Zero to Hero

You know you need to eat something. Last night, staying late to break into the display case, you forgot to eat. You had planned to meet your roommate for breakfast and bad coffee this morning, but just as you were putting on your coat to go, you saw the unmistakable red envelope. It must have been slipped under your door when you were in the shower.

Thinking of it now, you feel another wave of cold nausea wash over you. He knows where you live. Of course, he already has seemed to know your every move on campus – seems even to know, impossibly, where you will go before you do – but this feels different. Worse.

You reach the front of the line, order a bagel and a large coffee. As you wait, you stare at the wooden clock suspended above you, its face impartial to students’ comings and goings. It isn’t ticking, you realize. How long have the hands been frozen in time?

Time. Before this week, you only thought about it as a practical reality: minutes left before your alarm goes off, or for an exam, or to make it to the bus stop. I have been watching you for a long time, he said. How long?

With your food in hand, you head to your favorite place to think. An enormous dinosaur skeleton is mounted on the wall above you, and all around you are little kids on a field trip, chattering and filling out worksheets. Past, and future. The ancient, and the barely here.

You fish the piece of paper from the most recent envelope out of your bag. This morning you crumpled it up in frustration and anger, but now you smooth it out on the table in front of you.

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