Week one.
Third class.
Professor: tough, but fair. But really, really tough.
Chances of me getting an A: 100%
“What are you writing?”
Kinley jumped, just slightly. Tyler Green—who everyone he had ever met knew was bad news—was talking to her.
People didn’t talk to her. They just . . . didn’t.
Especially boy people.
She covered her paper with her hand, and she felt her face heat up. “Um. Nothing.”
Tyler winked. “Let me see. I won’t tell.”
“I would,” she said, “but see . . . you’d have to be able to read to understand.” She shrugged and shut her notebook. “Sorry.”
Tyler laughed. “You’re sort of funny for a narc.”
Kinley lifted a shoulder. Everyone said she was a narc, ever since the time she ratted on the middle school point guard for smoking weed on school grounds. But she didn’t care. Kinley just did what everyone else was scared to do, and what was wrong with that?
She was always prepared to go further than everyone else. Always.
That was why she was here early. She wanted to get some face time with Dr. Stratford before class started again. The first couple of classes . . . well, Dr. Stratford clearly didn’t understand who she was. He treated her like everyone else—with disdain, stopping just short of pure hatred.
He needed to realize.
She was the best student. Always. In every class.
She was Kinley Phillips. She had a reputation. A good reputation.
But Dr. Stratford was nowhere to be found. The only person she was getting face time with was Tyler Green, resident burnout. The kind of guy who did not give girls good reputations.
“Why are you in this class, anyway?”
Tyler flipped a yellow number two pencil through his fingers. “Trying to make up some credit.” He shrugged. “I need to graduate.”
Kinley raised her eyebrows. They made a crooked line across her forehead. “You’re still eligible to graduate?”
Tyler smirked. “I’m not stupid. I’m a delinquent.”
Kinley felt daring all of a sudden. She was talking to a guy. An actual guy. She was almost flirting.
She had never done that before. It wasn’t exactly in line with her goals.
Tyler put the very tip of the eraser in his mouth. “Obviously. Stupid is easy. Delinquency . . . is an art. It’s all about the things you do wrong versus the things you’re caught doing wrong.”
Kinley’s lips pursed. It made an odd sort of sense, actually.
Around them, the other students started to file in. Because it was a course that could be taken for college credit, they’d been assigned one of the larger classrooms—one that could fit almost forty students. The administration had assumed that a college-level course would attract a few more students looking to pad their applications. With the added fact that the class was taught at the high school, thirty minutes away from the college campus, it was a win-win.
Almost.
There was a catch: it was a Stratford class. Everyone knew about Stratford, which meant only fifteen students had actually signed up.
Fifteen brave, stupid souls.
One—a tiny, mousy girl Dr. Stratford had picked on—hadn’t shown up since the first day.
So fourteen. Fourteen total students.
Hardly any competition for Kinley Phillips.
Tyler scratched on the desk with his pencil.
“So your . . . lifestyle. You’re saying you’re a regular van Gogh,” Kinley said. “Breaking rules as art.” Her eyes followed his pencil on the surface of the desk. She couldn’t tell what he was drawing. His arm was carefully angled in front of it.
Tyler grinned. “I’d say I’m more of a Pollock, really. I just throw shit at a wall and see what sticks. Oh, and I’m not opposed to copying others’ work.” He glanced purposely at Kinley’s notebook.
Kinley laughed. Actually laughed. Here she was, the Goody Two-shoes of the entire school, and she was getting along with Tyler Green, who, upon closer inspection, was sort of cute. If you could overlook the stupid rock band T-shirt and ripped jeans. He could actually look good, cleaned up. She imagined him in a crisp blue button-down with a proper haircut.
He’d be perfect.
She bit into her bottom lip. She’d never had a boyfriend. Hadn’t even had a boy show interest, unless you counted Marcus Canter in fourth grade, when he told her she was pretty before sneezing a bucketload of green phlegm all over her.
And it was weird, but . . . well, she kind of liked the attention. For something other than getting the highest test score.
“Kinley? Kinley Phillips? Care to join the class?”
Kinley’s head snapped up. “Yes?”
Dr. Stratford stood at the front of the room, the full intensity of his focus upon her. He was not a normal professor type: his mess of hair, a tangled mass of gray with tinges of brown dye, sat atop his head like someone had placed it there. Half his face drooped. And his eyes were strange and too light. They were also staring directly at Kinley.
Kinley’s head spun. When had he even arrived? How was it time for class already?
“I apologize, sir. What was the question?”
He cleared his throat loudly, and for the second time that day, she was reminded of Marcus Canter. “Roll call, Ms. Phillips. Now, should I mark you as present? Or absent, as you clearly don’t seem to be here for class?”
Kinley didn’t flinch. She looked him in the eye, ignoring the heat creeping up from her neckline. “Here, sir. I apologize.” She bent her head.
Dr. Stratford just snorted. “Teller, Ella?” he asked. A girl in the front row slowly raised her hand, as if not to attract too much attention.
