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I shifted uncomfortably in my seat as I adjusted Lara’s flimsy lace shirt, studying the person sitting a little too close to me.
I was in one of the larger classrooms on campus. The seats rose in a half circle of rows framing a lectern that had yet to be occupied. The room was dated. My first clue was the too-small red chairs shoved together and bolted to the floor. I’d never considered myself tall until I maneuvered into the seat second from the aisle and felt like an Amazon.
Voices rode like waves around me, but I stayed quiet. I observed, wondering how they were all talking to each other and laughing when we were all supposed to be strangers on the first day of school.
As I sank lower into my creaky seat, I sorted through my tote. I found my brand new torts casebook and cracked it open, pretending to be absorbed in the Palsgraf Theory, whatever that was.
“I haven’t seen you before,” said the girl sitting too close to me. Not that it was her choice.
“Um,” I said, shutting the book on my lap. “Should you have seen me before?”
Her brown eyes almost disappeared when she gave me a generous smile. They were a deep brown, at least three shades darker than mine, and framed by black-rimmed glasses.
I was glad she smiled because I was afraid I was coming off rude. “Sorry. I’m just getting used to a classroom again.”
“I hear that,” the girl said. Her long auburn hair fell in attractive curls around her heart-shaped face, and immediately, I was envious.
“You’d think we wouldn’t be dumb enough to go for round three. You know.” She began ticking off with her fingers. “High school, college, now post-grad. Truth time,” she said, coming closer.
“Okay?” I said, leaning away from her sudden proximity.
“I’m only here because I didn’t know what the hell else to do with my sociology degree.”
I laughed before pointing at my chest. “Psychology.”
“Exactly.” Her laughter mixed with mine. “I’m Reagan.”
“Oh, Charlie.”
“Cool name,” she said. She was about to say something else, but the sharp clap from the podium stalled her. Both our gazes shot to the front, and I heard her mumble, “Not him again.” She huddled over her desk and pretended to be busy turning on her laptop.
I was nervous, but I tried not to show it as I went to page 386 in the casebook as directed.
“Now,” the professor continued, his glasses glinting in the overhead lights. He didn’t bother introducing himself, which I found pretty awkward. And intimidating.
“I expect all of you read pages 280 to 482 as I instructed you so happily to do last week. Shall we put it to the test?”
My swallow got stuck in my throat. I bent over and covered my mouth so as not to draw attention. When a water bottle was shoved into my range of vision, I grabbed it gratefully and chugged. Reagan patted my shoulder, but I knew she didn’t dare speak. Not when we had a professor who was transforming into a demon. He stood there, scanning the room with his reflective little eyes.
“For those of you who thought orientation was going to be a college cakewalk, I hope I’ve ground that theory into dust and shit all over it.” He walked up the stairs between the rows, hands clasped behind his back, a gleeful smile on his face. I stayed hunched over, praying he didn’t latch onto me.
“You.”
He pointed in my direction, and a lurch of anxiety rippled through my stomach. I didn’t want him to call on me. I had no idea what was happening.
“Me?” Reagan’s voice squeaked beside me.
“Yes, you. Tell me about the Cardozo view.”
“Ah…”
Reagan scrolled through the document on her laptop, her manicured fingers shaking as she pressed down on the mouse pad over and over again. “I…I know I took notes on this.”
“You have five seconds, or I assign to the entire class another hundred pages to read tonight. Your choice. Or your fault.”
Student’s hands flew up across the room and some even rolled their eyes. One girl sighed loudly as if this were the easiest and most bestest question in the world and Reagan was the village idiot who couldn’t get it right.
He stayed in the aisle. This professor was a man I wouldn’t look twice at in the streets but was terrified of now. His child-sized blazer, his cute little potbelly, his middle-aged lines and grandfather cheeks…
Monster.
“Five.”
A blush washed over Reagan’s face, and her breaths were hyperfast as she CTRL + F’d and couldn’t find “Cardozo” typed anywhere in her notes.
“Three.”
My mouth fell open. He skipped a number. That professorial demon actually skipped a number in the five-second countdown.
“I can’t…I’m sor—”
“Palsgraf?” I blurted the first word that came to mind.
I remembered thinking it, the one word I’d seen five minutes earlier—the only word in my current torts repertoire. I figured I might as well say it. I couldn’t let Reagan go down like that, not when she’d been so nice to me. Not with these asshole students who—on the first day of class—were already unleashing bitch faces at people.
The professor’s glasses glittered. Actually shone as his gaze moved from Reagan to me.
“Ah yes, Ms. Miller, so wonderful of you to join us. Finally.”
I clamped my mouth shut, looking around as the eye rolls shifted toward me.
“I was worried your fame would take you away from your first day as well as orientation.”
“I’m, uh, I didn’t know. About orientation,” I lied. My voice seemed to echo in the silence.
“I’m sure you didn’t. Who would ever think law school involved preparation?”
A swell of muffled chuckles floated around me. I hated them all.
“Excellent preseason game, by the way,” he said as he made his way over to the aisle closest to me. Though he was still a yard away, I shrank back from him. “Truly a New York hero. I would have gone to the game, of course. Big fan. But you know, I was here taking time out of my schedule, working hard for your benefit in order to further your career.” He punctuated each your as if it began with a capital letter, lashing me with that word the closer he got to me.
“In the future, Ms. Miller, I suggest if you want to survive your first year of law that you...Show. Up.” He ended his sentence with a puh right near my face.
“Do you want to know the law?” he asked, his voice soft.
I nodded. He straightened and addressed the classroom. “Don’t you all want to know society’s rules? To learn justice? To represent the weak? To fight at the forefront, to slay with your words, to know the power of power?”
Students nodded all around.
“First rule.”
He spun away from me, his Old Spice cologne all that remained as he strolled casually down the steps and to the lectern. Silence followed him as everyone, breath bated, waited for him to finish.
He was at less of a target distance now, but his eyes still managed to stab me as he turned and finished with, “Win.”
I sucked at staring contests. I looked away.
“Nobody succeeds standing in someone else’s shadow.”
My face went hot. The humiliation was so prevalent it swelled through me. Reagan peeked over with a mix of pity and gratitude, daring to mouth thank you before turning her attention back to the front.
Hers wasn’t the only expression that showed pity as the class all flicked their attention between the professor and me. But little did they know it wasn’t simply embarrassment that colored my cheeks.
It was anger.
I kept my mouth shut so tight my teeth began to throb, and I stayed silent. He wasn’t the first to accuse me of such things, and he wouldn’t be the last. So many liked to confuse the word support with shadow.
Time. It was the one thing that would prove them all wrong. So I sat back and told myself to relax
as I flipped my laptop open and let my fingers hover over the keyboard, ready to dutifully take down all the brilliance this pompous troll was prepared to dole out.
“Now,” he said, finally tearing his gaze from mine. “Justice Cardozo, a genius of his time, came up with the zone of danger theory after a famous case now simply known as Palsgraf…”
My mouth dropped open. That bastard.
I had been right.
SNAPPED: Part 1 Page 5