The next morning, the apartment is full of Julia's voice before it's even full of light.
She doesn't have class today, but she's already up—sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by highlighted scripts, loose papers, and half a banana she forgot she was eating.
"This is the big one," she says for the third time in ten minutes, flipping through her binder with the intensity of someone decoding ancient secrets. "Final showcase for this semester. It's still, like, two months away, but we're already in pre-pre-prep. They want it to be cross-departmental. Big collab, no pressure, blah blah."
She talks fast, like the words will evaporate if she doesn't get them out quickly enough. Her hair's up in a high bun with a pen stabbed through it like a sword.
I'm still half asleep on the couch, sipping lukewarm tea. "Cross-departmental with who?"
