Read?
My stomach dropped like the iron anchor on my father’s lake boat.
Clara Quinn wanted me to read aloud. To the entire class.
This was the stuff of nightmares.
Literally, I’d had nightmares about getting asked to read in front of the entire class—until a helpful administrator at the private school my adoptive parents tried to transfer me to when I was thirteen asked for them to get me formally assessed for what she’d called “certain academic handicaps.” After that, I’d been exempted from the common practice.
But something told me Ms. Quinn wasn’t the type of guest professor who went through the accommodations list for her class roster.
I swallowed but couldn’t make myself form the words to answer her. I could only sit there, rooted with embarrassment to my seat. My eyes pooled with tears. I’d be turning twenty-two in March, but I felt thirteen all over again, getting called out by teachers who assumed I was too lazy to do the work.
“Did you not read the book?” my hero, Clara Quinn, asked me, her voice becoming testy with irritation. And suspicion. “If that’s the case, you’ll have to leave. There is no place in my class for students who not only come in late but also fail to?—”
The scrape of a chair pushing back cut her off.
“I will read this passage you wish to hear out loud now,” Artyom announced.
Mouths dropped open all around the table, including mine.What is he doing?
“I did not askyouto read the passage, young man,” Clara Quinn said, squinting at him.
“I know you did not. This is why I am volunteering,” Artyom answered in a tone that somehow managed to be affable and cold at the same time.
Either way, it brooked no argument.
And even if it did, it didn’t matter in the end. Artyom began reading the passage in heavily accented, monotone English without waiting for Clara Quinn’s permission.
He was back. The considerate guy from Berlin had come to my rescue.
Drowning in a well of shame and confusion, I couldn’t help but wonder which version of Artyom Rustanov was real.
The savior reading the passage so that I wouldn’t have to explain to Clara Quinn why I couldn’t in front of the entire class?
Or the monster who’d launched my campus-wide torment with one cold sneer?
YOM
He did not meanto rescue her.
Yom cursed himself even as he saved Lydia from having to follow through on Clara Quinn’s request.
The most perplexing thing was he couldn’t even remember deciding to help her out of her jam.
She’d frozen, then began to tremble—most likely with stage fright or some other particularly American mental distress. There were so many here in the States that Yom had eventually stopped trying to keep track by his sophomore year of university when even his outwardly affable captain Lars had confessed to being put on medication for something called “crippling performance anxiety.”
It didn’t matter why. Only that the next thing Yom knew, he was standing up and reading the passage himself.
Neither Lydia nor their teacher thanked him after he finished reciting. Professor Quinn returned to her lecture with a scowl, and Lydia appeared to be actively avoiding his eyes, as if he had embarrassed her with his assistance.
But he was the one who should be embarrassed. He shouldn’t have helped her—just like he shouldn’t have secretly threatened Gary, the hockey player who’d knocked the tray out of her hands that past Saturday.
Yom wanted to make her life on campus completely uncomfortable. He needed to make her pay for what she’d done.
But he also felt compelled to protect her.
As his teammates often yelled when they missed an easy shot:What the fuck?
