Ethan was saying something about lunch.
Alice was in the middle of zipping his bag when he caught the shape of it, a question, probably something like do you want to grab food, and he was already opening his mouth to say something short and final when the classroom door swung open and Lucy appeared in it like a weather event in a school uniform.
She found him in half a second.
"Alice." She pointed. "Let's go."
Alice stood, slung his bag over his shoulder, and looked at Ethan once. "Later."
"Oh, yeah, sure, see you after---" but Lucy had already grabbed Alice's wrist and was pulling him toward the door with the kind of momentum that didn't leave room for discussion.
They were in the hallway before Ethan finished his sentence.
"Where are we going," Alice said. Not really a question.
"You'll see." Lucy turned a corner, then another, moving through the hallways with the confidence of someone who had done her research. She was also holding a small container of food in her free hand, which meant she'd planned this well in advance, which meant Bryan was already wherever they were going.
Alice let himself be pulled. He was used to this.
They ended up in front of a door on the far side of the building, down a hallway that was noticeably quieter than the rest. Lucy pushed it open.
It was a room that had clearly been used for something at some point and then quietly forgotten. A few old chairs stacked in the corner, a table that had seen better years, two windows letting in decent light. Bryan was already at the table with his lunch in front of him, looking completely unsurprised.
Alice looked around. "How did you find this."
"I explored," Lucy said, setting her food down.
"During class?"
"During the break between orientation and first period." She sat. "I'm three steps ahead."
Alice looked at Bryan.
Bryan shrugged. "She texted me the location. I got here early."
Alice sat down, pulled out his lunch, and decided this was exactly the kind of thing he should have expected from Lucy and let it go.
They ate. Quiet in the good way, just the sound of food and occasional comments about the morning. Bryan's statistics lecture had started five minutes late. Lucy's professor had spent most of the period talking about himself. Alice said his English lit class had been fine, which by his standards meant it had been genuinely decent.
The room was warm. The light came in at a good angle. Nobody else was there.
Good lunch spot, Alice thought. Hats off to Lucy.
Then the door opened.
Lucy startled, her chopsticks hitting her sushi container. Bryan's eyes went straight to the door, steady, already reading it. Alice looked up and kept eating.
It was a guy. Older, second or third year probably, with the look of someone who'd been moving fast and was trying hard to seem like he hadn't. Fresh black eye, still swelling. Breathing a little too quickly. He pushed the door mostly shut behind him and leaned against it.
The three of them looked at him.
He looked back.
A beat of strange silence passed.
Then knocking came from the other side, sharp and deliberate, and the guy's whole body went tense. He pressed back harder against the door, hands gripping the frame, eyes moving around the room looking for a second exit that wasn't there.
Alice took a bite of his banana.
Bryan raised an eyebrow.
The knocking came again. The door moved. The upperclassman made a sound of genuine distress trying to hold it. He managed about three seconds.
Then he didn't.
The door swung open. The upperclassman stumbled sideways. And the person who stepped through had cold eyes and the expression of someone who had been mildly annoyed since birth and had simply made peace with it.
Tall. Dark hair, sharp jaw, the kind of face that would have been good-looking if it wasn't currently doing that thing where it looked at everything like a minor inconvenience. His gaze swept the room, landed on the upperclassman, then moved to the three people sitting at the table eating lunch.
It stopped on Alice.
Something shifted. Not much. Just enough. The cold didn't go away but it moved slightly aside, and what replaced it was something that was almost, if you were being generous, warm.
"Oh," he said. "Hey, Alice."
Alice raised his hand in a small wave and went back to eating.