It was a Thursday in December. It was cold. The trees were bare, their fallen leaves buried under the snow. They would not see the sky for a long time. My boots, bought specifically for this kind of weather, made a wet squelching noise as I stepped over the slushy ground. Flakes of snow fell into my hair and clung to my lashes. I hugged my coat tighter around myself, but the chill still seeped into my bones.

It was also dark, past seven o’clock. The antique-looking streetlamps lit my path along the sidewalk, the twinkling yellow lights illuminating the snowflakes softly plummeting to the ground against the backdrop of the dark sky. The bare gray trees seemed to reach out to attempt to catch the falling snow, and the grand gothic architecture of the college watched wistfully over the scene.

I found the image I beheld beautiful. Beautiful in all of its sadness, grayness, longing.

I spotted the campus café in the distance, the building getting closer and closer as I walked forward. A bell rang as I entered the modest doors and walked up to the cashier, a student I barely recognized from my chemistry class, and she looked at me expectantly as I blankly studied the menu. The café suddenly reminded me of the one my parents owned, although it looked nothing like it. A deep, gnawing pain embedded itself in my gut, and I hugged my coat even closer. I missed them. I had so much to do, I didn’t know if I could do it all, I didn't know if I could do my best. I didn’t know anything. My future stretched far in front of me, occasionally changing color but always blank. I didn’t know if I could get into grad school, didn’t know if I could graduate from grad school. 

Gripping the straps of my bag, I looked to the side a little to see if I could find an empty seat first. There were so many people here. The air smelled like anxiety and restlessness and melancholy and loneliness, all overpowering the subtle smell of coffee. I could almost hear the buzzing coming from every students’ mind over the clacking of their keyboards. The sound, the smell, were loud, echoing everything in my own mind. 

The cashier still stood there, blinking at me, waiting for my order. 

I needed to get out. I couldn’t breathe. The library was not far from here. I felt like I was drowning. It would be quieter in the library. Drowning was loud, that thought had never occurred to me. I mumbled something about there being not enough available seats at the café and pushed past the doors, the bell ringing again. I was panting now, needing to be elsewhere. Elsewhere. Somewhere far, far away from here. But I could not get there—I was trapped. 

I kept walking forward until I got to the library. It was indeed emptier, quieter. Yes, every single seat on the bottom floor was taken, but there were some empty ones on the second floor. On the second floor, I could be above most of the buzz, higher than it, not sinking in it. As I ascended the stairs, I spotted an empty table, the only one of all of the half-full or full tables on the top floor.

I opened my laptop. At 7:15, I began working on my paper. The library filled up as I worked. At 8, a guy in my freshman Intro to Sociology class asked if he could sit at my table, still looking around for empty seats as he asked me. I said yes. He put his bag down and sat diagonally across from me. He got his laptop out and began typing out something. I looked back down and got back to work. At 8:35, a girl I did not know joined our table, sitting in front of me. At 10, she left. At 11, I had most of the research done for my paper. At 11:23, it occurred to me that the guy’s name was Thomas Lernner. By 2 am, people began to leave. Soon, it was only me and Thomas at the top floor of the library, the bottom floor almost empty—and I had a solid outline of my paper. Usually, by this time if I was still in the library, I would begin to feel lonely. I would normally be one of the only ones in the library and it would be dark and it would occur to me that a lot of my classmates were back in their dorms, sleeping or studying. I would feel that everyone was far, far away. However, at 2, Thomas was still here, in front of me, very real and relatively close enough to me for me to feel like I had someone else, to feel like I was indeed not truly alone. Around the 1000-word mark, at 3:17, I felt the need to distract myself. I looked out the window. The snow was falling harder.

I looked up at Thomas, making sure he was not sitting at an angle to where he could see my laptop screen, and searched the name “thomas lernner” on Safari. I scrolled down. A few Linkedin profiles, an obituary, and a restaurant’s Facebook page were among the first results, but none of them were his. Finally, I came across an Instagram handle titled “Thomas Lernner (@thomascl).” The bio read “gilbert college ‘26” so I knew it was him. There were two posts—the latest was an image of a sunset taken in Italy, captioned with a sunset emoji. The other one was a post announcing his decision to attend Gilbert. The image was taken seven months ago, in May, and in it was Thomas standing in front of Gilbert’s main building, his dark hair catching the sunlight. I snuck a look back up at present-day Thomas. In the Instagram post, his eyes were gleaming with a youthful, determined energy, his cheeks were full and red, and his smile reached his eyes. Now, his face, illuminated by the stark light of the laptop, was pale and sunken, and dark circles resided under his eyes. He was hunched over, and his eyes no longer gleamed with any energy at all. Rather, they were tired, worn, strained. His eyes moved back and forth across the screen, and occasionally he would type something.

He looked up at me, catching my gaze, and I looked away, embarrassed. I resumed working on my research paper. 

After a while, Thomas checked his phone. “Man, I’m so tired,” he sighed, shaking his head, his eyes never leaving the bright light of the laptop.

Because I was tired too, and quite delusional in my lack of sleep, I groaned and responded, “Likewise. What time is it?” I knew what time it was. I really didn’t know why I asked.

He finally looked up from his computer at me, blinking a few times as if to maybe rid the laptop’s light from his eyes. “3:30am.”

I just kept staring at him because I was too tired to move my eyes and look away. I saw my thoughts reflected in his own blank stare. We stayed like that, just staring endlessly and tiredly at each other. Then we randomly burst out into laughter. It was so funny; something about this was so funny and I was so tired and lost and unsure, but I was not alone. I noticed that tears were leaking out of Thomas’s eyes and then I realized that my face was wet too. It occurred to me that this image of us, laughing our heads off for no reason together, bonding over the freshman college experience, was more beautiful than anything I had ever seen recently.

Eventually we stopped and then, somehow, we were immersed back into our laptops, typing and editing our papers and whatnot.

Finally, at 5 am, I hit the submit button on Canvas. I had finished my paper. I looked over at Thomas, wondering if he was close to being finished himself, just out of curiosity, but found him asleep. He looked kind of like the Thomas I had seen on that Instagram post—young, full, happy.