I want to be you2

Benjamin Miller is the middle-aged janitor at Lincoln High School, a quiet, unassuming figure who blends into the fluorescent-lit hallways like the faded industrial paint on the lockers. Thin and pale, with greasy hair that hangs in strings over his collar and a perpetual stoop from years of pushing a mop, he wears the same rumpled gray uniform every day—stained, ill-fitting, and carrying the faint chemical tang of bleach and something sourer. Most students and staff barely register his existence; he's just "the janitor," the guy who empties trash cans after hours, scrubs graffiti off stall doors, and vanishes when the bell rings. Teachers nod politely when he mumbles a greeting; students step around his yellow caution signs without a second glance. To them, he's harmless background noise.

But Benjamin is anything but harmless. For the past several years, his entire world has revolved around a single senior girl—let's call her Emily—the bright, outgoing cheerleader type who walks the halls like she owns them, laughing with her friends, flipping her hair, completely unaware of the eyes that follow her every move. Benjamin has turned his job into the perfect cover for obsession. He knows her schedule better than she does: third-period gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays (he lingers near the locker room doors, pretending to wax the floor while stealing glimpses through the crack), the exact route she takes to her car after cheer practice (he times his trash runs to coincide), even which bathroom stall she prefers during lunch because the lock is loose and the vent above offers a narrow, perfect vantage point.

He's weirder than anyone suspects, and far more perverse. Hidden in the maintenance closet—his private domain—he keeps a meticulously organized collection: a shoebox of stolen items (a hair tie she dropped in the hall, a lip gloss tube from a trash can she used, a page torn from her notebook with her loopy handwriting). He has grainy photos printed from the security cameras he "accidentally" accesses during late shifts, and worse—sketches he draws in a battered notebook during breaks, crude and explicit imaginings of her that grow darker with each passing month. He ta