“You didn’t care much about the lectures in the past week; one more or less will not harm your already bad attendance record.”
She stops in her tracks and builds herself up with her fists in her sides.
“Have you been monitoring me?” she asks accusingly, and her eyes flicker angrily at me.
“I have vetted you pre-offer to the extent of asking my colleagues about their impression of you,” I say. “I must say, I was mildly surprised to learn you have been named for your absence.”
She scoffs and turns away, and I almost believe her to leave, but then, she rounds on me with a dark undertone in her voice that implies sarcasm in it.
“Well, if that is an issue, why did you even offer?”
“Because,” I say, and hesitate for a moment. It is a question I thought I could answer with utmost clarity, and yet, I hesitate. I could’ve found another assistant. One of my graduate students—they have drive and knowledge. But I knew she would be the right match from the moment she asked the question.
“Because my research needs a mind like yours.”
She squints her eyes at me.
“You know what I think?” she asks without asking. “I think you’re lying to yourself. You tell yourself this is all for your research, but there is something about me that draws you in. Something you are scared of. Something that ruffles your feathers, but you can’t let it go.”
Heat burns through me. A heat I have last felt when I stood in front of an audience and lost my train of thought.
Heat that chews on the inside of one’s chest and drives sweat on the forehead, because the dread of embarrassment spreads through one’s chest. That kind of heat.
I hate it.
I hate that she somehow seems to be able to see right through me.
I feel backed into a corner. And there are only two things that can happen when being backed into a corner: Endure or attack. And because I cannot have a student back me into a corner like this, I, the professor, attack.
“Says the girl who is running from her past.”
From how I read her, I expected her to explode. The drugs, the emotional heat, the agitation—but I was wrong. So, so wrong.
Her body becomes still. Her gaze dark. She draws her shoulders back and stands tall. Her lips purse nearly invisibly through the lightest twitches of her left cheek, as a dangerous, derogatory one-sided smirk tugs at her mouth.
“Well,” she says in a tone of superiority. “Good luck with your research, Professor McKenzie.”
And with that, she turns and walks out of my office without even closing the door.
I stare after her as she leaves me with the knowledge that whatever happened to her has trained her to be neither triggered nor teased. She has learned to guard her emotions, just like the past she tries to hide.
And while I am angry with her, I also know my curiosity about her is piqued—now more than ever.
In my mind, I return to the day after my 6th birthday, when I found a dead bunny on the road. I carried it home, bloody as it was, with its open abdomen and its intestines hanging out of it. My nanny nearly fainted and tried to vanish it, but I insisted on it staying and requested a dissection kit from my mother, who is a well-known neurosurgeon.
And because any interest in the medical field was pushed, veterinary or not, she brought me the kit home. I dissected the bunny into its pieces and mapped it out. Most of all, I wasinterested in the brain. I did not let go of it and even froze it in our freezer for further evaluation.
It was the first time I can remember that I couldn’t let go until I fully understood. Since then, I have been unable to let go of what I do not understand.
It is a curse as much as it is a blessing, and most of the time, I am grateful for the determination.
In cases like Amelie Degard, it might be my downfall.
It isevening as I close the door to my office and head to my lab. I am about to lock the door when my soul leaves my body for a single moment. A voice rips me from my thoughts.
Stalker,is my first thought
My pulse races.
