return to campus.
I'm in the kitchen making coffee when my phone buzzes. I open the email, and the first word is enough.
Congratulations…
For a second I don't read the rest. I just stand there with my hand on the counter, coffee machine hissing behind me, the room too bright.
My mom finds me like that.
"What happened?" she asks, alarmed.
I turn my phone toward her.
She reads it, then pulls me into a hug so tight it knocks the air out of me. "I'm so proud of you," she says into my hair.
My dad comes in, reads over her shoulder, and gives one firm nod.
That's all he says. It's enough.
That night I call Maya. She screams so loudly I have to hold the phone away.
"I told you!" she yells.
I'm laughing, and then I'm crying along side.
When I hang up, the house is quiet. I sit on my bed and let it sink in.
Not as a miracle. Not as a rescue.
As proof.
Before sleep, I write one line in my journal:
Maybe belief comes later and still counts.
The weather still cool outside,Inside, something in me stops bracing