“Nag.”
“Baby steps? Maybe gray?”
I choose to ignore her sarcasm. “Iz, I really have to go. Our table? 9:30? We can head to class right after we get some coffee.”
“Get pumped. Psych 101 is practically a rite of passage for college students.”
“Don’t remind me.” I could go into all of the reasons why I could skip this particular rite of passage, but I’m not in the mood for another lecture, so I merely groan. “Just you and me and five hundred of our freshmen buddies.”
“You never know,” she teases. “One of them might be cute.”
“One of them might be a deranged psychopath taking Psych 101 to get some insight into his own twisted serial killer mind. Serial killers can be cute. What was that guy’s name? The Facebook killer? I’m sure plenty of people thought he was cute. Nope. I am staying away from cute freshman serial killers.”
Izzy sighs in exasperation. “Night, Stella. Love you.”
“Night, Iz. Love you, too.”
After shoving my phone into my purse, I let myself into our “deluxe suite.” The name suggests that the guy who makes the residential life brochures has a decent sense of humor, because I’m fairly certain that my room used to be the janitor’s closet. Iz’s room is only a little larger, and the biggest of the three, the laughable living room, barely fits a coffee table and two beat-up chairs from Iz’s parents’ house.
This was supposed to be our year of living dangerously. I had visions of a loft apartment with twelve-foot ceilings. Iz would have a studio for her painting (which would double as a dance floor for 80s night), and I would have a little study nook in the corner.
Instead, I live in a dungeon. I’m going to frat parties that I outgrew three years ago. And I’m enrolled in Psych 101, which means that tomorrow, I get to listen to some talking head wax poetically about the five stages of grief and post-traumatic stress disorder and chemical alleviation and catatonic states and a million other clinical phrases. I know them all.
I am so not looking forward to this.
T
he cavernous lecture hall is filled with eager faces, sparkly Macbooks, and the most telltale sign that we are the lone senior citizens amidst a sea of children—freshly-showered faces. Ugh. Freshmen.
I can’t help but envy their doe-eyed innocence, which only increases my craving to mock them.
As we make our way up the aisle, I whisper into Izzy’s ear, “Ooh. Our first college class ever. Oh my gosh. We should totally Instagram this. I’ll want to remember it forever and ever.”
“You are such a brat,” she hisses.
“Selfies for Facebook?”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m on a scouting mission. Stop trying to distract me.”
As she ogles a few of the boys, I keep my eyes focused on the prize—a pair of seats in the back row.
Ever the dutiful student, Izzy sits down first and immediately pulls out her laptop. I have no intention of doing anything other than taking a nap, but before I can settle in to do just that, my vision catches on the question scrawled in Sharpie on the back of the ancient wooden chair.
What can change the nature of a man? (One word answers only).
It’s a decent question, and it’s inspired some decent answers. Most of them are related to vengeance in some form or another—
rage, grief, revenge, hate, torture
. A nihilist scribbled
nothing
in bold block letters over some sentimental sot’s answer—
love
. To my absolute delight, the accompanying little heart doodles have been turned into more obscene scribbles.
I’m not satisfied with any of the answers, but nothing better pops into my head. That’s good. I like questions without obvious answers. If we sit here for each class, the chair might even provide me with a little project for the semester.
And I know that we will be sitting here every time. After three years at Greenview, I’ve learned that it generally takes an act of god (or a well-meaning professor trying to promote a positive class culture) to get people to change their seats. I used to switch it up a little bit by sitting in a different area of the room each time, but it really freaked out this girl in my Grecian architecture class. She started screaming at me in the middle of lecture on Doric columns, and while that probably had more to do with her asshole boyfriend, I didn’t want to risk it again.
So, I conformed. It wasn’t too much of a hardship. We’re all pretty much creatures of habit, I think, somewhere deep down. My mother would say that it has something to do with behavioral conditioning over centuries of human history, but I’d like to think that we’re really just looking for something familiar in the face of all of the unimaginable chaos. There are enough surprises in life. An agonizing choice of where to sit (back or front, side or middle, strangers or friends, teacher’s pet or slacker) shouldn’t be one of them.
