My Professor Read online

  “What class are you skipping for this?” one girl asks her friend.

  “I’m supposed to be in o-chem right now, but the professor records his lectures so I’ll just watch it later.”

  “Yeah, I have English comp. I think I’m missing a quiz, but who cares.”

  Wait what?

  I turn toward the girls and speak before I think better of it. “Are you two registered for this class?”

  The girl closest to me, a sharp-featured brunette with a smattering of freckles, laughs. “No. We’re just like everyone else.”

  I frown. “What do you mean?”

  “Half these people aren’t in this class.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  She shrugs, not the least bit bothered.

  “What can I say? It’s an interesting class.”

  “With a hot professor,” her friend adds under her breath.

  They lose it in a fit of laughter while I grind my teeth, annoyed by my luck. It’s nearly impossible to take notes while standing, but if I sit down, I won’t be able to see the front of the lecture hall.

  Professor Barclay is already up there, his presentation prepared and projected on the large screen hanging behind him. At precisely ten AM on the dot, he walks to the center of the room and begins his lecture about conservation as it concerns prehistory through the fourteenth century. I scratch down notes as quickly and legibly as I can, cradling my textbook in my arms and using it as a makeshift clipboard.

  It’s hard to hear him all the way back here, and worse, everyone who’s not actually registered for this class has no reason to be following along with the lecture like I am. The girls beside me talk in hushed whispers while scrolling through their phones and then eventually start to shamelessly snap photos of Professor Barclay. I glance over and the girl catches me, angling her phone so I can see her caption.

  Daddy.

  I barely restrain an eye roll, and then I hear my name said from the front of the class.

  “Ms. Mercier.”

  Dread stops me in my tracks.

  No way.

  Surely, we are not here again.

  Surely, I won’t look away from her phone to find Professor Barclay with his attention on me.

  My stomach squeezes into a tight ball of anxiety as I lift my gaze, and sure enough, the entire classroom has shifted around to look back at me, including Professor Barclay.

  “Is this going to become a habit?”

  The girl beside me slinks away, leaving me entirely on my own. Not that it matters. I don’t even think Professor Barclay noticed that I wasn’t the one holding the phone, just the one looking at it.

  “Let’s solve the problem, shall we?” he continues with a harsh tone.

  He walks around the podium and retrieves a wooden chair that’s housing his things. Swiping his bag off of it, he carries the chair to the front of the classroom, dead center, completely on its own in front of the podium and projector.

  “Come take a seat.”

  “Lucky,” the girl with the phone whispers.

  No. This isn’t luck. It’s the exact opposite. A curse. An omen. One bad impression could be written off, but now this? There’s no way he’ll ever believe I was in the wrong place at the wrong time twice.

  I make quick work of gathering my things, but in my haste, my pen bag spills out onto the floor. No. My things scatter everywhere. Tears gather in my eyes, which only annoys me more. I will not cry about something so silly. The girls help me gather all my pens and pencils as Professor Barclay clears his throat. One hot tear slips down my cheek.

  God, I wish I could disappear.

  Once everything is in hand, I duck my head and walk toward the front of the classroom, down the center aisle. Like a bride walking toward her waiting groom, all eyes are on me.

  Professor Barclay stands with his arms crossed, and I peer up at him from beneath my wet lashes.

  When he sees me up close, I swear there’s a fleeting look of remorse that passes over his features, but then it’s gone. Maybe I only wished there was.

  “You’ll sit here from now on,” he tells me, pointing to the chair. His voice is quiet now that I’m so close, but he’s still mic’d up, so the whole class hears. “Think of it as your assigned seat.”

  I sit just as he asks, prop my textbook on my lap, and keep my head ducked the rest of class. I listen to his lecture, but I can’t gather the courage to look up at him for fear he’ll see my feelings plain as day on my face.

  I absolutely despise him. To call me out like that, to make me sit up here like a child in time out—who does he think he is?

