College life was absolutely fantastic. It was everything I had dreamed of during my senior year of high school.

Classes had barely started, and already flyers for parties and mysterious initiation rites for various fraternities were circulating around campus.

"Maybe I'll join the Dark Sigma," I said as we passed their porch littered with crushed plastic cups, with a guy passed out on the steps. "They sure know how to have fun."

Jeremy Smith, my unfortunate roommate, let out an annoyed sigh as he glanced at his ugly digital watch. "It's already eight-oh-three. Class started at eight sharp. We can't stop at every fraternity to comment on the decline of the educational institution. Please, Benjamin, let's hurry!"

I was beginning to think it would have been better to leave the dandy behind. He had an anxious chipmunk vibe about him and clearly didn’t know the meaning of the word fun.

We weren’t required to go to class holding hands, even if we were starting from the same point A and heading to the same point B.

But I couldn’t deny that I didn’t mind the company. For as annoying as it might be.

"Alright, alright..."

Not content with my surrender, Jeremy grabbed my arm and started dragging me toward building B1, but as soon as we reached the entrance, his phone rang for what must have been the fifth time that morning.

"Hello? Sorry, love, I'm just going into class. I'll call you back. Yes!"

After about four days of knowing him, I could already establish a reliable statistical average. Jeremy received about thirty calls a day, twenty-five of which were from his octopus of a boyfriend.

Seriously... there had to be a legal limit to how many times a person could say "my love" in a single day.

Five was acceptable. Six was annoying. Eighty was grounds for the death penalty.

Especially considering that our dear Lucas Hernández, about whom I now knew more than I cared to know about any human being, would be visiting our campus twice a week, every week, despite Jeremy planning to go home every weekend.

These two clearly had an unhealthy level of interest in each other.

Maybe I had fallen in love with a lying criminal and murderer, but at least no one had ever caught me in broad daylight calling him "my love".

And right after that thought, a wave of disgust washed over me. 

I dug my nails into the back of my other hand, leaving deep grooves. Lately, the skin there started to burn as soon as I touched it.

"If it itches so much that you're making it bleed, you should see a dermatologist," said Jeremy, the future detective.

I needed to find a less conspicuous way to silence my brain whenever it threatened to dwell on things better left forgotten, but I liked the idea that one day I would stop tormenting my hand because I would have finally managed to erase every poisonous memory of my past.

"Come on, let's go. There's no one left in the hallways; I bet they've already started." Jeremy unlocked his phone to check which classroom we were in.

I didn’t even bother trying to pull up the file. They’d sent us an unclickable PDF, and my screen reader couldn’t process it. Normally, I would waste time converting the file on my computer, but now... I just didn’t care.

Maybe I'd find the classroom, maybe I wouldn’t.

"Room 4.7. We need to go up to the fourth floor."

The inside of the building was lit by those neon lights that created such an intense contrast for me that everything was reduced to black silhouettes and white glowing orbs.

"Damn it!" Jeremy muttered, tugging me forward again. "It’ll take us forever to climb four floors."

The silhouette of the stairs appeared before me, and Jeremy released his grip on my arm to start climbing.

"Or... we could take the elevator," I suggested, stepping a bit to the right and placing my hand on what I assumed was the panel with the buttons.

"Oh." Jeremy stepped back down a few steps and tapped his index finger on a paper taped to the doors. "It says here you need a permit to use the elevator. I bet they'd give you one if you just told them about your visual impairment."

Here's another thing I didn’t appreciate much about my adorable roommate: he offered unsolicited advice a bit too often.

So, we climbed the stairs. Room 4.7 was, naturally, at the end of a long hallway. The door opened onto an amphitheater  made of students and the professor who stopped speaking as soon as we burst in, panting heavily.

A couple hundred eyes turned to us.

"We..." Jeremy panted. "W-we apologize for the..." Another breath. "Late arrival."

"No problem," said the teacher, who turned out to have an elderly and womanly voice. "Feel free to take a seat."

She pointed straight ahead, right to the empty seats in the front row.

Oh, fantastic.

Jeremy pushed me forward as soon as he saw me hesitate.

"No, no, no. Not the front row, are you crazy?" I hissed.

But he had no mercy for me. He dragged me to the nearest seat and plopped down in the one next to it, immediately adopting the posture of the perfect model student.

"May I continue?" The professor asked with a slight sarcastic tone.

"Please do." I replied with extreme politeness, just to annoy Jeremy.

"And take off that hat." This friendly comment didn’t come from the professor, but from a tall silhouette standing next to her.

I glanced around; there were large windows behind us letting in a fair amount of sunlight, but all in all, I didn’t really need the hat.

However, I didn’t like his tone. I pretended not to hear him.

Jeremy gave me a subtle elbow under the table, and I yawned.

"Insolent and rude. Not only do you show up late-"

"That's enough, Turner," the professor cut him off. "I don’t care if you wear hats, miniskirts, or show up drunk to class. You're all adults now, and for better or worse, that means you make your own decisions. Exciting, isn’t it?"

The class remained silent. What was wrong with everyone? Were they intimidated by a little old lady on the verge of retirement?

"Super exciting." I confirmed for everyone, and I got the impression that the professor was smiling at me.

Jeremy, on the other hand, let out a faint death rattle.

"Great! As I was saying, welcome to all you freshmen, I hope you have a wonderful semester. I’m Anijah Caldwell, your instructor for Criminal Behavior Studies."

Ah.

Caldwell, the head of the department and a former FBI agent. Maybe I should have taken off the hat.

"This is my assistant, Joseph Turner, and your third-year colleague. He has a brooding look, but he’s actually a big softie!"

Joseph confirmed his boss’s description by making a sound similar to a growl.

"As I do every year, I like to start the course with a little game to help you get to know your peers, test yourselves, and at the same time, test our dear Joseph. So, our Turner recently moved into an apartment in an undisclosed location in New York. Your task will be to discover the address, while Turner's task will be to keep it hidden. I encourage you to work in teams to find the solution, and whoever gives me the correct address first will receive three extra points on the final exam."

For the first time, the students in the raised rows of desks murmured excitedly.

"And if none of you manage to track down Turner by the end of the semester, he will receive a special prize. The only rule of the game is that stalking is forbidden. It would be rather boring otherwise, don’t you think? And I encourage you to keep your investigations within the limits of the law. Any questions?"

Jeremy’s hand shot up immediately. His entire figure seemed to quiver with excitement.

As soon as he was given the floor, he began asking every possible clarification about the game’s rules, especially the professor’s definition of "legal."

Fuck. Part of me was jealous. Part of me still wanted to feel that excitement, that desire to excel...

But the rest of me was numb. I didn’t care.

I just wanted to forget.