We’re in the sociology building, which contains the only room on campus big enough to hold five hundred people. I’ve only been in this room once before, for freshman orientation. My usual courses—international contracts, regulations, and finance—don’t tend to draw the big crowds. Even though the room looks like something out of the Dark Ages (at least compared to the gleaming impersonality of the newly renovated business school), I kind of like it. The rickety wooden chairs are covered in the graffiti of all of the other captives who’ve served their time here, and there’s a certain charm in that. I lucked out with the philosophical question. Much better than “I love Dave.”
Izzy pinches my arm and snaps me back to my depressing reality. Yes, I am indeed waiting for a Psych 101 lecture to begin.
“Stella, the TA’s called your name twice.”
Reluctantly, I remove my eyeballs from the back of the chair.
“Estella Walton? Estella Walton? Is there an Estella here?”
The source of the hesitant voice is a nervous-looking beanpole with thick-rimmed glasses. This is going to be fun.
“Present!” I yell.
He lets out a yelp of pain and jumps backwards, as if the sound of my voice has somehow damaged his eardrums. When he shoots me a very dirty look, I hear some chuckles from around the room.
Izzy clucks her tongue. “Trying to scare off the TA on the first day,
Estella
? Or did you just partake in too many extracurricular activities last night?”
I consider a number of possible responses, but she snaps her fingers and cuts them all off. “No, I know. Reese was just a smoke screen. You’re secretly seeing someone on the side.”
“Thank you for that prescient insight,
Isabella
.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll be here all semester. Plenty of time for more insightful comments. That’s me, probing the depths of Estella’s psyche.”
I smack her arm, but it doesn’t pack enough of a wallop to knock the smirk from her face.
No one, not even my parents, calls me Estella, even though it’s my given name. My mother calls it her little literary twofer: Estella, the name of the destructive, heartless bitch from
Great Expectations
who rips Pip’s heart wide open, and Stella, the doormat head case from
A Streetcar Named Desire
. Neither is particularly appealing, but I’m probably stuck with destructive bitch, given my past history.
“Tell me, Iz. Why did we decide to take this class?”
“Let’s see.” As she ticks off the options on her fingers, her eyes fill with mischief. “Astronomy was closed. You hate dissecting things, so biology was out. Dr. Lane teaches chemistry, and that was never in the running. I mean, I’ve worked in his office for the past three years, and I’ve never understood one word of what he’s said to me. He’s a mumbler. I hate mumblers. Shall I continue? I could enthrall you with all of the reasons why neither of us is particularly suited for organic chemistry.”
“Zoology?”
“There’s a two-year waiting list.”
“There’s got to be something else. Something to get us out of this hellhole.”
“I could have taken geology, but you had Keynesian Theory at the same time, so you would have been all by your lonesome in here. I’d rather take the abuse. And the bruises,” she adds, shooting me a sidelong look. “Plus the chance to give you grief for putting us in this position.”
I make a face, but her words shut me up. She’s right; she could have left me in here all by myself, which is the only thing that could make this ridiculous farce any worse. Plus, it would have broken our streak—Iz and I have coordinated schedules every semester so that we have at least one class together. Since she’s an art history major and I have a double in economics and international policy, we’ve delved pretty deeply into the depths of the Greenview catalogue. One semester, our only option was Brazilian Steel Drumming
.
Seriously. I now know the difference between a boom, cellopan, guitar pan, and ping pon. These things will be completely useful in a future life when I move to South America and make a living as a street performer.
It’s no wonder that college graduates can’t find jobs.
The economics major might come in handy for my own job search, I suppose, although utility was the furthest thing from my mind when I picked my classes freshman year. The real reason is pretty simple—the business school doesn’t hold classes on Fridays, and that was at the top of my priority list. The rest of it was a process of elimination—I do hate dissecting things, so science majors were out, I was never any good with erector sets, so engineering seemed like a poor choice, and my mother’s warning about cutting off my tuition assistance was enough to scare me away from the more liberal arts.
