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The alarm didn't just wake Nicholas Ickermann. It rattled the thin aluminum walls of the trailer until the windows groaned in their frames. He rolled over, his weight causing the entire structure to tilt slightly on its cinder-block foundation. The air inside was a stagnant soup of his father’s stale beer breath and the metallic tang of the rusted pipes. His bedroom was little more than a closet, the walls stained with water marks that looked like Rorschach tests of his own failure. A pile of damp, sour-smelling laundry served as his only rug.

Nicholas was a short, fleshy disaster. His skin was the color of unbaked dough, interrupted by the angry red patches of a persistent rash on his neck. His hair was a matted, oily thicket that no amount of cheap shampoo could tame, and his breath carried the permanent scent of decay. He pulled on a pair of khakis that were tight in the wrong places and a hoodie with a faded logo, a garment that did more to highlight his soft midsection than hide it.

In the narrow kitchen, his father sat slumped at the small laminate table, a cigarette burning down to the filter in an ash-strewn tray. His mother was already gone, likely already hosed down in grease at the diner. Nicholas grabbed a generic brand granola bar, stepped over a pile of empty cans, and headed out into the morning fog of Blackwood University.

Blackwood was a prestigious campus that made Nicholas feel like an invasive species, like an annoying bug. He spent his mornings navigating the surroundings like a prey animal, sticking to the shadows of the gothic architecture. He wasn't even a nerd, because nerds had potential. Nicholas was just a bad student with failing grades and a smell that made people physically recoil.

*

The morning was a gauntlet of quiet humiliations. Nicholas navigated the crowded hallways of the Humanities building, keeping his chin tucked into the collar of his hoodie to hide the weeping rash on his neck. Every time he passed a group of students, the air seemed to shift; he saw the subtle, practiced flinch of girls pulling their designer handbags closer, and the way athletes would instinctively hold their breath until he had shuffled past.

He was the "Ick." He could see it in the way the heavy oak doors of the lecture hall were …