Chapter Thirty-Six
Hayes: Repeat after me: I don’t care what she thinks.
Nova: I don’t care what she thinks.
Hayes: Okay, now say it out loud.
Nova: No
Nova: Thanks, though.
The sight of that open door roots my feet to the floor.
It’s always been closed. I’ve never even seen the light on. She still has a faded Easter wreath on the door, and I would bet money it isn’t even from this year.
I’d convinced Hayes I didn’t need backup for this.
I told him she just wanted to talk to me.
Even made it seem like a positive thing.
Like she wanted to congratulate me on my stellar midterm grade.
Somehow, whether it’s the churning feeling in my gut or the way dizziness is making my vision blur, I know that’s not how this is going to go.
I think maybe I do need backup for this, but if she’s going to tear me apart for some reason (what reason?!), I can’t let him watch. I like him too much to let him be the witness to my devastation.
“Come in, Ms. Carter,” I hear her say. She must sense me lurking in the hall. Maybe she sees my shadow. Or maybe my anxious heartbeat is loud enough that she can hear it too.
She published a literary analysis of “The Tell-Tale Heart” once, and I feel like I’m living in that story right now.
I feel like she’s going to chop me to pieces, and I’ll live under her office floorboards until someone comes looking for me.
It would be Hayes. He’d come looking for me first. And I don’t want him to see me dismembered under the ground, so I step forward.
This office is fucking creepy. I’m a dark-enough person that my life’s dream is to pursue a PhD in Literature with a Poe specialty, but this is really too macabre even for me.
There are no windows, and there is nothing personal, not anywhere I look.
Pretty grim office for a department head.
But she never spends time here anyway, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.
I slink down into an old chair that actually creaks. If there even is an overhead light, she’s left it off. The office is lit only by an old Tiffany lamp. It casts the walls in a yellowed glow. Professor Lowry’s face looks severe in the half-light.
“You wanted to see me, Professor?” I ask. In my lap, my hands tremble.
“I did.” She leans forward.
I will myself to find some subatomic strength, some tiny aspect of myself that has the power to not crumble under that intense stare.
She looks strangely professional today. Maybe that’s because I can only see her purple button-down. She could be wearing clown shoes and I wouldn’t know.
“I wanted to speak with you.” She leans back in her office chair that, of course, also creaks. With the low light, I feel like I’m in an interrogation scene from a crappy procedural. “I wanted to know where you got the nerve to attempt to take over my entire class right under my nose.”
If we were in that TV cop drama, this is where I would either confess to my crimes or wise up and ask for a lawyer. Instead, I couldn’t form words if my life depended on it. Exercising my right to remain silent, I sit there.
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” she asks.
I assume the question is rhetorical, seeing as she doesn’t care about my answer.
“You can’t reserve a weekly space for a study group full of my students without my knowledge.
The librarians are good friends of mine; imagine my surprise when they told me how often I was spoken of by you all—sneeringly, nastily, disrespectfully.
You were encouraging criticism of my teaching, my person, my dress, everything.
Are you hoping the class will turn in enough negative evaluations for action to be taken against me?
If so, you are delusional. This class has had a full semester of reading and film.
I absolutely do not deserve the sort of hatred you have incited amongst your classmates.
And there are rules in the university code of conduct against that sort of behavior.
” She sneers. “This is very serious. I may have to involve the dean. And the Endeavor administration. Do you understand, Nova?”
My name is a hiss in her voice, a hiss that’s broken with anger. I feel its sharp edges scratch over my skin like barbed wire.
“Your presentation and paper were very good. But your written work during the semester was merely adequate … if that. I wonder: Did you steal some of your ideas from other students during these ‘study sessions’?”
I’m so painfully confused.
I thought she was distracted. Or just kind of inept.
I thought she was burned out and exhausted and she had nothing left to give.
But she’s being spiteful and vindictive and selfish.
Can burnout look like that? Is she just a bad person?
It’s beyond baffling, the idea of a teacher actively trying to prevent her students from studying the material together.
It’s so perplexing that my confusion must have shown on my face.
Lowry smiles. It’s full of malice. She might be the single worst person I’ve ever met. The daggers in her eyes point right at me, and I know she’s not done flaying me with her words.
“You don’t belong here, Nova. The university world is not for you.
In your introductory essay, you wrote that you wanted to be an English professor.
An English professor! You’re fragile. You’re shy.
You’re … shall we say, socially inadequate?
You’re duplicitous, too, and mean-spirited, turning the class against their instructor and mining them for ideas.
It’s absolutely shameful. What do your parents do, anyway?
They’re not educated, are they? When I was in graduate school … ”
She starts to ramble, and her voice becomes a dull roar in my ear.
I just know that I’m going to be hearing those words forever.
You don’t belong here, Nova. And I know I’ll never forget the way she’s looking at me now, either, like I’m nothing but dirt under her shoes.
Like I’m nothing but pieces of what used to be a person.
You don’t belong here, Nova.
She’s still talking, but as I hear those words echo one more time, I wonder why I’m still sitting here.
I don’t feel equipped to metaphorically stand up for myself, but I can physically stand up and leave.
Though my legs wobble underneath me, I leave the creaking chair behind and step toward the light of the hallway.
Lowry speaks again, and I freeze. Even in fight-or-flight mode, I can’t make my body do the thing that’ll save me.
“You think you’re so smart.” Her voice is a scathing whisper. “But you’re not. You just weren’t born for this.”
Finally, I put one foot in front of the other.
I make it out of there, and my perfect-crying-hideout bathroom is just around the corner.
It has that designation for a reason, because it’s discrete and quiet and if anyone ever finds me there, they’ll leave me alone.
I don’t walk, I run. I sprint out of the building as fast as my body will allow.
I can’t breathe and I can’t see anyone I pass in the hallway because I’m running so fast that they blur.
Maybe that’s just the tears starting to fall.
I don’t know, and I don’t care. I fly past the crying bathroom. My feet won’t stop, not yet.
You don’t belong here, Nova.
I make it out into the fresh air. Without making a conscious decision, I head back to the Endeavour wing. To my spot. Almost four years, and I’ve never cried there. It’s sacred to me. That overly sunlit bench is my North Star, and I’m running toward it like a targeted missile.
You don’t belong here, Nova.
No one else is there, because it’s late in the afternoon and everyone should be headed home.
You think you’re so smart. Although some part of me wants to just let myself fall to the ground, a more prominent part of me needs to feel the mystical powers of my favorite spot.
You’ll never belong in my world. I lie down across the bench, and I let myself sob and weep and pathetically sniffle. You just weren’t born for this.
You don’t belong here, Nova. You’ll never belong.
“Oh, Novella,” I hear him say before I see him. Hayes. I thought he’d gone home. Instead, here he is, being the witness to my devastation. The one witness I didn’t want.
He sits down on what’s left of the bench. He shifts me around until my head’s resting in his lap. He’s warm, and he smells like Hayes, and his fingertips running over the back of my neck are enough to make me feel something other than the heavy anguish that’s crushing my chest.
You don’t belong here, Nova.
“Why did I do that?” I ask him. I hope he doesn’t want an explanation for my current emotional state. I don’t think I have one. I’m still not sure what just happened, beyond my worst fear coming to life.
“Do what?” He runs gentle fingers through my hair. My tears are falling onto the knees of his jeans.
“Help everyone. Why can’t I just leave shit alone?” I wipe snot off my face with the back of my hand, not even caring how gross that is.
“Because that’s who you are, Novella. You help everyone. You can’t leave shit alone.”
You’ll never belong in my world. You weren’t born for this.
He’s right. It’s in my nature to fuck up like this.