Chapter 3
XADE
Istand at the lectern, looking out at the blank faces of a hundred or so upperclassmen. A girl in the front row with scarlet-stained lips and white-blonde hair peers through her lashes at me. She bites her bottom lip as she continues to stare, but I don't waste another glance in her direction.
She hasn't realized it yet—none of them do, not at first—but she hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell of fucking me. Maybe a few years ago, when I was still an adjunct, I would have gagged her with my leather belt and bent her over the mahogany desk in my office.
Probably not, though.
Pin-ups and porn stars have never been my type.
We are only thirteen days into the semester, and two of her classmates have already propositioned me and one fraternity pretty boy offered me a piss-poor cash bribe to pass. Double digits dropped my course from their fall roster, too, but normally, I'd have at least culled the class in half by now.
I must be losing my touch.
I, of course, declined the propositions and told the would-be-bribe to get the fuck out of my office before I filed a complaint against him with the student ethics committee.
Little good it will do. The sun on campus rises and falls to the sound of cha-ching, and his daddy is one of the biggest benefactors of them all.
As always, I added the dropouts to my automatic denial list for all future course offerings.
Still, even with the trash taking itself out, this year's student roster is far from inspiring.
I currently have less faith in the entitled psychopaths in front of me than an atheist on Easter Sunday.
The Marilyn Monroe wannabe chomping on her bottom lip like a beaver trying to split wood certainly isn't helping my spiritual crisis, either.
I know who my students are just by looking at them.
They are the privileged, the survivors of what the undergraduates call All Hallows Year, aka what amounts to freshmen hell on campus.
But money talks, and dollar signs did the heavy lifting to get them here.
These students haven't had to work for anything a day in their lives.
They'd choke on their silver spoons if they were shoved any further down their throats.
They come to class dressed in exclusive, high-fashion sweats and carrying limited edition, genuine leather laptop bags. They are bourgeois intelligent at best and carelessly ignorant of the fact that they'll probably fail my class.
I know who my students are because I grew up just like them, held hostage by elite boarding schools until my father shipped me off to the big leagues.
I know what my course is to them, too, or at least what they want it to be. Everyone on campus wants to ace one of my classes. It's the ultimate bragging right for Friday frat parties and a damn near guaranteed acceptance into any of the university's graduate programs.
I boast an outstanding 39 percent fail rate, which is only as low as it is because of last year's threat of career blackball by the Board of Supervisors.
Not that they would have followed through … probably.
On second thought, they might have … especially after I failed two of their grandchildren.
Still, it could be worse. At least I didn't get stuck on the freshman course roster this year.
It's depressing, watching the light fade from their na?ve eyes as they fall victim to All Hallows one by one.
I hate having to watch the initiation. Even more, I hate knowing only the richest and most powerful will survive its cull.
I'll take the entitled menaces-to-society for 100, Alex.
I stare at my class as I circle the lectern and begin to spill facts about early nineteenth-century literary movements.
God knows I've said these lectures so many times I could recite them from memory at this point, and I do.
I talk for half an hour as my students preserve my words on their laptops and tablets.
Well, except for a big-haired brunette three rows up, who's all but drooling on her desk as she joins Ms. Not-Monroe's fantasy of fucking me.
She'll learn soon enough.
"Transcendentalism," I say to those still paying attention, "founded by Emerson, was a direct consequence of the prior intellectualist movement.
Although some of you may be more romantically inclined," I shoot a snide glance to the brunette still gawking at me, "others may appreciate the rationality linchpin of intellectualism.
Every literary movement has laid the etymological groundwork for what we now refer to as Modern English.
I could continue droning on, but I expect you've done your reading, correct? "
For the record, at least a fourth of them haven't learned that they are, in fact, required to do the reading.
Our Literary Movements from an Etymological Perspective course meets bright and early every Monday morning, and most of the undergrads here spent the weekend on a drunken frat party rotation.
Time to play Russian roulette with the assigned homework.
I scan the room, skipping over those who aren't slinking down in their chairs and avoiding eye contact.
I spot a poor bastard at the end of the front row.
He's decked out in black sweatpants and a matching university hoodie as he stares fixedly at his laptop, his fingers playing with the strings of his sweatshirt.
It would be funny if it wasn't sad.
Unfortunately for him, attempting to hide won't save him from my wrath. I don't give a fuck that he looks like he's two coffees shy of hungover and still semi-drunk.
"You." I look down the line of my nose at him. "How did American transcendentalism differ from the British movement?"
The kid jolts upright like I've electrocuted his ass, and I decide he would look less shocked if I had fried him in the electric chair. He swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing, as he adjusts the neckline of his hoodie by the strings.
It's painful to watch as he swallows again.
They say dress to impress, and this boy dressed like he rolled out of bed and picked up whatever laundry he found on the floor, clean or otherwise.
His mouth falls open and stays there. I am playing Whack-A-Mole with my intrusive thoughts and losing.
Words pop up. I push them down. More words return.
It started years ago as a tic. I'd think of words and their definitions when shit got tough. Then it evolved into a weird-as-hell coping mechanism a psychiatrist would be proud of.
Intellectualize the emotion. Avoid feeling it.
A word keeps popping up as I stare at the kid.
Word—moron.
Part of speech—noun.
Origin—early twentieth century.
Derived from the Greek μωρ?? (mōros), meaning this human tumbleweed.
"Anytime this century," I tell him.
Snickers scatter around the rotunda, but none of his fellow asshole classmates are brave enough to laugh, probably because if they did, I'd call on them next.
