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glanced down to the file she’d been tapping a moment before.
    Old Harry Barnes wandered in just then from the back hallway where the professors had their offices. Colleen liked Harry a great deal. He reminded her of an aged heron, or a stork. He made her think of an elderly Jimmy Stewart, especially in how kind he was, and gentle. His field was Historical Geography, the study of human, physical, fictional, theoretical and “real” geographies of the past. He always used those little air quotes around the word real , which Colleen found endearing.
    “Colleen, dear, I have been waiting for you. We’ve so much to do today. Class at ten, you know, and I need the handouts I gave you Friday.”
    Handouts? What was he talking about ? “I’m sorry, Harry, which …?”
    Sylvia and David, who still hadn’t said anything, watched her. Sylvia pressed her lips together as though trying not to say something. She inched the file on her desk toward Colleen. David’s face had gone a little red and his mouth was set in that way it did when he was annoyed.
    “I don’t quite remember, but I’m sure they’re here.” Colleen just needed a few minutes to settle in, just a couple of minutes to catch her breath.
    “Growth and Urbanization, 1860–1920,” said Harry, as he riffled through one of the piles on Colleen’s desk.
    “Are you sure you gave them to me?” She picked up a pile of papers from her to-do basket, which was admittedly a bit fuller than it should be. A paper to be typed for Professor Rose, the Medical Geographer, on dengue fever; something on the Olorgesailieprehistoric site in the Kenyan Rift Valley for Michael Banville; expense accounts to be tallied …
    “Quite sure, I’m afraid. And I do need them rather urgently.”
    Sylvia coughed. “Colleen?”
    Colleen looked at her. She was staring down at that thick file on her desk. Was that the file? What the hell ?
    David Moore and Harry Barnes looked at Sylvia now as well. Sylvia’s skin was mottled.
    “This might be it,” Sylvia said, picking up the file. “It just got misplaced, I’m sure.”
    Colleen stared at the folder. She didn’t trust this. She had no recollection of making the copies. Misplaced my ass, she thought. Sylvia was holding out the folder and she had no choice but to take it. She opened it and sure enough: Growth and Urbanization , 1860–1920.
    “Did you make those copies, Colleen?” asked Moore.
    It was very hard to know what to say. If only she could remember, but nothing was clear and everything was happening so fast, she couldn’t think. “It’s just copies, right, and here they are …”
    She held them out to Harry, who grabbed them. “No matter, no matter. No harm done. All’s well and all that,” he said as he scurried out of the office.
    David Moore asked, “Did you or did you not make those copies, Colleen?”
    There was a trap here, she knew there was, but she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see where to step. What if Sylvia had taken the file purposefully, to try to make her look bad? The idea of sabotage swelled thickly in her chest.
    “I didn’t give her anything. If she has them, she took them on purpose. It’s all on her.”
    “Oh, Colleen,” said Sylvia softly. “That’s not what happened.”
    And from the hurt, puzzled look on Sylvia’s face, who couldn’t possibly be that good an actor, Colleen knew she had blown it. She felt the same flush she saw on Sylvia’s face appear on her own. The blood rushing to the surface of her skin felt like hot needles. Maybe she could still back out.
    “Maybe I forgot. We were so busy.”
    Moore ran his hand over his head. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation about bloody photocopies. Fine. Sylvia, did you make the copies or not? I want a straight answer.”
    “I just did them, that’s all,” she said as she fiddled with the pens and papers on her desk. She glanced at Colleen. “I was going to give them to you … I was only trying to help. I