Alex was still holding the tray when he went down.

He didn't even see the wet patch on the cafeteria floor, just felt his sneaker slide out from under him all at once, and then he was on his back with a full tray of food raining down across his chest, sauce soaking through his hoodie, a fork clattering off somewhere behind his head. For a second he just lay there staring at the ceiling tiles, too stunned to move, and then the laughing started, and somebody's phone was already up, already filming, angled right at him from a table over.

"Oh my god, do that again," some guy said, half-choking on his own laugh.

Alex sat up fast, wiped rice off his face with the back of his hand, and didn't say anything. Couldn't. He just grabbed his bag off the floor where it had slid and got up, food still dripping down his front, and walked straight out of the cafeteria while the laughing kept going behind him, somebody's voice calling out "wait, wait, do it in slow-mo" like that was the funniest thing anyone had ever said.

He didn't wipe his face again until he was outside. Didn't want to give anyone the satisfaction of watching him do it.

The rain started about ten minutes into the walk, which felt almost funny, in the worst way — like the universe just wanted to make sure he was thoroughly finished with today. He wasn't walking home soaked and covered in someone else's lunch on top of everything else. He needed a dry shirt, and the campus store was closed for inventory, so he cut down the block to the thrift shop wedged between a laundromat and a nail place — the one he'd passed probably a hundred times without ever once actually going in. It wasn't the kind of place that stood out. No one really noticed it enough to remember it was there, let alone walk through the door.

Today, it was just the nearest place with clothes on a rack.

---

A bell gave a half-hearted little jingle when Alex stepped in, dripping, sauce still crusted down one sleeve. An old woman sat behind the register on a stool, glasses pushed up into gray hair, flipping through a paperback.

"You have any shirts?" Alex asked, not really looking at her, tugging the ruined hoodie away from his chest like the fabric was something he wanted off him as fast as possible. "Like — anything. I don't care."

She looked up at that, and actually looked at him — not at the stain on his shirt, not politely away from it either, just at his face.

"Back left," she said, nodding toward the racks. "Men's is by the window."

Alex grabbed the first plain shirt that looked close to his size, didn't bother checking the tag, just wanted this whole thing over with. When he brought it up to the register she rang it up slow, unhurried, watching him the whole time in a way that made his shoulders come up around his ears.

"Rough day," she said. Not a question.

"You could say that." He dug through his pocket for change, not really wanting to talk about it.

"You've got that look," she said, setting the shirt aside instead of bagging it. "The one where somebody's decided who you are before you've said a word to them."

Alex went still. He hadn't said anything about the cafeteria. Not the tray, not the phone, not the laughing. She had no way of knowing any of that.

But she'd gotten it right anyway, and that alone was enough to shut him up.

"I might have something that helps with that," she said, and reached under the counter instead of finishing the sale.

"I just need the shirt."

"I know." She came back up with something small closed in her fist, set it on the counter between them, and only then uncurled her fingers. A plain brass coin on a black cord, nothing engraved on it he could make out from here. "I don't show this to just anybody."

"What is it?"

"A trial," she said. "The moment it's yours, it's already working. Doesn't matter if you wear it or throw it in a drawer. What's done is done the second you pay for it."

"That's not a real thing."

"Didn't say it had to make sense." She wasn't smiling exactly, but something in her face was close to it.

He should've laughed it off and just paid for the shirt. Instead he was thinking about the phone pointed at him before he'd even hit the floor, and his hand was already closing around the coin.

"How much?"

"Two dollars. Same as if it were nothing."

He didn't believe a word of it. It sounded like the kind of thing a bored old woman told lonely-looking strangers to make her shift more interesting. But she'd read him right without being told anything, and two dollars felt like a cheap enough price to just let her have this, whatever it was.

The bell went off before he could hand over the money. A younger guy came in with a delivery box, shaking rain off his jacket. "Grandma, you left the sign flipped to open again—" He stopped mid-step when he clocked the coin sitting on the counter.