"Ralph Waldo Emerson was instrumental …" he begins.
I raise an eyebrow as he goes in for a second swing.
"Emerson was instrumental in …"
One long fucking second.
Two long fucking seconds.
Three.
I fire the roulette gun for him, putting us both out of our misery.
"Get out." I don't yell it. The words are enough.
"W … w … what?" he stutters, his tipsy eyes bulging.
"Get. Out," I repeat, and this time, I am loud because if there's anything I hate, it's having to repeat myself. "On Wednesday, I expect you to have done the reading or don't bother showing up."
"Aw, man," he mumbles, and I think he might be sobering up.
"Out." I bite the word, and a mental timer starts between my ears. This dumbass has five more seconds before I drag him by those hoodie strings he keeps tugging on and Windsor-knot his ass to the nearest emergency exit.
Thankfully, he gets moving and gathers his belongings. I continue down the row and focus on the blonde girl beside him.
"What about you?" I ask with a wan smile. "Did you do your homework?"
The girl makes some derivative remarks, and I fantasize about grabbing the pencil she's rolling between her thumb and forefinger and lobotomizing myself. The more she talks, the more I feel like I'm listening to someone narrate the textbook. Still, the girl did the reading, so she can stay.
The rest of the class passes by in the same manner for the next hour and a half, down the first row and into the second.
By the end of class, I've kicked out three more students who played a game of chance with the homework, and I'm even more annoyed than usual.
They should have learned by this point in the semester that I do not tolerate laziness.
I give the remaining students the next reading assignment, snatch my belongings, and am the first person out of the room. As I enter the brightly lit hallway and the door to the rotunda closes beside me, I find Dean Grisham beside the door.
Fuck.
She's always trying to talk to me. And now, she found me.
Double fuck.
"Professor Thatcher," she purrs in that unsettling way that makes my dick shrivel. "I'm so glad I caught you."
I'm calling bullshit. She's saying it like we ran into each other, but we both know she's been waiting outside my classroom for the past fifteen minutes. Probably twenty.
"No, LeeAnne," I tell her, catching a glimpse of her left eye twitching. It always does when she gets an answer she doesn't like.
I walk faster down the hall, and Dean Grisham hurries to catch up, her heels tapping out a fast tempo on the tuxedo-tile floor.
"But Xade," she says in that grating bedroom voice I've noticed she reserves for yours truly.
She's begging now, and I wish she wouldn't. It's beneath us both.
This will only go down one way. In the next minute or two, she'll ask me again to lead the college's new baccalaureate and master's dual-degree program. I'll tell her no, as I've done half a dozen times before, until, eventually, she's forced to choose someone else.
I wish she'd move on to another target sooner rather than later, but sadly, no one has come along yet to rid me of her presence.
There are a dozen adjuncts who deserve tenure, and all of them would happily kiss LeeAnne's ass, but she is hell-bent that I lead the program.
Honestly, at this point, I can't decide if she takes my denial as a challenge to her authority or if she just wants to fuck with me.
She should know I have no patience for the politics of academia, and I will never be her obedient pet, professionally or otherwise.
I've heard the rumors about her and the head of the Mathematical Engineering Department. I would have had to live as a mountain troll to avoid them.
Everyone knows Dean Grisham has a type—black hair, a bad attitude, and twenty-odd years her junior.
Regrettably, that type includes me, but I have no desire to fuck her and no tolerance for the bullshit that comes with collegiate hierarchies.
I am more comfortable between pages of vellum, wearing nitrile gloves in a climate-controlled room, and carefully studying two-thousand-year-old manuscripts.
Words, I love.
People, politics, and the rest … not so much.
Now, if only LeeAnne would accept my firm and continued answer of hell no.
I continue down the hall, walking faster until all five feet of my boss can't keep up, and she's forced to jog to stay alongside me.
Word—tiresome.
Part of speech—adjective.
Origin—late 16th century.
Derived from Old English tēorian, meaning to become weary.
"But Xade …" she whines again, and I am reminded of how annoying it is that she thinks we're on a first-name basis.
"I'll think about it," I placate as I near the double doors to the building, though my answer is already decided. This conversation will be better had in an email at this point. "You'll have my answer by Friday."
"Delightful," she says with a false smile. "Why don't you come to my office then, and I'll …"
"I'm very busy," I interrupt, "perhaps another time."
Another time in another world in another fucking universe.
I dart past underclassmen and head out the door, my briefcase in hand as I walk outside.
I am down the marble steps and walking straight into the morning sunlight when my phone vibrates in my jacket pocket.
I slide it out, glancing at the number before I answer the call and bring it to my ear.
There's a beat of silence on the other end, and I wait a moment as I turn to follow the sidewalk.
"Xade," a voice says, and I don't like his tone. He's worried, and neither one of us should be worried. "There's been a change of plans."
I sigh, my knuckles squeezing the handle of my briefcase.
I do my own thing.
It was agreed.
It's better that way.
"What do you mean?" I bark, sidestepping two students too oblivious to get out of my way.
A weary breath crackles through the line. "We need you here."
"There?" That was never part of the plan. "When?"
"Soon," he answers. "I'm not sure about the timeframe. Nine months, maybe twelve. It depends."
Great.
No notice, and now I need to take a year off work.
LeeAnne's going to love this. Everything just got complicated.
Fuck!
"So, there's a problem?" Annoyance grates my words.
"Yes, you could say that."
No details over the phone. We're much too careful.
"I'll drive up tonight," I say before disconnecting the call.
Cursing under my breath, I slide my phone into my pocket and wonder if it's all been for nothing.