I followed after, lead weights dragging my feet, feeling as if I were going to my execution instead of class.
I can’t do this anymore.
My new mantra in a school that did accept failure, but expected nothing but perfection.
Chapter 21Orion
“Ms. Bennett, Mr. Mercer, so glad you could join us,” ProfessorCallister intoned from the whiteboard as Harper took her seat in the front and I took my spot next to Tessa in the back. The pretty actress gave me a friendly smile, but I had nothing in the tank to give back. If Callister played his read-aloud game, I was going to lose my bloody mind.
“I was informing the class that today is the last day for review before your Mesopotamia essays are due on Friday,” he said. “You’ll all do well to take extensive notes on today’s lecture to hone your facts. Fair warning: I’ll be running your papers through an AI-detection system. I’ll know if you’ve gone outside the classroom for assistance.”
The students pulled out their iPads for notetaking. I went to do the same and found that I’d left all of my electronic helpers back at the dorms. Because of course I did.
Shit, fuck, bollocks.
I raised my hand. “Professor Callister, I left my iPad back at Atlas Hall. Might I run and grab it? I’ll only be gone a minute.”
“No, you may not,” he said. “You can take notes like we did backin the ancient times: with a pen and paper.”
He turned back to his lecture, and I slunk deeper into my seat. Harper glanced over her shoulder, concern in her eyes. I quickly averted mine. Why should she be concerned? There was nothingobviouslywrong with me, except my handwriting was absolute shit.
“Callister’s an ass,” Tessa whispered, and passed me a few sheets of notebook paper and a pen.
“Thanks, love,” I muttered. I needed to take notes. My term paper, as it currently stood, was absolute shit too, and I was too wrung out to try to memorize Callister’s lecture. But writing by hand—never mind my penmanship—wasn’t my brain’s favorite thing to do.
Because it’s hard to focus, that’s all. It takes a lot of concentration. I’m a auditory spatial learner, like Wolfe said.
I hunched over, making a protective barrier with my left arm, and put the pen to paper. I tried to follow along to the lecture, my pen scratching away the best I could, but the words came out looking like jagged peaks in a needle-sharp mountain range. Getting them down at all was a supreme effort in forcing communication between brain and hand. Within minutes, I was too far behind and gave up.
Out of desperation, I sketched instead. I drew the images that Callister’s words created in my mind: a city-state called Sumer nestled between two rivers that had pioneered most of humanity’s biggest breakthroughs, including the wheel, the plow, irrigation, and—irony of ironies—the written word.
When the bell finally rang, I was bloody beat. Exhausted in a way I never felt after a regatta race. I had a strange yearning to talk to Ezra Wolfe but not in his class.
Which I had next.
With Harper.
I had to get out. Get away from fucking classrooms. I hastily gathered my stuff and slipped out the door, to the gym.
There, I changed into workout clothes in the locker room and found a bunch of my crewmates working out on the ergs and liftingweights. In the center of the huge gym, the men’s gymnastics team was practicing on the rings, the floor, and Gideon Foster was doing his thing on the horizontal bar, defying gravity with amazing spins and flips.
I joined my mates at the weights just in time to find Xander confronting Tucker about how he’d kicked Emery out of his truck the night of the storm.
“You left her,” Xander was saying, getting right up in Tucker’s face but remaining cool as hell. “You fucking left her in the pouring rain.”
Tucker had the decency to look embarrassed for half a second, then glanced to Rhett Calloway for back up. I moved to do the same for Xander.
“Back off, Ford, if you know what’s good for you.”
Tucker started to turn away, but it was a ruse. He came back with a swing and Xander was ready. He ducked Tucker’s fist and slammed his left elbow into the bigger guy’s nose.
Holy shit, I thought, and did my best not to snicker.
Tucker staggered back, blood leaking from between his fingers, his eyes wide. “I think you broke my fucking nose.”
Xander crossed his arms. “I didn’t want a physical confrontation, but there needs to be a reckoning.”
“Awhat?” Tucker spat a wad of blood on the floor. “I was drunk that night. I don’t remember shit.”
