Why is he acting like I did something to him?
“I’d like to get home tonight, Amalia, so go ahead and tell me what happened.”
I run through what I could possibly say because I know for certain the truth isn’t going to help me. I’ve told the truth before, and that’s exactly how I made an enemy of Paulina in the first place. And now, without meaning to be, I’m irritated at him for making me explain.
I just wanna go home, crawl in my bed, sip some hot chocolate with cinnamon, and forget this afternoon.
“I wasn’t careful with my high school diploma, and it got wet in the rain,” I say so weakly I could slap myself, because the award for worst liar would go directly to me.
I have absolutely zero talent for it.
“Try again, and maybe this time it’ll be the actual story,” he says, and I notice his tone has shifted toward impatience.
“For the love ofNewton, what does it matter what happened?” And this time I’m the one who’s exasperated.
“It matters because you’re defending a student who destroyed your property in public and you’re not planning to do a single thing about it,” he tells me, and that’s when it hits me that he saw the whole thing.
Wonderful. On top of knowing I have no sense of direction and that I panic when I don’t know the answer to a question, he now knows I’m the kind of person who lets herself get walked all over.
“If I do something about it, I’m the one who pays for it in the end,” I say, and I want him to understand that I have tried tohold my ground against people like her, people who have come after me over the years.
Maybe I win a battle, but they win the war.
Because in the end, what they do isn’t something you can punish. It’s perfectly acceptable to go after someone else’s work, perfectly justifiable to mock a person for being happy about something they earned.They are just jokes.
He takes a few steps toward me, and suddenly his presence is all I register. The scent of him — something clean, minty — his dark eyes, and those arms that are slightly tensed now, the kind where a few veins come through like they do in the shows, and the voice in my head goes quiet.
Since when do I notice men’s hands?
But somehow I know it’s specifically his hands I’m noticing, and without meaning to, I swallow against a knot in my throat.
That’s also when I see it. A small scar on his neck, faint and easy to miss, the kind that only reveals itself when you’re close enough to notice the details you have no business noticing. The urge to trace it with my fingertip hits me out of nowhere, and I press my hands into fists before they get any ideas.
So in order to avoid making this afternoon a complete and utter disaster, I lift my eyes to his face. His features are slightly sharp, but I can say with complete confidence that if this man ever smiled, really smiled, my mind would go blank on the spot.
“You know what the secret is to winning that war with them?” he asks, and I just shake my head.
“Fear. They’re not afraid of you.”
“It’s not like I can become intimidating overnight. Look at me. I’m wearing six colors at once, my hair is always pinned up, I always look like I just rolled out of bed, and my glasses don’t exactly scream ‘public threat.’”
His eyes move over my rain jacket, then the bun that has become more of a ponytail at this point with all the strands that have escaped it, and finally my glasses.
And I feel warm.
“No,” he says, “but this,” and his finger taps my temple three times, “can be. Your intelligence is the most powerful weapon in your arsenal. Stop hiding it just so other people don’t feel intimidated. You are the sharpest student on this entire campus, so stop getting down on your knees for people whose neurons checked out in elementary school. Your worth doesn’t begin or end with a piece of paper, Amalia. Your worth isn’t determined by your GPA or the score on any exam, it’s determined by everything you do with what you’ve built here. Because a lot of people finish their degrees and disappear into the crowd. Step out of the herd and you’ve already won.”
I have absolutely nothing to say back to him, which is its own kind of miracle because, by the grace of Turing, I would absolutely ruin the moment with my blabbering. My heart is racing, and I’m fairly certain it’s because I can feel that he means it. Not as a compliment, not as a pleasantry. He just means it, plainly, the way you state a fact. I’ve always known I’m not exactly easy to keep up with. That my brain runs faster than most people are comfortable with. But being seen by someone who doesn’t just keep up, who actually gets it, I genuinely don’t know what to do with that.
When he lowers his hand, for just a fraction of a second, our fingers touch. And I know from the way neither of us breathes that the current passed through both of us.
My brain immediately begins explaining the humidity in the air and the static charge already built up in my hair, but my heart speaks over it for the first time, and it tells me that this is the first time I’ve had this reaction to another person.
Just as quickly as it happened, Professor Vaughn pulls his hand back and walks out of the building, flexing his fingers like he’s trying to shake off the feel of me. I know it takes me exactly six minutes and twenty-three seconds to be able to move again.
It took two days and more explanations than I care to count, but the faculty administration was understanding once I told them what actually happened. Which is a small victory, I suppose. The less small problem is Paulina, who is currently heading straight for me with a look on her face that suggests she has mapped out at least three ways to murder me and is simply deciding which one is most satisfying.
“You went crying to the dean? How pathetic do you have to be that you can’t defend yourself?”
