Taming My Bullies novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Read It Out Loud

Grayson mocks Mindy's reading in seminar, then freezes when the professor calls on him, and Mindy quietly saves him.

I slept on a pile of trophy crates with my mother's blazer for a blanket.

At seven the house adviser found me, a tired graduate student with a clipboard and an apologetic face.

"Room 4B is a storage closet," she said. "Somebody edited the room list overnight. I'm so sorry."

"Who edits the room list?"

"Technically, no one," she said, and moved me to 2C, a real room with a real bed and a window that faced the lake.

I put my mother's tin on the sill and went to my first seminar.

American Fiction met in a round room at the top of the library, where the table was one big wooden oval.

Rhys sat at the far end with his tie even looser than yesterday.

Sean sat two seats from him and didn't look at me.

Grayson sat beside Lane, in fresh khakis, and he grinned the second I came in.

Lane, the blond one with the ear cuff, did not.

He studied his notebook with a flat scowl.

"Our transfer student," the professor said, glancing at her roster. "Miss Kincaid. Welcome to the table."

"The scholarship table," Grayson said under his breath.

Half the room snickered.

"Let's begin with the first page of the novel," the professor went on. "Mr. Tull, since you're so lively this morning, start us off. Read the opening aloud."

The room went quiet in a strange way.

It wasn't the quiet of waiting.

It was the quiet of people who had watched this happen before and had agreed never to mention it.

Grayson's grin didn't move.

"Actually, Professor, I'd love to hear the transfer first," he said. "I bet at a state school they read really slowly. Let's see how it's done."

A couple of people laughed.

The professor frowned, but she nodded at me.

I read the opening page, steady and clear, the way my mother used to read on the porch at night.

When I finished, the professor said, "Thank you, Miss Kincaid. Mr. Tull, the second page, please."

Grayson sat very still.

He picked up the book and held it close to his face.

His thumb moved under the first line, and I realized he was following it with his finger.

"The," he said.

He stopped.

"The... morning," he said.

His ears went red.

He started the sentence again, and the words came out in pieces, wrong and wide apart.

Somebody at the back hid a smile.

Rhys didn't. Rhys was looking at the table with a small, tight, furious face.

Lane's pen had stopped.

Grayson swallowed.

The sweat stood out on his shaved head, and I watched a boy twice my size go small in front of his friends.

I could have let it happen.

He had tripped me. He had laughed at my mother's name in a collar.

I opened my mouth anyway.

"Professor, can I answer the question the page is asking?" I said.

She blinked. "I haven't asked a question yet."

"The second page. It's the scene on the porch where the narrator says he's never learned how to say goodbye. I think it's the hinge of the whole book."

I said it in my own voice, easily.

Then I recited the passage from memory, four lines, word for word, with the porch and the screen door and the narrator's hands.

I had read this novel three times at my last school.

It was the only luck I'd had all week.

When I finished, the professor sat back, delighted.

"Well," she said. "That is exactly the moment I was going to teach. Mr. Tull, thank you, you can stop. Miss Kincaid has said it better than the page did."

Grayson put the book down.

His hands were trembling, and his glare was raw with humiliation.

I didn't look back.

I looked at the professor and asked about the screen door.

After class, the hall outside the round room was crowded with students, and I was halfway down the stairs when a hand landed on the wall beside my head.

Grayson.

He had backed me against the plaster, and he was big enough to block the light.

"Don't do that," he said low.

"Do what?"

"Don't be nice to me."

"I wasn't being nice. I was giving a very good answer."

His jaw worked.

"Why'd you do it?" he said. "I'd have done it to you."

"I know."

"Then why?"

I looked up at him, and I kept my voice flat.

"Because you're on my list," I said. "And I don't want you to apologize because you were humiliated. I want you to do it because you mean it."

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