Kev pulled into the parking lot and held his breath as he hunted a decent parking spot. The best ones were right at the end of the building where the back doors were, or on the edge, in the shade of the trees that dotted the campus.

Score! He tucked his seven-year-old Mazda into the rim of shade thrown by a big horse chestnut between Badlam Hall and Truford Residence. He glanced up at Badlam’s brick and steel facade, and couldn’t help a silent wish that he’d be assigned as Residence Assistant somewhere else this year. If he was going to get the marks he needed in order to get into the Fourth Year Honors, he couldn’t be dealing with the crap that went on in there. One year in ‘Bedlam’ was enough.

Andrews would be wonderful. Small, mostly older students who had their eye on a Master’s degree, just like him. He should be so lucky. Kev crossed his fingers, then uncrossed them because that was a silly childhood superstition that didn’t change anything. But, as he shouldered his backpack and locked the car, he self-consciously crossed them again, just in case.

I can hear Ana’s dun dun dun! already…