by Noir, Roxie
When I get home, none of my roommates are there. I’m not surprised, because they’re all at least as busy as me if not more so, but I wish they were because I ugly-cried all the way home and at least want someone to sit on the couch with me and pet my hair and tell me it’ll all be okay.
But they’re not, so I lock myself in my room and cry. It’s pathetic. I know that I should be researching how to beat an ethics violation charge, or at least learning about the Byzantine process that I’ll be navigating, but I can’t. I’m useless.
I know I shouldn’t be so shocked and upset that I’m reaping the consequences of my actions, but that thought only makes me feel worse, not better. I did something and I got caught and I’m just upset that I got caught, how stupid is that?
Really stupid.
I cry harder. I cry for myself, because I’m definitely at least getting put on probation for a year, which means I won’t graduate in May and probably pushes graduate school right out of the picture. I cry because I might get expelled with one semester left to go.
I cry because I can only imagine my parents’ reactions when they find out why I’m getting kicked out of college, because despite everything they were so excited about me graduating.
And I cry because I’m certain I’ve fucked Caleb over, too, and he won’t even talk to me. I know he’s probably just being smart, and I can’t blame him, but right now everything hurts and especially that.
Finally, I cry myself to sleep.
* * *
A few hours later, I wake up because I have to pee. The lights in my room are still on, and I’m still in my clothes, half under the covers and half on top of them. My bedside clock says it’s two in the morning, and I feel like shit.
I drag myself out of my bed, pull my now-incredibly-uncomfortable jeans off, and head for the bathroom in my shirt and underwear. If they’re not asleep, my roommates have seen me in my underwear before, and also, I’m about to get kicked out of school so who cares about anything?
I hit the lights in my room before I open the door, but our living room is dark, the only light the glow of a single open laptop on the kitchen table.
“Hey,” I say, keeping my voice down, but Margaret’s got her headphones on and doesn’t move as I cross behind her, on the way to the bathroom.
I don’t mean to, but I look over at her screen, glance at what’s on it.
Then I stop in my tracks, because she’s got an email inbox open in her browser, and it’s for an email address I’ve seen before.
“What the fuck?” I say, and she jumps and whirls around, practically ripping her headphones off.
“Jesus!” she hisses. “Don’t do that, it’s two in the morning and I thought you were —”
“What the fuck is that?” I repeat, pointing at her screen.
She looks back, comprehension dawning instantly.
“I—"
“It was you,” I say, disgust winding into my chest, taking hold. “Holy shit. Why the fuck would you do that, Margaret? You went right over my head like that and never even bothered talking to me? Not once?”
She slams her laptop screen shut, plunging us both into near-darkness, but it’s way too late.
“I talked to you,” she says, defensive. “You weren’t interested in listening to me about how fucked up you were being, so I decided to try a different tactic so that maybe someone would listen and at least have second thoughts.”
“Second thoughts?” I ask, and now I’m loud, nearly yelling, and I couldn’t care less. “You think that getting me expelled and Caleb fired is the best way to make us have second fucking thoughts? You went that far over my head — you reported me to goddamn University Ethics — you’re getting my scholarship taken away so I’ll rethink my life choices?”
Now she’s standing.
“Wait —”
“I’m sorry your dad fucked his secretary and left your mom!” I shout, my voice pitching higher and higher. “Okay? I’m sorry that you think every relationship is a transaction of power —”
“Shut up!” she shouts, and for a second, I do. “What the fuck are you talking about, expelled?”
“I’m talking about you reporting Caleb and me to the administration,” I shout. “Because apparently it’s not enough to send fucked up emails to him, you also had to make sure that we got punished for doing something wrong according to whatever moral code it is you follow so religiously —”
“I didn’t report you.”
“Right, you just called my boyfriend morally bankrupt and a stupid dinglebat and what was that last one he showed me? Unscrupulous pervert or something, but no, it was some other asshole who tattled on us?”
“I wouldn’t get you expelled!” she says. “Thalia, I swear to God, I think he’s a total fucking creep for dating you but —”
“Thanks,” I say, practically spitting the word at her. “Thanks, sure, who could be interested in me but a total creep who just wants to pop my cherry for his trophy wall?”
“You can’t act like it’s not fucked up!” she says, pointing dramatically at the ground, like it’s going to help her make her point. “There’s no such thing as informed consent in a relationship where you are his subordinate —”
“You think I’m incapable of meaningful consent?” I shout, my voice wobbling. I’m half a second from crying tears of rage and trying desperately to hold them in, but it’s not going to work for long. “Because I’m younger than him? Because I’m a student? You think I can’t say yes and know what I mean? Fuck you.”
“I think it’s murky as fuck and he’s a creep for going after undergrads!”
“He’s not going after undergrads, he’s going after me,” I say.
Now I’m crying, my voice all over the place.
“You don’t know that,” Margaret says. “Maybe there’s some girl every year who thinks oh, my professor is really into me, I’m so cool and lucky.”
I feel like I’m going to throw up, or scream, or throw up while screaming and also strangling Margaret.
