shouldhavesaidsomething
stupidbadidiot
alwaysgonnafeellikethis
With a gnash of her teeth, she gropes to turn on her hazards and veers off to the shoulder. Five things she can see—cars, desert, more cars. Shaky inhales. Blurred vision.
A panic attack.
The first one she’s had since Milwaukee.
6
Risky Quizness is down byfour points going into the last round.
“Sea turtles,” Fumiko Hayashi says, leaning over the answer sheet.
Sam Wright, professor of ancient history specializing in the Roman Empire, jabs a finger at the next question. “That’s an easy one. Augustus.”
What’s the largest organ in the human body? That’s biology professor Lola Adebayo’s domain. “Skin!” she whisper-shouts, deservedly smug about it.
Jozef Brodzinski from the linguistics department takes the question about Middle English.
And the round ends with a question about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, so tailor-made for Nick that he scribbles the answer too quickly, the pen nearly ripping the paper.
All confidence, they turn in their sheets to the quizmaster on the other side of the bar, giving their rival team, the Know-It-Ales, their most intimidating glares. Which, for a group of professors, is probably not all that intimidating, but they try.
What started as a way to blow off steam has now become one of Nick’s favorite parts of the week. Fumiko, a recent empty nester eager for some social interaction, brought them together across departments after posting an ad to their online classifieds.STEM Prof Seeks Trivia Team, Must Enjoy Annihilating the Competition. Risky Quizness is consistently in the top three, often the winner, and even if the prizes are lackluster—usually a free round of drinks—what they’re really here for is the glory.
It didn’t take Nick long after the divorce to realize most of his friends were couple friends, and because he was no longer in a couple, spending time with them meant fielding soft-spoken questions about how he was doing and if he was ready to get back out there. He wondered if Kathryn was doing the same, before quickly realizing that no, she was now part of a couple once again.
Tonight, with his sister out to dinner with a client and his niece spending the night at a friend’s, Nick feels slightly untethered. At least he’s gotten his ten minutes of wallowing down to six, mainly because the new quarter has him so busy.
“Hell of a first couple weeks,” says Jozef Brodzinski, his Polish accent more pronounced after a couple drinks. He joined the UCLA faculty from Warsaw a few years back. “My 101 course is half students who thought it would be an easy gen ed.”
“Mine too.” Lola Adebayo gives a dramatic nod toward Nick and Fumiko. She’s the youngest on their team, their resident pop culture expert, and a fan of wearing her academic subject whenever possible. Tonight her natural coiled hair is tucked back with a DNA-patterned bandanna. “And I don’t even have a celebrity in class.”
Fumiko removes her reading glasses and laughs. “She’s very sweet. It’s not quite as glamorous as you might think.”
Very sweet.Nick sips his IPA and wonders what version of Ramona Fumiko is getting. He can think of a hundred adjectives to describe Ramona, butsweetisn’t at the top of his list. Hostile, maybe. Scary, definitely.
“Did you notice the rest of your class started dressing nicer after the first day?” Fumiko asks Nick, clearly delighted by the whole thing. “Almost like they wanted to impress her.”
Nick considers this. “Now that you mention it…” Usually his students transition to sweatpants after day one, but there hasn’t been a hint of athleisure in Behavior and the Brain. And sure, that’s amusing, though Ramona clearly hasn’t cared.
She’s been much quieter, keeping to herself even as his other students chat and flirt and make study plans. He figures there’s no reason for her to be a social butterfly—she probably has enough friends.
But the quiet bothers him, too. Participation is crucial in his class; he loves the kind of rousing debates that get him thinking about something in a new light, like the conversation in his advanced Psychology of Sleep class that made him reconsider his recent dreams. Psychology isn’t black-and-white. It lives in the grayscale space, and he’s always eager to see how his students interpret that grayscale.
Ramona’s homework hasn’t shown up in the online portal, and if that continues to be the case, he’s going to have to talk to her again. And he really, really doesn’t want to do that. Because of course she asked for zero special treatment, and then proceeded not to do the thing none of the other students have a problem with.
“Can you gently suggest she take Cell Biology next quarter?” Lola asks with pleading eyes. “My friends and I were obsessedwith ‘Never Be Prom Queen’ when it came out. It’s still my karaoke song.”
“Is it too late for her to switch for this quarter?” Nick jokes.
Jozef gives him a good-natured grimace. “It can’t be that bad, can it?”
Nick peels at the label on his IPA bottle. Just this afternoon, she passed him at the door at the end of class. “Have a good weekend,” he said, and she didn’t even glance up from her phone.
