MIA POV
I last until eight o'clock.
That's how long I hold it together the whole lunch with Jake, two afternoon classes, dinner in the dining hall, the walk back to the dorm, dropping my bag on the floor, and sitting on my bed.
Eight o'clock. Then Cara looks at me from across the room with those eyes she has, the ones that see everything, that have always seen everything, that have been seeing through me since seventh grade, and she says:
"Okay. What happened?"
Not a question. A door opening.
I open my mouth to say nothing, or I'm fine, or some other complete lie.
What comes out instead is:
"Everything. Everything happened. Where do I start?"
Cara sits cross-legged on her bed and does not interrupt once.
This is remarkable because Cara interrupts everything. She is the most opinionated person I have ever met in my life. She has opinions about things that don't require opinions, the correct way to fold a fitted sheet, whether the dining hall's pasta is better on Tuesdays or Thursdays, and which side of the elevator you should stand on. She has a take on everything, and she shares it freely and at volume.
She does not interrupt this.
I start at the beginning, the acceptance letter, Jake's apartment, the key on the floor. I watch her face do things. Jaw tightening. Eyes are going sharp. The particular expression she makes when she is angry on my behalf and is physically containing it.
I get to the part about forgiving him, and she makes a sound. One sound, small, controlled, through her nose, and then she goes still again.
I get to the bar.
Cara leans forward slightly.
I tell her about the no-names rule. The two hours. The conversation. The way he listened. The sidewalk. The morning after.
Cara's face does something I cannot fully read. Shocked and awed, and something that might be delighted, except the situation is deeply complicated, so she pushes that part dowI got up this morning.ing.
I tell her slowly. The classroom. Looking up. The coffee cup. The name on the board.
Cara's mouth opens.
Then closes.
Then opens again.
She holds up one finger like she needs a moment.
She takes the moment.
Then she says, "Your one-night stand is your professor."
"Yes."
"The man from the bar. The man you."
"Yes."
"He's standing at the front of your classroom."
"Yes."
"Grading your work."
"Cara"
"He is going to grade your papers, Mia."
"I am aware."
"The man whose"
"CARA."
She closes her mouth.
We look at each other.
Her face goes through approximately eleven emotions in about four seconds. I watch them move across her like weather furious on my behalf, then awed, then furious again, then something close to impressed, then back to furious because that feels most appropriate.
She lands on: "Drop the class."
"I can't drop the class," I say. "It's required. Every other section is full. I already checked twice, actually, before you ask."
"Then unforgive Jake."
I blink. "Those are two separate issues."
"Are they though?" She tilts her head. "You took Jake back because you felt guilty about the bar. And the bar was because Jake cheated. And now the bar is your professor. These are not separate issues, Mia, these are one continuous catastrophe."
I pick up my pillow.
"Don't you dare," she says.
I put it over my face.
The pillow is dark and quiet and does not have opinions about my life choices. I stay there for what feels like a reasonable amount of time. Long enough for the world to rearrange itself into something more manageable.
Cara pulls one corner of the pillow down enough to see my eyes.
"Are you done?" she asks.
"No."
She lets it go back up.
I stay under the pillow.
"Okay," Cara says to the pillow, in the voice she uses when she is setting aside her feelings to be practically helpful. "Let's think about this like adults."
"I don't want to think about it like adults."
"Too bad. Adult thinking is happening. Ready?"
I pull the pillow down. I look at her. I say, "Ready."
Cara has what she calls her problem-solving face. It is the face of someone who is going to fix a thing, whether the thing wants to be fixed or not. She is sitting perfectly straight with her hands folded in her lap and her chin level, and she looks, in this moment, like someone who runs small countries.
"Okay," she says. "What are the actual facts. Not the feelings, not the drama, the facts."
"The facts."
"Yes."
I take a breath. "The facts are: nothing happened between us after I enrolled. We had one conversation that lasted about forty-five seconds, and it was completely professional. He has not treated me differently from any other student. We have an agreement, unofficial, unspoken, to pretend the previous situation doesn't exist."
"Good," Cara says. "That's actually good. That means nothing reportable has happened."
"Nothing reportable has happened," I confirm.
"And you don't have feelings for him."
Silence.
Cara looks at me.
I look at the wall behind her head.
"Mia."
"The facts," I say carefully, "are that I had one night with a stranger who I did not know would become my professor, and I am now in his class for one semester, and then it is over."
Cara stares at me for a long moment. "That was very precisely worded."
"Thank you."
"That was not a compliment."
I pick up the pillow again. She grabs it before it reaches my face.
"Give me that." She sets the pillow behind her. Out of reach. "Here is what we are going to do. You are going to be the best student in that class. Best notes. Best papers. Best participation. You are going to be so impressively, boringly, academically excellent that nobody, not him, not other students, not your own brain at two in the morning, has any reason to think anything other than that girl works very hard."
I look at her.
"That's the plan?" I say.
"That's the plan."
"That's your whole plan."
"It's a good plan."
I think about it. Sitting in that classroom. Taking notes. Being excellent. Being unremarkable. Being so completely professional that the whole situation becomes just a room, a teacher, a course requirement. Eleven weeks and then it's over, and it becomes a thing that happened once that I never have to think about again.
"Okay," I say.
"Okay?"
"It's a good plan."
Cara points at me. "Write that down. I want it on record that I had a good plan."
"You have terrible plans most of the time."
"But not this time."
"But not this time," I agree.
We stay up too late after that, talking about everything else, unpacking the last of the boxes, arguing about whose turn it is to buy more hand soap. Normal things. Good things. The kind of night that makes a dorm room feel like home.
When the light goes off, I stare at the ceiling and think: Best student in the class. Unremarkable. Professional.
I can do that.
I fall asleep believing it.
The first assignment comes back the next morning.
I find it in the class portal before I've finished my first coffee. Professor Cross uploads grades early, which means I am learning, which means he works even later than I stay up.n I stay up. I click on it with one hand, eat my toast with the other, fully confident.
The grade loads.
I put down my toast.
I stare at the screen.
C plus.
I scroll down. The paper is covered in red ink, not angry red ink, not this is terrible red ink, but the particular kind of red ink that means someone read every line very carefully and had a specific, informed opinion about every single one of them. Questions in the margins. Words circled. Arrows between paragraphs point out where the argument loses its thread.
It is the most thoroughly marked paper I have ever received in my life.
At the bottom, in handwriting that is sharp and even and takes up exactly the space it needs:
You are capable of much better than this. Rewrite it.
That's it.
No grade justification. No, please see me during office hours, or nice effort, needs improvement, or any of the soft language teachers use when they want to cushion a bad grade.
Just: You are capable of much better than this. Rewrite it.
I read it four times.
I don't know if I'm angry or embarrassed or something else entirely, some third thing that sits between those two and has no clean name. I wrote that paper in one evening, and I thought it was fine. I thought it was better than fine. I have been told I'm a good writer my entire life, and Professor Cross has marked up every paragraph like I handed in something a twelve-year-old wrote on a bad day.
Capable of much better.
How does he know what I'm capable of?
I sit at my desk and stare at those words.
And underneath the embarrassment, underneath the sting of the grade, underneath all of it, something else.
Something small and stubborn that sounds like:
Fine. I'll show you.