Kinley scowled. Damn it. She shot a look at Tyler. He’d been distracting her when she should have been paying attention. That was what happened to girls who got caught up with boys like Tyler. Or boys in general.
It was too bad. She’d liked talking to him.
Professor Stratford finished calling roll, and then stepped behind the desk—a desk that normally belonged to Mr. Tanner, a teacher with thick glasses who pretty much everyone liked. He opened the desk and pulled out a huge tome that looked at least a billion years old.
“Today,” he said, “we’re going to talk about guilt. Specifically, Freud and his approach to guilt. Which I find to be a bit stupid and outdated—but then, so is Freud.”
Dr. Stratford, Kinley thought, was definitely a teacher who was passionate about his subject matter.
“Now, last class, we discussed the psychic apparatus. Can anyone remind us what this consists of ?” He looked around at the class. “Kinley? Do you remember, or were you too busy being desperate with that boy there?”
Kinley stared, her heart beating strangely in her chest. Desperate? This was the first time she’d ever spoken to Tyler.
“No? Okay. Well, then. Let’s try Ivy in the corner there. Ivy, would you like to take a break from staring out the window?”
“I know,” Kinley interrupted, her voice a pitch too loud. “The psychic apparatus consists of—”
“Stop,” Dr. Stratford said, slamming his wrinkled hand on the desk. “Just stop. You had your chance. I wanted to know what you knew, not what you had time to google on your phone while I asked someone else.”
Kinley’s mouth dropped open. This was not how teachers spoke to her. Teachers loved her. She was a dream student. She was a pet.
Tyler leaned over and nudged her. “Don’t worry about it,” he whispered. “He’s an asshole. Everyone knows it.”
Kinley ignored him. She felt her face burn ever hotter. Her father would be so disappointed. He did everything right. He was a leader. He’d even written a book, and CNN had invited him in-studio to represent minority visions on modern culture. Her fingers reached for the ends of her braid—a nervous habit.
While Ivy struggled in the corner over the difference between id and ego, the door opened and a tall, sort of youngish-looking boy shuffled in and shut the door quietly behind him. Kinley couldn’t remember his name.
Stratford’s head jerked around, and he actually sniffed like he smelled blood. Hot, fresh blood.
Kinley said a silent thank-you. Stratford was going to lose it on this kid. He didn’t tolerate tardiness. And hopefully, that meant he’d forget about Kinley’s little mistake.
“Say, Mr. Byrne? Mattie, is it?” Dr. Stratford said, pulling his focus away from Ivy. “Listen, young man. Since you haven’t sat down yet, I don’t suppose you’d do me a favor?”
“Um, sure.” Mattie waited at the door. The collar of his shirt was flipped up on one side, and his hair stuck up a little bit, like maybe he’d just woken up from a nap.
“Across campus, you’ll find my office. It’s temporary, and it has Mr. Tanner’s name on it. I’m afraid I left my coffee over there, and I could really use it right now.”
Dr. Stratford smiled, but there was something off about it. It was toothy and hungry and fell short on one side.
Mattie sort of smiled back, clearly relieved. “Sure, Dr. Stratford.” He opened the door and stepped backward into the hallway.
Dr. Stratford stared after the student for a half second, and stroked the few stray whiskers he had growing out of his chin.
He crossed the room, pulled a heavy ring of keys out of his pocket, and locked the door behind Mattie.
Kinley chanced another look at Tyler, and she knew exactly what he was thinking: thank God it wasn’t them.
There was something about Stratford. About the way he looked at you. It was condescension, sure. And no matter who he was looking at, there was a distinct and undeniable overtone of disgust. But beneath it all, barely lingering below the surface, was pure, unadulterated hatred.
It was clear to Kinley then. It was clear to all of them, really. Stratford hated students. All of them. In fact, it was pretty safe to say he hated teaching. He was probably only there because he enjoyed torturing students, one by one, as payback for some horrible way in which he’d been wronged in the past.
Kinley looked back toward Dr. Stratford, in case the professor thought she wasn’t paying attention.
“I trust that will convince the rest of you that being late is something of a capital crime in my classes. Now, where were we? Ah yes. Guilt. What a beautiful, pointless thing. Let us discuss the struggle between the id and the superego.”
And he went on that way for a few minutes, until suddenly the doorknob rattled and Mattie’s face appeared in the little window in the doorframe. He pulled on the door again, and knocked twice.
Kinley felt a little bad for him. She’d spoken to him, for just a second, outside the school on the first day, when he’d picked up a pen that had fallen from her notebook. He’d seemed nice enough.
“The id, of course, develops first, and, some argue, is humanity’s natural state.” Dr. Stratford crossed the room and, without so much as a glance at Mattie, pulled the shade down over the window. “The id is virtually incapable of guilt.”
The doorknob stopped rattling.
And that was when Tyler Green made a mistake.
He laughed.