  The moment he wraps up class, I’m up and out of my chair, moving through the crowd toward the back entrance before most people have even closed their laptops and stuffed their textbooks back into their bags.

  I’m almost to the door when a hand darts out to touch my arm. It’s Sonya, and she’s grinning. In all my haste to leave the room, I completely forgot she and Annette were in the class with me.

  “What a production! Dragging you to the front like that.”

  I scowl and turn away, but still, she persists, scurrying after me.

  “If the schoolyard bullying act wasn’t enough, he looked over at you during his lecture about a million times. Holy hell. The tension! I was sweating.”

  “If he looked at me, I’m sure it was only to make sure I was in my seat, taking notes and not causing any more disruptions.”

  After this, I try to resume my annoyed departure, but she’s hot on my heels. Fortunately, Annette has the good sense not to try to keep up.

  “I know you’re not nearly as boy crazy as I am,” Sonya continues. “In fact, have you even dated anyone since that absolute bore Owen? Or was it Oliver? Ugh, who cares. I think you stand a chance with Professor Barclay.”

  “Sonya. I have no interest in that.”

  “That’s even better! I doubt he’d go for someone desperate to have him. You know he’s taught here for four years and he’s never so much as cracked a joke with a student? He’s completely straightlaced and by the book. No smiles. No flirting.”

  “So?”

  “So?! It’s just such a waste. Have you ever seen a man so goddamn gorgeous?”

  “Who cares about his face? His attitude sucks.” When this doesn’t win the argument for me, I tack on, “Why don’t you date him if you think he’s so attractive?”

  She points a finger at me and waves it up and down. “If he were interested in me the way he’s interested in you, believe me, I would.”

  I roll my eyes and wave goodbye as I walk away, leaving her outside her next class.

  Conversation over.

  At least I hope.

  On Tuesday—the first lecture since the phone incident—my assigned seat isn’t where it’s supposed to be. When I walk into class, I hesitate, wondering for a moment if Professor Barclay might have forgotten about his edict or perhaps not truly have meant it. But then his gaze finds mine, and one of his eyebrows lifts almost imperceptibly before he takes the chair and moves it right where he wants it. I sigh, break off from Annette and Sonya, and make my way to the front to take my place.

  There’re a few minutes before class. Behind me, the room is filled with quiet chatter, but from where I am, I can only see Professor Barclay as he stands to the side of the podium, reading something on his phone. He wears fitted navy slacks and a white button-down. His watch glints in the light, and I follow the smooth line of muscle from his wrist up to his cuffed shirtsleeve. I don’t know why I care to look at him. He’s already morphed into some kind of beast in my mind, an angry asshole who no doubt gets off on my humiliation.

  I’ve stared too long, I realize, when he looks up from his phone and catches me.

  I want to be strong and maintain eye contact, challenge him in this small, subtle way, but like the easy prey I am, my eyes immediately shift to the ground. In this position on my chair, I’m practically bowing before his feet.

  Thursday
is somehow worse. When getting dressed in the morning, I’m not thinking about Professor Barclay or his class. When I slip on a baby-doll dress with three-quarter-length sleeves, a square neckline, and a short hem, it’s for no other reason than that it makes me happy to wear. The white and blue floral fabric reminds me of a dress my mother used to have, something that might still be inside the chest of her belongings I couldn’t bear to part with a few years ago.

  When I arrive in class, however, it strikes me almost immediately that the garment is inappropriate given my seating situation. Under normal circumstances, lost in one of the middle rows, my dress and I would go unnoticed. I’d be tucked safely among my peers, my legs and hemline hidden. But sitting on that chair, there is no way to hide the fact that most of my upper thighs are showing.

  Professor Barclay isn’t there when I arrive, thank god.

  I dip low to the ground, careful to squat rather than bend at the waist, so I can retrieve my textbook, a pen, and my lecture slides. Then I hurriedly take a seat, dropping my textbook on my lap with my slides and pen in place. I look down and try to adjust the sides of my dress, tugging ever so gently and praying the entire class isn’t watching me fidget—and I’m still grabbing hold of the hem when Professor Barclay pulls open the side door and walks inside with the sun pouring in behind him.

