In the Middle of Somewhere (Middle of Somewhere, #1)(18)

“She wants you to shake,” Rex says.

“Oh, right.” I take her large paw in my hand and shake it. “Um. Good night.” I turn away slowly, my face burning. He doesn’t have any interest in making plans, clearly.

“Daniel.” Rex’s hand on my shoulder spins me around. He leans down and kisses me, short and hard. “I’m glad you’re here. I’ll see you.” This time it sounds reassuring. He doesn’t just think I’m a quick f*ck against a tree.

Better.

Then he walks away, Marilyn trotting at his side.





Chapter 4


September



“BECAUSE RESTATING the prompt isn’t a thesis, Malcolm. A thesis needs to make a claim. It tells the reader what you’ll spend the rest of the paper demonstrating. Remember?”

Stab, throttle, smash, annihilate, disembowel. I try to calm myself down by listing words that describe what I’d like to do to Malcolm. Preppy, entitled, slickly handsome Malcolm. Raze, liquefy, obliterate, eviscerate, pulverize, gut. Malcolm is the sixth student to come to my Friday afternoon office hours to argue about his grade on the first short paper for my Intro to American Literature class. All six complaining students missed class the day I assigned the papers and explained very clearly what a thesis was. All six complaining students turned in papers with no thesis statements.

“But you never said we needed to make a claim,” Malcolm says, scanning his paper. “I mean, like, if I’d known that was a requirement, then I totally could have done it.”

“Well,” I say, “this assignment is called ‘Advancing a Claim.’ I’d suggest, in the future, that you draft your papers with the assignment sheet in front of you. And I’d suggest making sure you find out what you miss on days when you aren’t in class. Anything else I can do for you?”

“I mean, I basically made a claim. It’s right here.”

“As I mentioned, this is a restatement of the prompt I gave you in class, so it can’t be your claim.”

“But it’s totally a claim.”

“It’s a question, Malcolm. My question. I wouldn’t really assign a paper where you were supposed to make a claim I already made on the assignment sheet, would I?”

“How am I supposed to know what you’d do?” Malcolm says, sounding sincerely confused. But it’s clear that his confusion masks aggression. He disliked me on sight.

“Look, I’ll give you the same opportunity I gave your classmates who were unhappy with their paper grades. If you’d like to rewrite the paper and give it to me next week, I’ll regrade it with a cap at a B-. It’s up to you.”

“So I can’t get higher than a B-? No way, man!” Ooh, Malcolm’s pissed now. I admit, I get a little bit of a rush out of staying perfectly calm when I know that a student would be punching me in the face if we were at a bar instead of across a desk from one another.

“Well, as of now, this is a D paper. Whether you choose to keep that grade or try the assignment again is completely up to you.”

Malcolm gathers his things up angrily, sliding his chair back with a loud scrape on the old hardwood floor.

“Yeah, fine, next week, thanks,” he mumbles, and jerks his backpack over his shoulder. He pulls my office door shut behind him. Hard. It’s an old building, and, as the new kid, I clearly got stuck in the office that either: (a) was recently cleared out when some faculty member who never used it died, or (b) is a gateway to the fires of hell. As such, when Malcolm slams the door, a crack peels open in the ceiling drywall from the corner of the door to the rickety light fixture hanging precariously from the ceiling three feet away. The light fixture droops from the drywall and hangs cockeyed from a cluster of wires.

“Have a nice weekend,” I mutter.

Then, as I watch, the light fixture falls to the floor in a gunshot of dented tin, frosted glass, and plaster dust.

Great.




THANK GOD it’s the end of the week. After I call maintenance at the college and leave them a message about the disaster that my office has become, I order pizza and call Ginger. She’s always in the shop on Friday nights but only works by appointment because she doesn’t want to be implicated in people’s stupid, drunken mistakes. After some sorority girl’s mom came into the shop, dragging her daughter by the wrist, to ask why Ginger gave her daughter a tattoo of a cupcake on her ass with the words “sweet to the last lick” curling in a banner underneath, and didn’t respond well to Ginger’s assurance that the girl was very much of legal age to get a tattoo and quite insistent on this one in particular, Ginger stopped participating in Friday night walkins, leaving the easy cash to her employees. She answers on the first ring.

“Have you seen him again?” she says.

“Dude, come on,” I say. She’s asked me this every time we’ve spoken since I told her about running into him—well, about Marilyn running into me.

“Sorry, sweet cheeks. I’m just having a hell of a dry spell in the city of what is clearly exclusively brotherly love and I need a little pick me up.”

“I’m not holding my breath, Ginge. Like I told you, he didn’t even want my phone number. I think maybe he just saw it as a onetime thing.”

“Come on. There are, like, thirty-seven people in your town. It’s totally inevitable. Besides, he knows where you work. I think he could find you if he were trying.”