Ethan

I haven't dreaded a first day of class this hard since first grade. It's clouded and colored my entire day, really. So far, it hasn't been that bad. Well, mostly.

The amount of reading for my seminar class is insane, and I have until the end of the month to submit, and gain approval, for my senior thesis. Worse, not only do my academic advisor and the professor supervising the course have to sign off on it, McDonough has to as well, and I'm supposed to work with him on it.

My academic advisor, also the department head, is Dr. Carol Ross. I almost approached her this morning and asked about changing things up and TA'ing for someone else, but I'd be on thin ice. She very much emphasized that I was being granted a special privilege usually only accorded to grad students.

It'll be a huge boost for me in applying to grad schools, or matriculating here into the education program, not that it'd be too hard to do that. I just want my options open, and maybe a chance to travel—being dirt poor means graduate studies are my best bet to see the world, even if the world ends up being New Jersey.

Plus, at the end of the day it carries a stipend, and I need that stipend. Every penny I can put away is just as vital as the last, and if I actually leave the school year with a surplus and not a deficit, I'll be in good shape to last the summer and make it through interviews and applications. I'm going to need money to cover expenses if I have to travel for that.

So rather than complain, I wave goodbye to her and head to my next course, a 400 level Early American History course.

I groan when I double check my schedule. Half the class groans, too.

It's Drone. Everyone calls Dr. Clark “Drone.” He's like the teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, except he talks slower and he's far more boring. Super traditional, too. He doesn't take roll, have participation grades, or ask questions for the class to answer, or have discussion sessions. In fact, he doesn't seem to notice the class at all, even when one of my colleagues in the front row puts her head down and goes to sleep midway through his reading of the syllabus.

Most professors go through the syllabus section by section and, you know, summarize it. They spend the most time on the grading and attendance policies and all that. Not Drone. Drone reads it all. Word. For. Word.

It's almost enough to put me to sleep. In fact, I quietly and carefully take out the textbook and start reading and taking notes, using Drone's droning as background noise to keep up my concentration. The other thing about his classes is that they are entirely text based, from the assigned readings. Unlike other professors who have lecture-only material on tests or expect you to reference class sessions, you can theoretically just get the syllabus and pass Drone's class. I have no idea why most of us don't. For me at least, I'm too much of a goody two shoes, even if I could use the time.

I'm not that worried about missing anything because he often delivers the same lecture session after session. The record was five times, giving the same talk about Declension among protestants in the Massachusetts Colony, which is about as interesting as it sounds. Let's just say that in a 100-level course full of education majors and various others who were only there to fulfill a requirement, there was a lot of sleeping.

Oh, and a full-on make-out session in one class session that he didn't even notice. I'm honestly surprised no one has had sex in his class or rolled in a keg.

After a fifty-minute class that feels like four hours, I lurch down the hall and into the stairwell, out across the pedestrian plaza, and over to Lepton Hall. It “belongs” to the science departments who have all the labs and offices there, but almost all the freshman courses are offered in the big auditorium-style lecture halls, regardless of subject or discipline.

That's where I find McDonough. He looks up from his lecture notes on the lectern, where he was casually flipping the pages.

“You're on time,” he says pleasantly. “You may leave your things here. You'll need to go pick up copies of the syllabus from the copy room. Take this so Linda will speak with you.”

He hands me his ID card.

Our fingers almost touch as I grasp it. The way he looks at me seems to verge on anger, like I've already done something offensive, but when I feel his gaze pass over me, gooseflesh rises along my entire body and I swallow, hard. It's like being thrown in a pool of cold water, except instead of shriveling up, my cock throbs with tension and I feel it thicken, straining my pants.

I want to kneel, I think. Why?

I nod quickly and dart off without speaking, being a good little servant. I'm a little disgusted with myself. I should hate the guy, I do hate the guy, and yet every time I'm in the room with him something in me just pops and I go fully subservient.

Even though I don't turn back, don't dare, my butt sense is tingling, like he's staring at my ass.

It's just my imagination, has to be. He wears a wedding band. He's full-on macho. No way he'd…no.

I practically have to run across campus to get to the copy center, where a six-foot-tall woman of Swedish descent named Linda manages the school's resources like a tyrant commanding her little empire. Students are not allowed in, as the resource storage area has scan-tron machines and cards and all that stuff, and exams and such are printed in here.

Others aren't. I show her the ID card and explain who I am.

She heaves into my arms a double-box designed to hold five full reams of paper, and it feels like I'm carrying another person in my arms as I haul the box of syllabi over to the lecture hall, terrified I'm going to trip on stone steps or catch my foot on something that I can't see.

Panting, I thump the box down onto the desk by the lectern and lean on it, winded.

“Don't tell me a little jog has you worn out,” McDonough says dismissively.

“Let's see you haul a box full of phone books across campus in five minutes.”

