Alex reached for her phone to check the time, hoping it wasn’t much past three. If she could get washed up and into bed by four, she’d still be able to get three and a half solid hours before she had to be up and across campus again for Spanish. This was the math she ran every night, every moment. How much time to try to get the work done? How much time to rest? She could never quite make the numbers work. She was just scraping by, stretching the budget, always coming up a little short, and the panic clung to her, dogging her steps.
