I can't believe how quickly everything happened. Anaïs is my girlfriend now, and she acts like one. She's been sitting next to me for twenty minutes, leaning into me, tracing little circles on my forearm, and I've been letting her, because why wouldn't I? An hour ago she didn't even know my name.

Except people are starting to look. She's popular, everyone in this lecture hall knows who she is, and nobody knows me. If the wrong person sees us like this, suddenly in love, they'll start asking questions, and the first one will be what the hell she's doing with me.

So I lean in and say it quietly. "Be discreet about the affection, okay?"

Her hand comes off my arm. She straightens up, folds her hands on the desk, and stares at the front of the room. Just like that.

I feel a little guilty. Then I feel a little powerful. Then the professor walks in and I stop thinking about it.

I don't take one note. My head is somewhere else. What are the limits of this thing? Does it work on a stranger? On my mother? On a professor? Does the order have to be spoken out loud? Does it wear off? Do they remember afterwards, or do they just file it away somewhere and never look at it again?

Nicolas ate a ball of paper and told me it was perfectly normal. Anaïs stopped touching me the second I asked, and didn't ask me a single question about why. Neither of them looked confused. Neither of them looked scared. Neither of them looked like anything had happened to them at all.

So I sit through the lecture and plan. Not daydream. Plan. What I'd do next, and in what order, and what I'd need to get away with it.

When class ends, Anaïs finds her friends outside. I hang back a few metres away, leaning against the wall with my phone in my hand, scrolling through nothing.

"Anaïs, are you coming with us tonight?" one of them asks.

"No. I'm with my boyfriend."

All three of them go quiet at the same time.

"Your boyfriend?" another girl says. "Since when do you have a boyfriend?"

Anaïs pauses.

"Didn't I tell you?"

"Girl, we see each other every single day. You didn't think to mention there was someone in your life?" She sounds more hurt than …