“Fine,” I say, angry tears pouring down my face. “Sure. Every semester, he picks some girl from one of his classes and uses his immense powers of assistant professorship to coerce her into great sex —"
“How do you know it’s great sex?” she fires.
“So you also think I’m a moron who’s happy to lie back and take whatever dicking she gets because she doesn’t know any better?” I say, sounding borderline hysterical because I can’t stop crying. “Do you seriously think I can’t tell when sex is great?”
I suddenly realize that Harper and Victoria are standing in the doors to their rooms, looking on, horrified expressions on their faces.
“How are you supposed to know?” Margaret snaps.
“Have I ever once given you shit for banging the entire men’s diving team?” I shout. “No. Because I don’t care who you sleep with, so how about you don’t be an asshole and virgin-shame me.”
“I’m not shaming you!” she shouts. “Fucking your professor is inherently coercive —”
“What a fancy phrase for I think you’re too dumb to make your own decisions.”
“Are you really this dense?” she shouts.
“Guys!” Harper says, trying to yell over us.
“No, I’m not dense,” I yell. “What I am is perfectly capable of making decisions about who I have sex with!”
“Stop it!” calls Victoria.
“Not if he’s grading your papers,” Margaret says.
“HEY!” Victoria shouts.
We both look over at her, wearing pajamas and a silk wrap around her hair. I’m crying and doing my damnedest to stop, and Margaret is breathing hard, like she just sprinted a couple blocks.
Victoria furiously points at the ceiling.
“If the bitch upstairs calls the cops on you two my Black ass is not answering the door,” she says, then looks at me. “And your Mexican ass probably shouldn’t either. Let the white girl do it.”
; “I’ll talk to the cops,” Harper says behind us, and we both turn. “What happened?”
Margaret and I look at each other, and she holds her hands up.
“Thalia, I swear I didn’t report you,” she says. “I fucking swear.”
“You just sent fucked-up emails in the hopes that, what? He’d dump me?”
“Report what to who?” asks Harper, waving her hands, trying to get us back on track. “You and Caleb?”
“To the administration,” I say, tilting my head back and taking a deep breath. “I have an ethics hearing Thursday.”
The three of them gasp in unison.
“Oh, fuck,” breathes Margaret.
“Oh no,” says Harper.
“Shit,” agrees Victoria.
“I didn’t even know,” Margaret says. “Thalia, I wouldn’t, I would never ever do that, I just think it’s fucked up —”
“Don’t really care what you think,” I tell her, and for once she has the good sense to shut her mouth.
I believe her, though. I’d kind of like to strangle her, but I believe her when she says she didn’t report us.
Victoria covers her face with her hands, then takes a deep breath.
“Okay,” she says, then uncovers her face. “Okay. Thalia, you sit on the couch. Harper, can you make some tea or something? Margaret, you should probably go to bed.”
I sit. Harper goes into the kitchen. Margaret says nothing, but grabs her laptop and leaves, shutting her bedroom door behind herself. Victoria sits next to me on the couch, and a few minutes later, Harper comes in with three mismatched mugs full of chamomile.
“Okay,” Victoria says. “Tell us.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Caleb
I glance at the clock again and wonder, for at least the thirtieth time in as many minutes, why I’ve agreed to this. True, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but the closer I get to it actually happening, the more I’m dreading it.
I don’t think I can plan any more. I can’t visualize any more contingencies, come up with any more if-this-then-thats. I’ve spent hours on the phone with Seth, my most pragmatic, most forgiving, and least judgmental brother, going over all the options. I’m pretty sure he ran some statistical models.
I still don’t know what to do.
Here’s what I want: I want to go into the committee and explain what happened. I’ll swear on a bible that I graded all her quizzes and homework and tests fairly. It’s math, for fuck’s sake; there’s a right answer and a wrong answer, with not much open to interpretation. They’ll nod their heads and fondly remember the first time they fell in love like this, tell me not to do it again, and send me on my way.
That won’t happen.
Second most, I want to deny that it ever happened. If they have no evidence, only the allegation, it could work. Sure, lying is wrong and immoral, but it’s not like I cared about those things when I got myself into this.
And if neither of those things happen — if they decide that someone needs punishing for this — I want to be the one punished, not her.
The university can have my head, but they can’t have hers.
At exactly seven o’clock, there’s a knock on the door. It opens before I can even stop pacing in the living room, and my brother’s voice calls out.
“Hey!” he shouts. “We’re here.”
I take a deep breath, steel myself, and step into the hallway.
“Hey,” I say, and Seth waves, hanging up his coat in my coat closet.
Behind him, my mom just sighs and gives me a very disappointed look.
God, it’s worse than a knife to the heart.
Seth comes over, puts both his hands on my shoulders, and looks me dead in the eyes.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he says. “I promise.”
“The depends on your definition of okay,” I tell him.
“You’ll see,” he says, and gives me a few firm pats, then walks past me, down the hall, toward the kitchen. “Do either of you want anything to drink? I’m going to make tea.”
