“Eli would never freeze a lasagna,” Seth says. “Are you kidding? ‘Freezing cheese breaks down the cellular walls and affects the melting point of blah blah blah,’ I can just hear him now.”
I grab my glasses from my nightstand and put them on, but even when I’m no longer slightly blurry, I can’t get over the notion that I look like some sort of corporate douchebag in a suit. It doesn’t matter that it’s dark gray and properly tailored, and it doesn’t matter that after several thousand tries, I finally got the tie right.
I don’t belong in a suit. I belong in t-shirts and jeans, maybe fleece and flannel in the wintertime, whatever lets me get outdoors and move around. Suits are too restrictive. By the end of the night I’m going to feel like jumping out of my own skin.
Because I don’t like suits. That’s the only possible reason that attending the Madison Scholars beginning-of-year banquet might make me feel like I want to jump out of my own skin.
The single reason.
“I’ve been getting twice-daily updates from Daniel,” Seth is saying. “Usually he follows them up with a quick monologue about how they’re totally prepared for a newborn and how he’s feeling very calm, so…”
Seth and Daniel are two of my brothers who own a brewery together in our hometown, so of course Seth is well-informed about our future nephew.
“And Rusty?” I ask. “How are the nursery decorations going?”
Rusty is Daniel’s nine-year-old daughter, and as a way to include her in the arrival of a new brother, Daniel and his wife Charlie asked her to be in charge of nursery decorations.
It’s gone… interestingly.
“Well, they talked her out of the photorealistic Kraken for the wall over the crib,” he says. “And I believe they’re negotiating toward a friendly-looking octopus,” Seth says.
“Progress.”
“She tried to argue that since the baby’s living underwater right now, the Kraken would be a soothing kindred spirit,” Seth says.
“We’re sure she’s not somehow Eli’s daughter, not Daniel’s?” I ask, and he just snorts.
“How’s the job?” he asks. “What’s with the sighing and rustling? Hot date?”
“I have to go to a banquet for undergrads,” I say. “Suit required.”
Not just any undergrads, I think. Madison Scholars.
Like Thalia.
It’s been two weeks now. Six class sessions. Six hours of her sitting in the back of my classroom, taking the world’s most studious notes while I talk about calculating limits.
Two weeks of classes. Six hours of calculus instruction, and every time she walks into the classroom the world still tilts on its axis for a moment.
I hate it.
I hate lusting over a student. It makes me feel like I’m a dirty old pervert, like I’m one step away from hanging around cheerleader tryouts just to leer at undergrads in workout gear.
I hate that I can’t stop thinking about her this way, as the girl who told me about magic and then kissed me in the starlight, and not as a student.
I’m starting to hate myself.
Virginia State University has an undergraduate enrollment of 17,289 students, and 17,288 of them look like children to me. I’ve never been attracted to one before. Not my first year teaching, when I was a graduate student who was barely older than some of them; not any of the years afterward.
The thought’s never even occurred to me. They’re students.
17,288 of them, anyway.
For two weeks, I’ve been waiting for Thalia to make that switch. Every day I wake up and think, maybe today’s the day she finally looks like a student and nothing more.
“Undergrads get banquets these days?” Seth asks. “I just got credits for soggy chicken tenders at the dining hall. No wonder tuition keeps going up.”
“What do you know about college tuition?” I ask, giving up on looking at myself in the mirror and opening my sock drawer.
“Who do you think does Daniel’s tuition forecasting?” Seth laughs. “He’s only got nine more years before Rusty’s in college. You know how he likes to be prepared.”
“Is anyone ever really prepared for Rusty?” I ask, digging through a layer of hiking socks to find the ones that go with a suit.
“Well, no,” Seth admits. “Has anyone told you her latest thing?”
Finally, I grab a pair of black socks, a sudden pang of guilt working its way between my ribs. Between moving and the start of the school year, I haven’t visited home or seen any of my family in nearly a month.
“Computer hacking,” I guess. “She wants Eli to buy a whole pig so they can have a proper luau. She’s mastered alchemy and managed to turn lead into gold.”
Seth just laughs.
“Close,” he says. “Medieval siegecraft. Levi’s helping her build a model trebuchet.”
I’m not even a little bit surprised.Chapter TenThalia“I should pull my hair back,” I say, frowning at myself in the mirror.
“Stop it,” says Victoria, leaning forward to check her teeth for lipstick.