He stepped out onto the quad, the autumn wind biting through his designer jacket—the one he’d bought to impress a girl who had already moved on to a guy with a real career.
Marcus took off the watch. He looked at the polished chrome, then at the library where he was supposed to be finishing his thesis. He realized he wasn’t chasing a dream; he was chasing a shadow.
He thought about his mother back in South Side. She’d spent twenty years cleaning offices so he could be the first to graduate. She thought he was studying "business strategy." She didn't know he spent his afternoons at the jewelry store, staring at things he couldn't afford, trying to buy back a sense of worth the world had told him he lacked.
