Oh, right, because then I’d have to cancel Sutter’s class as well. Only reason I didn’t pull a one-eighty on Norma is because Haven takes that class, too.
Took,past tense. She hasn’t been in class this week.
Because she hasn’t left her and Kai’s little fucknest by the coast.
I’ve spent too much time in the past few days staring at that beach house on StreetView. I knew it had to belong to theJordans or associates of theirs, but I looked up the property records anyway, because apparently the knife Haven stuck in my back isn’t wedged in deep enough already.
When I went to Kai’s frat house to find out what had become of my TA, those idiots told me he’d been kicked out.
My pets have run off together. InmyLand Rover.
How fucking adorable.
I was so damn tempted to go down to the station and report the car missing. But then I’d have to deal with Thatcher, and he’d undoubtedly want to knowwhyHaven had my keys in the first place…
If anyone should be thinking with their brain, not their dick, it’s me.
Would be a lot easier if I had something else to keep me occupied, so I wasn’t constantly ruminating. But I’ve already been blessed with two pets this term. I don’t hold out hope of finding a third.
“Let me rephrase, Miss Parker,” I say, my jaw clenching with the effort of admitting it. “If you were in that video, wouldyouhave deemed anything worthy of your Activity Log?”
I keep staring directly at her, and my unwavering gaze makes her shift in her seat.
Not so glib now, are we, Parker?
She rallies surprisingly well with a sharp, “From Haven’s point of view? Obviously.AndI’d have reported Ezra’s to the police, too. That wasn’t just cruel. It was criminal.”
“You want the alleged perpetrator brought to justice?” I tilt my head, tracing my fingers along my bottom lip.
“Of course!”
“Even after he’s already suffered what I assume was, and still is, an excruciating amount of pain at the hands of his brother?”
Her mouth opens and then closes again. She shakes her head hard enough to make her sleek hair shimmer in the fluorescentlighting. “I know where you’re going with this. But you’re wrong. It doesn’t bring me pleasure. It’s justright.”
I step back to slap the blackboard.
Several students flinch, and one of them drops their phone on the floor.
I hope the screen’s busted.
“Schadenfreude isn’t merely about deriving joy from another’s misfortune. It’s about the delicious anticipation ofinevitableconsequences. The satisfaction we derive when someone who believes themselves above consequence suddenly finds themselves...chastised.”
“I never—” Parker begins, but I cut her off like she didn’t even open her immaculately lipsticked mouth.
“The Greeks understood something fundamental about human nature.”
I thump my fist into my palm like a judge banging his gavel.
“Hubris. Demands. Nemesis. In layman’s terms, pride comes before a fall. And those who witness that fall often experience a pleasure so profound it borders on the erotic.”
I stalk back to the board to draw a line under all the words I’d scrawled on there during my lectures this week.
SCHADENFREUDE
PAIN = PLEASURE
CRUELTY