The words are out of my mouth before I can think to stop myself. He turns slowly from the lectern and I realize that there are students in the lecture hall. They either didn't notice or don't want anyone to know they noticed as they fiddle with their phones and papers.

One look from him cuts into me like a bullwhip and I go silent, standing at an approximation of attention behind him, not sure where to put my hands. His eyes devour me, like a dragon ready to eat me as punishment for my transgression.

When the lecture hall is nearly full, with at least a hundred students in attendance, he walks to the door and closes it. Hard.

The room goes silent.

Most of the professors who use these rooms use the PA system so they can speak in a normal voice. McDonough does not, and it shocks the class. Somehow, he speaks in a normal, perfectly understandable tone, but his voice thunders and ripples out over the class like waves breaking on rocks and brings them all to attention.

“You'll notice that I've shut the door. When you arrive for my class, and you find the door shut, it means you are late, and if you are late, you are not admitted to class. Being here is a privilege; you are no longer being corralled in a public school full of those who teach because they can't do. You are paying for the privilege of learning from professors. If you choose not to take seriously that for which you have agreed to pay a frankly exorbitant amount…”

That raises some brief, nervous chuckles.

“…that is your problem, but you will not deprive other students of what they have paid for. The same principle is behind my policy on cell phone use. They are to be put away in class. If I see one I expect there to be a valid reason, such as an oncoming hurricane or a death in the family. It must be a human death not a parakeet or a dog, and when I say in the family, I don't mean a second cousin you met twice at a family reunion you were too baked to remember.”

More chuckles.

“The human policy has an exception for cats.” He clears his throat. “I expect you to read the syllabus on your own time.”

He snaps his fingers and motions to me, and I hurriedly rush stacks of the papers around, passing them out so the students can hand them along the rows to each other.

“Now that it is in your hands, it is your responsibility. If you do not care to read it and you violate a policy or are late on an assignment, you will be held responsible. Most of you likely have driver's licenses. If you strip the gears or run into a tree because you did something the manual warns you against, you don't complain that the dealer didn't read it to you. As it is with my syllabus. I suggest you take a moment to review the schedule of assignments. Nothing I will ask you to do in this course comes as a surprise: It's all there.”

Then he leans forward over the lectern. Somehow, it sounds like he's whispering, but his voice still booms. I shudder, knowing what he's about to say. I've heard it before.

“Now listen close. I'm going to tell you a valuable secret. Your other professors all know this, but they keep it to themselves. It's like the dirty little trick we all know and refuse to share.”

He looks around the room and the students hunch forward, as if joining the conspiracy.

“If you all fail,” he says, soft in tone yet somehow loud in volume, “I still get paid.”

Then he throws himself back from the lectern. “This is the one day of amnesty, when I will ask you no questions, as you haven't had an opportunity to do any reading yet. After this, that amnesty is ended. I don't care what you do; beg, borrow, steal. If you can't afford the text or you ordered it online and it hasn't arrived yet, I have copies on reserve in the library; give the attendant my name and you will be permitted to use the books.”

From there he just launches into the lecture, the students already scrambling to take notes, many of them stone-faced or a little pale. I jog back down the stairs and stand to the side of the whiteboard while he jots down some notes for them to copy.

He side-eyes me, not turning his head as he faces the board. I do everything I can not to shudder, and I swear he suppresses a smile I barely see.

McDonough doesn't seem to mind me sidling over to a chair in the corner behind the lectern, nor starting the reading for my own classes. It's hard to concentrate with him in the room, and harder when his booming voice keeps cutting through me, curled along my skin like a resting whip.

Occasionally, I look up. I might as well be invisible, since no one pays me any mind. I jerk, startled, when I notice that half the auditorium is watching him with strange, rapt fascination. The female half, mostly.

It never occurred to me that he was a hit with the girls. I admit, he's smoother now than when I had him, more practiced, his lecture more flowing and less stilted. He knows how to work a room, and his voice never seems to tire.

I could listen to him for hours, too, I realize. After a time, I even forget my book. His sudden, abrupt dismissal of the class with a curt “we're done” and wave of his hand seems to catch the entire room off guard, but it's his style.

He turns to me, a mischievous grin on his face for a bare second before his expression turns neutral, there and gone again so fast I can't be sure I didn't imagine it.

“Professor?”

The student behind him catches us both off guard. McDonough, because he's not used to being approached, I think. He was certainly remote when I was in his class; people used to go in groups to his office during his hours as if they were marching into the cave of a bear that might eat them rather than the den of a professor who might educate them.

The girl is tall and slim, pretty in that unconscious way of someone who puts very little effort into their appearance, maybe even trying to conceal it. She pushes a curtain of dark hair back over one ear and looks at him with big brown eyes, her pale lips curled into a faint half smile.

