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If I were the predator they think Bastien is, I would at least be the one with the power in this. A monster has power. A monster is not a burden somebody is stuck with.

I have just enough time to go home and make it happen.

Chapter forty-nine

Bastien

Levi is gone when I wake. The only sign that he’s been here at all is a note taped across the thermostat that reads GODDAMNIT, NO! My clothes are laid out on the bed: a sharp brown suit with a gold vest and a brown tie that he’s already pre-tied for me. There’s a gold pocket square in the top of the suit jacket. My brown shoes are reflective and there’s the faint tang of shoe polish in the air. I almost take out a different outfit and a different tie just for spite, but I don’t. Instead, I pick up my phone and call him to ask him why he didn’t at least wake me up when he was leaving.

“Hi! This is Levi. Please leave me a message.”

“Levi, it’s me. Where are you? Can you call me?”

When he doesn’t call back by the time I’ve made myself eat the toaster waffles from the freezer, I dress and drive to the faculty parking and sit there in the midmorning air, staring at the clock on the dash.

I want Levi. He can’t do anything. He can’t make the time pass more quickly. He can’t make me feel less afraid or less humiliated. But he could be here. I call him again and get his voice mail. This time I don’t leave a message.

There is a different energy that hits me when I finally get out of the car and the radio isn’t playing loud enough to make the outside world seem like a suggestion. I can hear something that sounds like a festival going on. Someone is speaking on a bullhorn, and his voice is pinging off brickwork somewhere. A crowd applauds. When I cross in front of the library building, there is a boy on the library steps taping a cardboard sign to a broom handle. He looks at me and gapes in silence.

“Dr. Saint-Jacques!” A girl barrels into me and hugs me. I step back and realize that I’ve never seen her before in my life. “Sorry. You look like you needed that. You’ve got this!”

“Do I?” I can’t make it sound like a proper question. I’m too astonished.

“This is a question of fairness and rights,” a man is shouting into that microphone. I haven’t had access to the campus email. Are they doing another PETA demonstration? They had one at my last job in front of the cafeteria.

The crowd applauds, and, unfortunately, I realize that it’s right in my way. It’s in front of the Grier building. I round the corner and try to sneak sideways. And then I look up.

It’s a full-on rally—people are waving rainbow flags and somebody’s done a banner saying END DISCRIMINATION NOW! SAVE SEBASTIAN! There’s another one that reads, FIGHT BACK WITH SAINT-JACK. There are hundreds of them.

They have spelled my name wrong twice. I stand silently, gaping at the people in front of me.

The man who seems to be behind all of this is a handsome man with dark skin and dark hair. He’s standing on a bench. Someone motions to him, and he bends down. A second later, he stands straight, scans the crowd, and smiles at me. “And the man of the hour! Dr. Saint-Jacques, please!” He motions to me.

I want to go home. There must be four hundred people here. I want to go home and lock the door and lie on the floor of the closet where the radio equipment lives. I feel like I am being pulled by a hundred hands toward the center of this madness. The man pulls me up onto the bench. “Miguel Figueroa,” he says. “Grad student in history. Such a pleasure.”

I shake his hand. He beams at me. The crowd starts chanting, “Fight back, Saint-Jacques!” like they’re at a hockey game calling for defense. They seem to be enjoying it. I’m not. They’ve made a mistake and I’m the only person here who knows it. They’re out here in the cold for a professor who was wronged. The professor they are describing is a man who did nothing, and I’m a man who did a great deal. Every one of these people is holding a sign for a version of me that does not exist, and soon they will find out.

I scan the crowd for Levi. I want to see him in front of me this one last time before I go and face the committee. I want him to smile at me. I want him to forgive how shitty I was to him yesterday. And he’s not on the grass or the steps or at the back where he would stand if he wanted to look at me without being seen. I feel sick.

The boy pushes the bullhorn at me. I take it because a man standing on a bench in front of four hundred people has run out of other options.

“I didn’t want this,” I say. “I didn’t want any of this.”

I watch the crowd go quiet for a second, and then some of the girls start cooing at me, like they could comfort me. I’m telling them the truth in the wrong order and they are hearing a speech.

“I am only a simple teacher. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. I wanted to help people all my life. I am…I am overwhelmed by your support, but I never wanted it.” It’s underwhelming. I know it is, but Miguel smiles at me. I try to hand back the bullhorn, but he makes a motion, like I should say more. I close my eyes. “I am touched by your support. But, please. I beg of you to go home. There is a process that these things must go through.” I open my eyes and make myself smile and lie to them. “And we must trust that the processes work.”

I look one more time. All the way across, both ends of the crowd, the steps, the road behind. He is not there.

I give the bullhorn back and get down off the bench, and the sound the crowd makes is enormous. It’s a roar of approval. Miguel takes back the bullhorn. “Do we think the processes work?” he demands of the crowd.

“No!” they shout. People pat me on the back as I walk toward the Grier building.

Cara Finch is waiting at the edge of the crowd. She has a recorder in her hand. “Doctor Saint-Jacques. Two minutes, and I will take a no.”

“I have a hearing I’ll be late for.”

“Then one minute.” She falls into step beside me and doesn’t look at her recorder. “The Excelsior ran the gala piece Sunday. Were you aware of the interest this is getting from outside the region?”