He arcs one hand through the air, mimicking the scrape. “It’s a long jagged mark along the right side. Stops just before the passenger door.”
“What kind of car is it?” calls out another voice.
“How is that relevant?” someone else asks.
“Just trying to paint a picture.”
Nick gives a jovial clap of his hands as he jogs to the other side of the room. Puts a hand to his brow as though trying to get a better look at the student who asked the question. He’s almost too animated, like teaching is a sport and he can’t possibly be expected to stand still. “I like where your head is at. Your name, good sir?”
“Joaquin.”
“Joaquin. Excellent. It’s a top-of-the-line, very luxurious 2005 Toyota Prius, with zero of the original siding and 320,000 miles. I think it’s on its fourth battery?”
This draws some laughs while Ramona melts deeper into her seat.
“Are we this afraid to pass judgment?” Nick asks, grinning, even though his car is the one that’s damaged.
“I’ll bite,” says Ramona’s tormentor. “Trevor Mullins.”
“Hey, Trevor. Good to meet you.”
“Yeah. I think anyone who pulls a hit-and-run is a shitty person. They couldn’t take two minutes out of their day to leave a note? They don’t know how much that car means to the owner. Maybe it looks like a piece of junk, but it has sentimental value.”
“I agree,” another student puts in. “My mom was the victim of a hit-and-run years ago, and she still has neck pain.”
“No one was in the car,” someone else says, and Ramona’s alarmed to discover that it’s her. She swallows hard, aware of the craning heads and bated breath, as though they’ve all been waiting to see what she might contribute. If she’s alegitimate studentor not. “Obviously anyone who leaves the scene of an active hit-and-run is a terrible person. But this was in a parking lot, and no one was injured. It sounds like it was more of a…scrape-and-crawl.”
Nick heads back toward her row. He seems so fucking natural in front of the classroom, with those self-assured strides and easy jokes, and why shouldn’t he? This is his territory. If it makes her a little envious, it’s probably because it’s been months since anything felt that natural to her.
“So I take it, Ms.Wilder, that you don’t believe the perpetrator of this scrape-and-crawl is inherently evil?” She swears when he says her name there’s a hint of chill that wasn’t there with the others.
For a moment, she considers this. Is she, Ramona Wilder, inherently evil? He doesn’t know she was the driver, and yet she can’t shake the feeling that it’s somehow what he’s asking.
“I don’t,” she says. “We don’t know what’s going on in the driver’s life. Maybe they were running late. Maybe they had an emergency, and they didn’t have the time to leave a note.”
“An emergency that gave them the time to slink away and find a new parking spot,” Joaquin says, followed by murmured agreement.
So it’s been decreed. She’s a piece of shit.
She’s had full-body waxing sessions more pleasant than this.
The exercise over, Nick launches a PowerPoint that links to the class website and portal, where, he informs them, they’ll be submitting all their homework, and details each unit they’ll be covering this quarter.
It doesn’t escape her notice that she’s the only one he didn’t have a warm welcome for.
The only one whose name he already knew.
UCLA must have given him advance warning about her, and now she wonders whether he feels the same as Trevor. If he thinks she’s just here wasting his valuable time when she’s going to use her degree for fuck all.
She doesn’t say a single thing the rest of class, except for when Nick asks everyone to introduce themselves with their name, where they’re from, and a fun fact.
“Ramona, LA, I collect vintage salt and pepper shakers,” she says all in one breath, and she’s relieved when the next person jumps right in.
Her bag is zipped before the professor officially dismisses them. She beelines for the door, not wanting to overhear what any of her classmates have to say about her. If they even still care, or if she’s proven herself someone no longer worth gossiping about.
A calm but firm voice stops her.
“Ms.Wilder,” Nick says. “Could I speak with you for a moment?”
