Oh, shit, not again.

I read the grade again, hoping the number would change if I stared at it long enough. It didn’t. It never did.

Failed.

I folded it carefully, tucked it into my bag, and walked until the campus noise faded behind me; the laughter, the groups of students comparing results with relieved faces, the general ease of people who hadn’t just watched their future collapse on a single sheet of paper.

I walked until I found my place: the old stone corner behind the east building, half-hidden by an overgrown hedge, where the groundskeepers never bothered, and the students never wandered because someone had started a rumor...