“Stop it!” calls Victoria.
“Not if he’s grading your papers,” Margaret says.
“HEY!” Victoria shouts.
We both look over at her, wearing pajamas and a silk wrap around her hair. I’m crying and doing my damnedest to stop, and Margaret is breathing hard, like she just sprinted a couple blocks.
Victoria furiously points at the ceiling.
“If the bitch upstairs calls the cops on you two my Black ass is not answering the door,” she says, then looks at me. “And your Mexican ass probably shouldn’t either. Let the white girl do it.”
“I’ll talk to the cops,” Harper says behind us, and we both turn. “What happened?”
Margaret and I look at each other, and she holds her hands up.
“Thalia, I swear I didn’t report you,” she says. “I fucking swear.”
“You just sent fucked-up emails in the hopes that, what? He’d dump me?”
“Report what to who?” asks Harper, waving her hands, trying to get us back on track. “You and Caleb?”
“To the administration,” I say, tilting my head back and taking a deep breath. “I have an ethics hearing Thursday.”
The three of them gasp in unison.
“Oh, fuck,” breathes Margaret.
“Oh no,” says Harper.
“Shit,” agrees Victoria.
“I didn’t even know,” Margaret says. “Thalia, I wouldn’t, I would never ever do that, I just think it’s fucked up —”
“Don’t really care what you think,” I tell her, and for once she has the good sense to shut her mouth.
I believe her, though. I’d kind of like to strangle her, but I believe her when she says she didn’t report us.
Victoria covers her face with her hands, then takes a deep breath.
“Okay,” she says, then uncovers her face. “Okay. Thalia, you sit on the couch. Harper, can you make some tea or something? Margaret, you should probably go to bed.”
I sit. Harper goes into the kitchen. Margaret says nothing, but grabs her laptop and leaves, shutting her bedroom door behind herself. Victoria sits next to me on the couch, and a few minutes later, Harper comes in with three mismatched mugs full of chamomile.
“Okay,” Victoria says. “Tell us.”Chapter Forty-SixCalebI glance at the clock again and wonder, for at least the thirtieth time in as many minutes, why I’ve agreed to this. True, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but the closer I get to it actually happening, the more I’m dreading it.
I don’t think I can plan any more. I can’t visualize any more contingencies, come up with any more if-this-then-thats. I’ve spent hours on the phone with Seth, my most pragmatic, most forgiving, and least judgmental brother, going over all the options. I’m pretty sure he ran some statistical models.
I still don’t know what to do.
Here’s what I want: I want to go into the committee and explain what happened. I’ll swear on a bible that I graded all her quizzes and homework and tests fairly. It’s math, for fuck’s sake; there’s a right answer and a wrong answer, with not much open to interpretation. They’ll nod their heads and fondly remember the first time they fell in love like this, tell me not to do it again, and send me on my way.
That won’t happen.
Second most, I want to deny that it ever happened. If they have no evidence, only the allegation, it could work. Sure, lying is wrong and immoral, but it’s not like I cared about those things when I got myself into this.
And if neither of those things happen — if they decide that someone needs punishing for this — I want to be the one punished, not her.
The university can have my head, but they can’t have hers.
At exactly seven o’clock, there’s a knock on the door. It opens before I can even stop pacing in the living room, and my brother’s voice calls out.
“Hey!” he shouts. “We’re here.”
I take a deep breath, steel myself, and step into the hallway.
“Hey,” I say, and Seth waves, hanging up his coat in my coat closet.
Behind him, my mom just sighs and gives me a very disappointed look.
God, it’s worse than a knife to the heart.
Seth comes over, puts both his hands on my shoulders, and looks me dead in the eyes.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he says. “I promise.”
“The depends on your definition of okay,” I tell him.
“You’ll see,” he says, and gives me a few firm pats, then walks past me, down the hall, toward the kitchen. “Do either of you want anything to drink? I’m going to make tea.”
Seth is extremely at home in my house.
“Earl Grey would be lovely,” my mom calls, shutting the door to the coat closet
Then she walks down the hall to where I’m standing, and just looks up at me.
“This was the bad thing you didn’t want to tell me,” she says, matter-of-fact. “I guess I understand why.”
My mom is an astronomy professor who mainly works at the Steinberg telescope that’s about thirty minutes from our house and is owned by the Virginia Institute of Technology. She mostly does research and only teaches a class a semester, but still.