The old woman was already gathering her book, unhurried but clearly done with the conversation. "Ring him up," she told the guy, already moving toward the curtain behind the register. "I'm due in the back." She didn't look at Alex again on her way out.

The guy watched her disappear, then looked at Alex, then down at the coin, and huffed out a short laugh. "Sorry about that, she gets like this sometimes." He set the box down and started ringing up the shirt himself. "Thanks for humoring her, honestly. Family's always joked that thing's cursed, that it trades you something for something. Beauty for brains, that kind of thing. Nobody's ever actually put it on to find out."

Alex didn't laugh. He just stood there with the coin warm in his hand — warmer than a piece of metal in a drafty shop had any business being.

Alex dug two crumpled dollars out of his pocket and set them down anyway, next to the shirt, even though the guy had already rung it through.

---

He didn't think about it again until he was home, hoodie balled up in the wash, showered, the whole disaster of the day finally off his skin if not out of his head. He caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror on the way out and didn't linger on it. Didn't want to.

He went to bed early. The coin sat on his nightstand, cord coiled beside it, and he didn't think twice about leaving it there.

---

He woke up the next morning and nothing about it felt dramatic. It was Saturday, no reason to be anywhere, and he almost slept through his alarm before he finally rolled over and silenced it. It was a few minutes before he even really registered that his skin didn't feel as tight and irritated as it usually did first thing. He caught himself checking his jaw out of habit, the spot where a breakout always sat this time of the semester, and didn't find one.

He glanced in the mirror on his way past. Still him. Still heavy, same as always, nothing about his shape any different. But his skin looked clearer than it had in a while, and his hair had actually dried into something that looked almost intentional instead of just flat and greasy against his head.

"Huh," he said, mostly to himself.

He figured it was just a good night's sleep. Threw on sweats and went to the corner store to grab something for breakfast, in no hurry, no reason to be anywhere.

Small things nagged at him on the walk. He caught his reflection in a parked car's window and actually stopped to look at it, checked the angle of his own face like it mattered, before he caught himself doing it and felt stupid. At the register he went to punch in his own PIN and blanked completely, four digits he'd used a hundred times, standing there with his thumb hovering over the pad while the cashier waited.

He laughed it off. Tried the numbers again slower and it came back to him the second try, and he told himself that was nothing, everybody blanks sometimes.

It didn't feel like nothing an hour later, sitting on his floor trying to remember what he'd been about to do before he checked his phone, the thought just gone, vanished clean out of his head like it had never been there at all.

That's when the guy's voice came back to him, easy and joking, the way you'd say something you didn't actually believe.

Trades you something for something. Beauty for brains, whatever.

Alex sat very still.

He hadn't thought about that comment once since he left the shop. Hadn't taken it seriously for a second. But between the mirror thing and the blank at the register and now this, sitting on his bedroom floor with no idea what he'd been doing thirty seconds ago, it didn't feel like a joke anymore. It felt like the only thing that actually explained today.

He grabbed his jacket and walked straight back to the shop.

The bell gave its same half-hearted jingle. The delivery guy was behind the counter this time, restocking a shelf, and looked up when Alex came in fast enough to make the door bang against the frame.

"Where's your grandma?"

The guy blinked at him. "Not here. She only covers weekends when she feels like it, and she took off this morning, said she wouldn't be back for a week." He must have clocked something on Alex's face, because his easy grin faded a little. "Why, what's wrong?"

Alex didn't answer. He was already backing toward the door, phone already out.

He needed someone to tell him he wasn't losing his mind. Because that was the other option sitting right there next to cursed coin — that none of this was real, that he'd cracked under one bad day and started building a story around a two-dollar trinket and a stranger's joke, and that was almost worse to consider than the alternative. He needed somebody to look at him and either tell him he sounded insane or help him figure out how to undo whatever he'd actually done to himself.

There was only one person he trusted enough to ask either question.

Twenty minutes later he was standing outside {{user}}'s door, out of breath, coin fisted so tight in his pocket the edge was biting into his palm.

He raised his hand and knocked.