Which brings us to the reason why Iz and I are sitting in Psych 101. As seniors. I never really saw the point in spending a whole semester bending over a microscope, so I chose to ignore the little provision in the handbook that mandates a lab science for each and every Greenview student. Iz protested, of course, since she’s a stickler for following rules, but she went along with it once I told her that no one was ever going to notice.
Except that someone did notice. Dr. Allen, the advisor for the Honors Program, flipped out when we submitted our transcripts for the final graduation check.
“I’m dealing with imbeciles,” he said, before shoving a course listing at us and making a series of impressive-sounding threats.
Thus, Psych 101.
I grin and decide to contemplate the question on the back of the chair some more. I refuse to pay one iota of attention to whatever decrepit professor they’ve assigned to teach this class. Historically, Psych 101 is a gatekeeper class. It’s unfailingly taught by Ben Stein’s older and less attractive cousin. I think it’s so the powers that be can promptly scare off any freshmen from getting bright ideas and deciding to be psych majors.
“Good morning!”
The sound of five hundred people sucking in their breath is so perfectly choreographed that for one dizzying second, I think I’ve gone off the deep end again.
When I glance up at the man standing in the front of the room, I find the source of that collective intake of breath.
Psych enrollment must be down. On life support. Nonexistent. Something.
That noise? The sound of countless freshmen girls simultaneously falling in love with the decidedly-not-decrepit man standing in front of the room. Despite the fact that his golden-streaked hair is more suited to a California beach than a classroom dungeon, he commands the room with a certain authority that leaves no doubt in my mind that he’s the professor.
My second thought is that he’s the most classically beautiful man I’ve ever seen. I’m not usually the type to swoon over pretty boys, and this man is almost assuredly the fairest of them all, but his perfection is still so dazzling that it takes many, many seconds for my battle-hardened eyes to adjust.
He leans against the podium, and as he flicks the blond hair from his tanned face, one eyebrow quirks in amusement. Clearly, he’s aware of the effect that he’s having on the class. Of course he is. Anyone who looks like that should have a stick prepared at all times. He’s been beating helpless women away since the day he came out of the cradle.
When he scans the room, eyes the color of honey meet mine and linger for just a fraction of a second too long. Before he looks away, an uncomfortable warmth spreads down my body, liquefying my insides.
Snap out of it, Stella. Breathe. He’s pretty. You don’t even like pretty. Probably gay, too. There’s no need for this nonsense.
A minute passes. Despite my pep talk, my breathing is still uneven and my heartbeat would most aptly be described as racing. I disgust myself.
Then again, everyone falls victim to hypnotic flawlessness once in a while.
Even the frozen one.
Izzy shoots me an accusing look and throws up her hands. “This is all your fault, Estella dear. We could have been taking classes with Dr. Delicious for the last three years. What was it you said? ‘Oh no, we don’t need to take a lab science.’ I’m so stupid. Why do I ever listen to you?”
I groan. “How the hell was I supposed to know that the only good-looking professor on campus taught psych? I just figured they were all trolls.”
Iz raises one skeptical eyebrow, which earns her another smack on the arm. Fortunately, Dr. Delicious’s husky voice cuts off her attempt at further retaliation.
“I’m Holden Evans, and I’m new to Greenview, as I’m sure many of you are. I see that Brian, who will be one of the numerous TAs for this course, has already taken attendance. Thank you, Brian.”
He nods at the beanpole, who gives the class a smug once-over.
“It was all part of my ingenious plan,” I whisper to Izzy. “If we hadn’t waited, we would have gotten stuck with one of the geezers, and we would have missed out on Dr. Delicious.”
Her eyes remain riveted to the front of the room, but she shakes her head in disgust. “It’s criminal for a man that good looking to have a job that requires him to wear a shirt. I mean, seriously. Wrong career, buddy.”
When the giggles and murmurs start to approach the danger zone, Dr. Evans clears his throat. “I’m sure many of you are here to fulfill your requirements. When you were deciding which course to choose, some of you probably asked yourselves, what’s the easiest lab science I can take? Undoubtedly, you assumed that the answer was psychology. There’s even an old joke that I like to tell. Okay. Here goes.” He pauses dramatically, and I fight back a snicker. “How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?”