Seth is extremely at home in my house.
“Earl Grey would be lovely,” my mom calls, shutting the door to the coat closet
Then she walks down the hall to where I’m standing, and just looks up at me.
“This was the bad thing you didn’t want to tell me,” she says, matter-of-fact. “I guess I understand why.”
My mom is an astronomy professor who mainly works at the Steinberg telescope that’s about thirty minutes from our house and is owned by the Virginia Institute of Technology. She mostly does research and only teaches a class a semester, but still.
“I know,” I say quietly, unable to look her in the eye. “I know.”
“You worked so hard,” she says.
“I know.”
Before she can say anything else, there’s a knock on my front door. I open it and Oliver’s there, wearing a black coat with a green scarf, and he nods at me once.
“Thanks for inviting me to your strategy meeting,” he says, as I usher him inside. “Hope I can be of some —”
He stops, just for a second, looking down the hall at where my mom is leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen, saying something to Seth inside.
“ —use,” he finishes, then shrugs his coat off. Underneath he’s got on a fairly tame shirt, compared to some of the things I’ve seen him wear, though his shoes are a startling shade of blue.
“That’s the idea,” I say, taking his coat and scarf, but he’s already walking down the hall.
“You must be Caleb’s mom,” he says, holding out a hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
“You must be his advisor,” I hear her say. “Clara Loveless.”
“Oliver Nguyen.”
“Be honest,” my mom says as I close the closet door. “How bad has he fucked up?”
Oliver just sighs.
“Bad,” he says.
* * *
“So they never get better?” my mom asks, sitting next to me on the couch.
“NSF grant applications? No, I think they get worse,” Oliver says, sitting on a chair across from my mom. “I swear they add three pages of nonsense for you to fill out every year. Why do they need to know what the highest-paid employee at my institution is? Not my fault the football coach makes a pile of money.”
“I was hoping that maybe if I did this for long enough everything would just click into place,” my mom says, gesturing into the air. “Ten years, maybe fifteen.”
“I wish,” Oliver says, and my mom laughs.
Just then, Seth comes into the living room, carrying a tray with four cups of Earl Grey, a few cookies, and some grapes. I didn’t know I had any of those things in my house, but leave it to Seth to find them and present them nicely to the rest of us.
“Thanks,” I say, as he takes a seat, and we all lean forward for our tea, silence hanging heavy in the air between us.
Finally, Oliver clears his throat.
“I spoke with my colleague on the ethics committee,” he says.
I can already tell it’s bad news. Good news comes out immediately. Bad news waits.
“And?” I ask.
“They were sent a short video,” he says.
My stomach drops. I put my tea back on the coffee table and lean my elbows on my knees, rubbing my hands together.
The organ concert, I think, a sharp prickle working its way down my spine. The library. That time in my office. God, how thorough was I about closing the curtains when we were here?
If someone has footage of Thalia naked without her consent I’m going to fucking kill them.
“What’s on the video?” I ask, my voice surprisingly steady.
“It’s you and — sorry…”
“Thalia,” I supply, my voice tight.
“You and Thalia kissing next to a minivan,” he says. “Apparently you’re in some parking lot, but it’s quite clearly you and pretty unmistakable what you’re doing.”
I close my eyes and sigh with relief. I’m pretty sure everyone sighs with relief, though when I open my eyes, Seth is smirking at me.
I wait for Oliver to look away, and I flip him off as subtly as I can.
Then, suddenly, I realize what Oliver just said.
Parking lot.
Minivan.
That really, really narrows down who the reporter could have been.
“Can he say it’s Photoshopped?” Seth asks. “Academia’s cutthroat, maybe someone wants him fired.”
“It’s a video,” Oliver says.
“You can edit videos,” Seth says. “Right now, the technology exists to make very convincing deep fakes. Just last week I saw a video that someone had made of the President saying —”
“It’s not fake,” I point out.
“Yes, I know,” Seth says, in his most patient you are a moron voice. “But can you convince people that it’s fake?”
“Seth,” my mom says sharply.
“We’re talking about a whole committee of people who know what Occam’s Razor is,” I say. “And the simplest explanation is clearly —”
“That’s actually not what Occam’s Razor says,” Seth interrupts. “Occam’s Razor states that the solution that makes the fewest assumptions is likely to be correct, not the simplest.”
“That’s accurate,” confirms Oliver.
I shift position, flopping backward onto my couch and covering my face with my hands.
“But I take your point,” Seth concedes, sipping his tea.
I sit there, quietly, trying to think, but my brain feels like a disused path through the dense forest, like I’m hacking through kudzu and tripping over fallen trees every three feet just to get a single thought together.
“So it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to deny that the affair happened,” my mom chimes in, ever pragmatic. Clearly, Seth got it from somewhere.
“Yes,” says Oliver.
“What are his options?” she goes on. “Is this the sort of thing where he could swear that it’s over and will never happen again, and he’s very sorry? Or have institutions of higher learning moved on in the past thirty years?”