“Yes?” McDonough says, sounding less like a professor and more like a dragon that had just gotten to sleep atop its gold hoard.

“Do you have office hours this week?”

He blinks a few times.

“The syllabus says I do. That means I do unless I announce otherwise.”

She nods, pink circles forming on her cheeks. “Yes. Sorry. Thank you. I have to go.”

“You do that,” McDonough mutters, seeming to forget her as soon as she's in his peripheral vision. He sweeps past where she stood to gather his things and head back to his office.

Or rather, he gathers them and looks at me like he's wondering what I'm doing there.

“You're an assistant,” he growls, “Assist.”

I shoulder my own bag and carry his heavy catalog case back over to the history department, grunting as I carry it up the steps. McDonough considers his own copy of his syllabus as he walks.

When we reach his office and he unlocks it, I'm grateful to set the heavy bag down on the chair. He filled it up with books, some of them the ones I took out from the library, others not.

“Oh,” he says absently. “Run those back, would you? I no longer require them.”

Frowning, I pluck the books from his bag and stack them on the desk. I don't have anywhere to put them; even if my own bag were empty, it'd be too small. I'll have to just muscle them back to the library.

While pulling the books out, I accidentally pull out a blue portfolio. It's full of legal-sized papers, the bottom of the stack folded on itself to tuck neatly in a letter-sized folder. Trying to grab it while I balance phone book-sized history texts on my arms, I end up dumping it on the floor and the papers spill apart.

McDonough stares down at them and glares daggers at me.

I look away from them, desperate not only to avoid seeing but to make it clear that I was avoiding, to spare myself his wrath.

Too late; the big legend at the top of the first page is plain to see. Petition for Divorce.

I say nothing, hastily stacking the books while McDonough crouches to gather up and organize the papers, and tuck them back in his bag. He says nothing, but I can feel him bristle, like his body is surrounded by the invisible force that holds magnets apart when you try to push them against one another.

Before either of us can say a word, I rush out, my heart pounding. On my way, I accidentally brush against the girl from the lecture. She stares at me wide-eyed for a half second before scurrying into the office, holding the syllabus against her chest as if it were a shield.

She probably wants to drop his class and move to another section.

By the time I arrive at the library, my arms feel like they've been grabbed by a giant and stretched out to break me like a wishbone. I set them on the circulation desk and heave out a breath.

Jennifer looks up from the homework she's already working on. I'm surprised to see her on duty during the day.

“If you think you can just leave those there for me to put away…” she growls playfully.

“Relax, relax, I was just resting,” I sigh.

She leans forward, her tone low and conspiratorial.

“So, you're his TA,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“You didn't quit,” she says, sounding genuinely surprised.

“Yeah, it's the real deal, I'm doing it,” I puff out, still a tad winded.

“Did he go all Doctor McDoom on you yet?”

“Not yet,” I sigh, neither of us acting like the yet part was a joke. The question might as well be as inevitable as “has it rained yet?” It will, eventually.

“Well, it's only been a day,” she shrugs. “I'm sure you'll piss him off somehow by Wednesday. You can put those on the circulation cart and we'll get them back where they belong.”

I nod, steel myself, and carry the big stack back over to the cart, straining to hold it one-handed while I pluck the books and set them upright on the shelf, and finally relax.

When I get back to the office, McDonough is seated at his desk, chair creaking as he bobs in it slightly. The girl doesn't have a drop/add form. In fact, she has a copy of the class text, already dog-eared and heavily bookmarked, open on her lap.

He looks up at me.

“This is Scarlett,” he says, indicating her with his hand. “She shows initiative.”

I blink a few times, stunned. He actually praised her.

Worse, I can see it very clearly now. Whatever she came in here for was blatantly just an excuse, even though she seems to be taking notes on something.

“She was just asking me to expand on the textbook's section on the French and Indian War,” he says, as if this immensely pleases him. He turns back to her. “I need to be available for other students. Let me give you a list of texts to study.”

He hands her the note and she smiles warmly, nodding like he'd just handed her the envelope with this year's Oscar winner for best picture. Taking it, she scurries off, brushing past me in a hurry, long skirts swishing around her legs.

After she's clearly gone, I move to the door and close it.

McDonough looks up, sharply.

“I prefer not to be alone in the office with a student and a closed door. That includes you.”

He almost sounds nervous, which catches me off guard. The way he said it, his voice hitching ever so slightly, makes me wonder if he was thinking what I'm thinking.

“She has a crush on you,” I say.

McDonough blinks a few times, as if he was expecting—or hoping—for something else. He almost looks like he just woke up, but I missed when he drifted out of it.

He seems more amused than anything. “Not the first, or the last. Are you planning to teach? When you have your degree, I mean. It'll happen to you, too.”

I sweep into the chair in front of his desk.

This is the most personal of a conversation I've ever had with him.