  The time for attempting to fix my dress is over. I don’t want to further call attention to my outfit, so I press my legs together, cross my ankles, and let my nude ballet flats fall to the side.

  I feel his gaze like a heavy weight around my neck. It could be imagined—my mind twisting reality into my worst possible nightmare—or it could be my body’s sixth sense, but I know he’s taken notice of my outfit. I imagine his eyes surreptitiously sliding up the length of my legs, along my calves and the sensitive groove behind my knees, up along the sides of my thighs that aren’t hidden beneath my textbook. I shift and mask a shiver, keeping my eyes glued to the floor. If he’s looking, if he sees me like this, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to consider the possibility that he thinks I’ve done this on purpose, that I might have dressed like this to elicit some sort of reaction from him.

  I just want to survive another day in this class. That’s all I can hope for.

  The following week, Tuesday before class, I’m sitting outside the lecture hall, reading ahead in Mayer’s A Richer Heritage when Sonya plops down in front of me on the ground, ready to pick up the conversation we’ve been having off and on since the start of the semester.

  “Busy?” Sonya asks, a ball of nervous energy.

  “Yes.”

  “Well too bad because I’ve got something to show you.” She unzips her backpack and tugs out her laptop, already booting it up. “You’re not going to believe what I’ve done.”

  I’m already scowling, having learned to trust Sonya about as far as I can throw her. She’s definitely not my most levelheaded friend. She’s spontaneous and fun and, I’m only now realizing, rather persistent.

  “It’s a work of art.”

  I don’t look up. “I’m trying to read before class, Sonya.”

  “That’s good. What a dutiful student you are. Now look.”

  She turns her laptop to face me, and there on the screen is a blown-up, high-resolution photo of Professor Barclay and me with our arms wrapped around one another. We’re dressed to the nines, him in a black suit and tie and me in a silver slinky gown. We look like we’re attending some fancy awards show together.

  My stomach drops.

  “Where did you get this?” I hiss.

  “I MADE it!” Sonya exclaims, drawing the attention of a group of nearby students who turn and see her computer screen before I can quickly turn it away. “Isn’t it brilliant?!” she adds. “A sort of real-life rendering of what could be if only you’d stop being such a bore!”

  “That is seriously…creepy.” I squint, trying to focus on all the details. My face is barely blended onto the photo, and same goes for Professor Barclay. It’s the work of a toddler, at best. “Sonya, that’s…really bad.”

  “Well, right. Okay. I did it in this dumb app. You just upload two headshots and it does the rest for you. I was at it all morning, saving pictures of me with young DiCaprio—you know, during his Titanic era—when I had the brilliant idea to show you how good you and Professor Barclay would look together.”

  Professor Barclay’s face—which she must have taken from a photo she pulled from the university’s website—is comically large in proportion to mine, and his skin tone is a shade tanner than the person she’s stuck him on.

  “Whose body is that?” I ask, pointing to the screen.

  “Blake Lively, and I put Professor Barclay on Ryan Reynolds. I thought it was close enough.”

  “We look nothing like them. My hair isn’t blonde.”

  “Okay, yes, slight oversight on my part, but the app doesn’t give you much to choose from. It’s free, after all.”

  “You could have at least picked a brunette actress.”

  “You know, you don’t sound all that grateful. I haven’t heard a single thank you.”

  I gift her with a You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me glare. “Oh, it’s because I’m not the least bit grateful. In fact, I think you might be insane. You need help.”

  She’s offended by this. “Are you serious? This was hard work. It took almost ten whole minutes. And I had to scroll through some truly nauseatingly pretty photos of you to find the exact perfect one for the job.”

  She pushes the laptop toward me so I can take another look, but I don’t need one.

  “Have I finally convinced you?” she asks.

