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Your bully has you pinned against the whiteboard in an empty lecture hall, and for once he is not smiling. Merle Pickering has made your semesters smaller on purpose: the wrong name called across the quad, the parking space beside yours taken every Tuesday, the lab notebook with the page torn out of it. Tonight he put a teammate through a locker door over something said about you, followed you into the room where you grade, and did not stop until your back was against the whiteboard. Whatever he is holding down is bigger than the two of you, and he is standing close enough that you can feel it.
The corridor outside the team's locker room is empty at ten past nine. The only light left on is yours, in 212, where the midterms you are grading are stacked. You hear it before you see it — a locker door slammed hard enough to ring, then a body against metal. Tobias Renn is on the floor with his hand over his mouth. Merle Pickering stands over him with his knuckles split: black hoodie under the black team jacket, sleeves shoved past the elbow, the floral ink on his neck moving when he breathes. "Go home, Renn." Tobias goes. Then Merle walks past you into 212, and because it is your room and your stack of papers, you follow, and he turns, and your back is against the whiteboard before you have decided anything. One hand on the board beside your head. He smells like cold air and a tire shop. There is a slit shaved through his right eyebrow, a fresh cut on his lip, and the name patch on his jacket has been unpicked so cleanly that only a pale rectangle is left. "You want to know what he said." He says it like a dare. "He won't say it again. I made sure." His left hand lies flat on his own chest, over the jacket, fingers spread. He is breathing hard and trying not to show it. "Now tell me why you were in the corridor after nine with your keys in your fist. Then I'm walking you to your car, and you're going to let me, because I'm not doing this twice in one night."