Page 250 of A University of Betrayal

Gold-Tiger

“Aww, look!” I heard one girl say to her three friends as they passed us, and I was grateful that her gaze was not on me, but on the dog, who was happily running in front of me and chasing one of those black butterflies that seemed to only exist in Blairville.

Even if his wound still had to heal internally, the closing of the wound seemed to affect the little one’s well-being.

“Oh, how cute...” another girl in the group said, and she stopped, which the dog saw as an invitation to run to her, sniff her and let her pet him.

“Alyssa, we’renotgetting a dog!”

I toyed with the idea of giving the dog to the girls, but when I noticed the flirtatious gaze of the other three girls on me, I lost the desire to approach them at all.

The fourth girl sighed, rose to her feet and followed the others, while the dog continued to run alongside me as if he had already gotten used to me.

Great... Now I had a dog stuck to me.

“Oh my God!” a female voice rang out and the dog jerked its head up. “Buddy!”

The dog charged off in the direction of the call and I stopped, looking around the campus path.

Office Talk

Christopher Tyng

When I spotted the braided platinum blonde hair that belonged to the fragile-looking girl in the Vanderwood uniform, I stopped abruptly.

She didn’t notice me, but bent down to greet the playful puppy that threw itself at her as if they belonged together.

Realization dawned on me.

Oh, fuck. This couldn’t be true.

What if she had a camera hidden in the dog’s fur and intentionally hurt him so that I would take him in?

I wanted it to be true, because the image of her petting this dog as if she cared about it didn’t match the image ofJulie Blair,who had embarrassed me in my seminar classes, broken into my office, and was one of those people.

“Where the hell have you been?” she laughed, and I didn’t like the fact that her laughter sounded pleasant and brought back memories inside me that hadnothingto do withher. “I was worried sick...”

I narrowed my eyes, annoyed at this unfortunate coincidence, but didn’t move from the spot.

“That’syourdog?” I shouted across the short distance.

She jumped up and dragged the dog up with her, immediately dirtying the white sleeves of her blouse with paws that were still wet from the sidewalk.

Julie’s eyes were full of horror.

And only now did it occur to me that she might have thought I was going to harm her.

But with all the stress caused by the experiments I had been doing over the last few weeks, I had completely blocked her out. And it was only now that I remembered that I hadn’t seen her at all for the last few lessons.

Even that had slipped my mind, because J had taken overeverythingin my head, occupying my mind in every possible way.

Julie looked around with that innocent, though barely interpretable look – that I hated so much because it hid deceptively well what she really was –, before staring at me one last time, wrapping her arms tighter around the dog and finally turning to disappear behind the nearest building.

Damn it. Now she was gone. But what could I have done?

Every time I planned how I would act if I met her; that I would erase her memory with Salma at some point, but every time I missed the opportunity.

And the fact that the dog had beenherdog had unsettled me so much that it was still bothering me when I had already arrived at the professors’ accommodation.

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