  Silence.

  She throws her hands into the air.

  “So that’s it? It’s an official no-go? You’re not going to listen to me? You’re just going to be a stick in the mud?”

  “Yes,” I reply flatly.

  She closes her laptop and stuffs it back into her backpack. “What a huge mistake. You could be slinking off with him right now, having a little make-out session before class.”

  She doesn’t bother modulating her voice, and I know better than to suggest she should. Sonya has one setting: loud.

  “I’m not all that interested in making out at the moment. I’m trying to keep up my GPA so I can get into grad school, preferably on scholarship. I don’t think banging my professor will really help me achieve that goal.”

  The doors to the auditorium open and students start rushing in. I collect my things and stand then hold my hand out for Sonya to grab. She does, with a sulking frown.

  “Sorry I’m not more adventurous. Honestly, just thinking about having an affair with a professor makes my stomach hurt.”

  “I get it, I suppose. And though I do still think you’re making a mistake, I realize now you’re a lost cause.”

  I laugh, knowing she’s not being the least bit sarcastic. She means every word. In Sonya’s world, it makes perfect sense to jeopardize your entire future for one night with a hot professor. I would never in a million years go down that road.

  “Can we drop this once and for all?”

  She nods. “Yes. The subject is officially closed.”

  We walk into class side by side, and Sonya starts to tell me about this sexy guy in her psychology class. I’m listening until I glance toward the front of the lecture hall and see Professor Barclay speaking to a few students. I immediately recognize them as the group of girls who were standing near Sonya and me out in the hallway…the ones who saw Sonya’s fake picture before I turned the laptop away.

  I feel the color start to drain from my face.

  No.

  It’s just a coincidence.

  It has to be.

  They have a question about the reading. They want to know what chapters will be on the first test. SOMETHING!

  Professor Barclay looks over his shoulder, spots Sonya and me walking down the aisle, and then nods to the girls. They disperse and take their seats in the front row. One of them—t
he pretty blonde I now recognize as the girl he agreed to advise this semester—smiles snidely at me before turning away, and that’s when I know my fate is sealed.

  I barely manage to keep pace with Sonya, who’s completely unaware of what’s just happened. She’s strolling along down the stairs, having a grand ol’ time discussing psychology boy. Meanwhile, Professor Barclay levels me with a glare burning with so much anger I’m surprised I don’t melt on the spot. He gestures for me to come to him.

  I want to turn and run, but my feet won’t cooperate.

  Before I know it, I’m upon him, and did I really think he was attractive? He’s terrifying.

  “Ms. Mercier, I need to meet with you and your friend in my office after class,” he says abruptly.

  “Is it about the—”

  My attempt to remedy the situation here and now gets cut off.

  “After class.”

  Chapter Five

  Emelia

  * * *

  Professor Barclay’s office is housed in Reed Hall in the center of campus. The historic white brick building is just off the Green, and the sprawling lawn is packed with people enjoying the afternoon. Frisbees are being tossed, lunches are being unpacked, peals of laughter taunt me as I continue my trek toward my demise. To make matters worse, it’s a beautiful autumn day. The temperature is hovering in the low 70s, and all I want to do is go to my favorite bench, take out a good book, and sunbathe like the rest of the students around me.

  Unfortunately, I have a meeting to attend.

  “It won’t be that bad,” Sonya assures me, trying a smile on for size.

  When she sees my face, she lets her smile fall.

  We’ve taken our time getting here. We stalled back at class. Packed up slowly. Used the bathroom. Dawdled. Even still, I couldn’t come up with any way of getting out of this.

  Professor Barclay’s office is on the first floor of the building. Sonya and I walk through the hallway slowly, and I let her take the lead. Shockingly, she’s quiet—a rare occurrence for Sonya. She’s already apologized profusely, and already my annoyance with her is dwindling. To her, this was all one big joke, the teasing, the photo, all of it. She didn’t mean any harm, and that’s what I’ll tell Professor Barclay.