Page 104 of Not Fooling Anyone

I sit there, internally vibrating with tension, but he doesn’t seem to notice, finally taking his arm off me when Dr. Clark dismisses us an hour and a half later.

“You have plans tonight?” he asks, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. Why does he even carry that thing around when he doesn’t take any notes?

“I’m going to apply for a job at the diner,” I tell him, meticulously packing up my stuff.

“That’s right. I hope you get it.”

I’m silent, watching as Christian and Amber leave hand in hand. No problems in paradise for them, at least.

“You sure you’re okay?” He squints at me, his skepticism obvious. I’ve never been a great actress.

“Just worried about this test in Russian Lit,” I lie. “It’s worth a big part of our grade.”

What a load of crock. Papers make up our grade, not tests.

“You’ll ace it,” he says easily. “But I meant from last night. If I was too forward—”

“I’m fine,” I interrupt, staring down at my shoes. “I have to get to class.”

“Right. Yeah.”

He sounds taken aback, and rightly so. This is how I acted with him a month ago, not now.

He moves in to kiss me goodbye, and I turn at the last second so he kisses my cheek instead. I can’t share anything as intimate as a real kiss with him.

“Bye.” I book it out of there, my feet on fire as I speed toward the Humanities building. All in all, that could have gone worse. I barely had to talk to him and he doesn’t suspect too much.

Even so, I’m not out of the woods. Nowhere near. I can’t string him along forever. At some point, I’ll have to tell him I don’t want to be together. Don’t want to be around him even. It’s only a reminder of my misplaced trust, how others will always let you down.

I take a seat in my normal spot in Dr. Kroft’s class, not bothering to pull anything out of my bag yet, instead laying my head down on the desk, the wood cool against my cheek.

I’m startled what seems like a moment later as the professor calls class to begin, a sticky trail of drool on my cheek as I sit up. Oh God, that’s disgusting. I guess my restless night finally caught up with me.

I surreptitiously wipe at my face, praying no one saw that, and pull my notebook and pen out of my bag, taking notes as Dr. Kroft soliloquizes about last week’s read ofEugene Oneginand its themes of society and superficiality.

After a certain point, though, he fades out as he heads into today’s topic. Crap. It’s the stuff I didn’t read.

“Tell me about Russian formalism,” he says to the room at large, his unnaturally blue eyes staring out at us dispassionately.

The lecture hall is quiet in response, no one taking the bait.

“No one?” he asks, cocking a blond brow. He reaches on his desk, holding up the class roster. Oh, no. Someone’s about to get their ass handed to them.

“Alexandra Adams,” he says in a clear voice, my stomach sinking. The one time I’m unprepared when he calls on me.

I slowly raise my hand, holding back my wince when his gaze meets mine.

“Tell me about fabula and syuzhet and how they relate to formalism.”

I swallow, my mouth like cotton after drooling everywhere, and answer, “I don’t know.”

His gaze sharpens, a predator latching onto its prey. “Tell me anything about formalism, then. What it is, when it started, which scholars were involved.”

“I don’t know,” I repeat, my voice tight.

Everyone is staring at me now, worse than in Intro to Psych today.

He sets down the roster, leaning back against his desk, feet crossed at the ankle. “Did you do the assigned reading?”

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