Page 45 of Solo

“And yet, I am.”

He looks at me with confusion. “You’re what?”

“I’m an honors student. President’s Honor Roll every semester since I was a freshman,” I inform him in what should be a strong, proud voice. But it’s not. It’s a small, weak voice that sounds as if I might burst into tears.

No. I’m done crying.

“You know what, let’s not talk about this now,” he suggests.

But I’m not finished with this conversation—not by a long shot. It’s unlikely I’ll ever have the opportunity, or the courage, to speak to him this candidly again.

“You know why I don’t tell anybody anything? Because when I do, I find personal details of my life in the newspaper.”

He starts to reply but I hold up a finger to silence him. He nods and takes a sip of his wine instead.

“I’m tired all the time,” I continue, “because I’m a grad student with a heavy class load. And I also happen to work two jobs.”

His brows go up in clear surprise.

“I have classes all day, go home, and grab a quick bite to eat. Then I clean offices in a professional building in town. I get off at ten, then I sit up and study till about one. My alarm goes off at five in the morning and I head over to the North Dining Hall on campus, where I work the breakfast shift until seven thirty. I try to change my clothes, which always smell like the smoke from the grill, but there isn’t always time. If there’s a spill that needs to be cleaned up before my shift ends, or if I get stuck hauling out the trash, I might be running fifteen or twenty minutes late. Which doesn’t give me a lot of time to get all the way across campus, find a parking spot, and hike the stairs to your class before the stroke of eight a.m. And, Dr. Drew, if I argue with you in front of the class, it’s because you won’t give me a chance to speak. To explain myself or answer a question…or anything.”

His stunned expression is so intense that I look away, into the fire. But I can see in my peripheral vision that he’s still staring at me.

“So there it is,” I continue. “Tired, bloodshot eyes, late all the time, smelling of smoke, grumpy. I think that pretty much covers it all, doesn’t it? Sometimes, when people don’t know the truth, they just make shit up,” I conclude, thinking about my misinformation about his fiancée.

“I’m sorry, Katherine. I really am. I’ve been jumping to conclusions. But you just get on my nerves sometimes. I feel like you’re always judging me.”

“What?” I yelp, my voice suddenly too loud for this conversation. I sit up and glare at him incredulously. “You think that I judge you?”

“Well, don’t you?” he asks, genuinely interested in what my answer will be. “I feel like you’re always trying to show me that you’re smarter than I am; that you don’t need to learn anything from me.”

The room feels chillier all of a sudden.

“What? Are you insane?” I argue, my pitch rising to match my volume. “I mean, really, you’re the one who’s constantly trying to trip me up!”

“Trip you up? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he counters indignantly. A little too indignantly, in fact. He knows I’m right, I can see he does. And it’s pissing him off. Yeah, well it’s pissing me off, too.

“You ask me harder questions than everyone else. You deliberately try to embarrass me. You offer the rest of the class an open invitation to your office for help, but me… God, it’s like you want me to fail your tests and your assignments.”

“But you never do,” he says, jumping onto my wave of accusations. And then he stops, cold, as the realization of what he’s just said—what he’s just done—sinks in. He’s just admitted his guilt.

“No. No, I don’t,” I spit back at him as I shake my head, a triumphant smile spreading across my face. “I can’t fail, you self-serving jackass! I can’t afford to make a single mistake because you’re just waiting; watching every little thing I do and say. Everyone gets a pass except for Katherine Brenner, the senator’s daughter, right?”

He starts to answer, but I won’t let him get a word in. I’m getting worked up now and my cheeks have gone from pale to flaming.

“I don’t have the luxury of not passing your class. Not if I want to graduate. So I stay up all night studying and doing your assignments. I read ahead. I study in and around and beyond the composers we’re studying because you have never once asked me a question that involved the material we were currently covering.”

“Oh Christ,” he grumbles, rolling his eyes. “That is not true.”

“It is!”

“Please, Katherine. Paranoid much?” he scoffs.

“Copland.”

“What?”

“Copland. We were talking about the correlation between Mahler’s Fourth Symphony and Beethoven’s Ninth when you asked me a question about Aaron Fucking Copland. And then the discussion on the baroque concerto grosso style. The entire class is knee-deep in the eighteenth century with Bach and Vivaldi and you ask me about Béla Bartók. A twentieth century composer. Dude, don’t even get me started on that assignment last semester when you asked us to write a—”