The Gender Studies Dropout

Leonie Serrano was supposed to be building a life that made sense on paper. Brilliant in class and fluent in the language of justice, she was the kind of student everyone assumed would keep rising. Instead, she quietly slips out of academia, buried under burnout, shame, and the growing fear that she knows how to talk about life far better than she knows how to live one.

When a part-time job at Common Ground Plants gives her somewhere to land, Leonie tells herself it is temporary. The shop is...