Unmistakable (3 page)

A couple of aspiring teacher’s pets try to chorus out possibilities, but he merely grins and answers his own question.

“Just one, but the bulb will have to be ready to change.”

That gets appreciative laughter, at least from the female members of the class. I roll my eyes and see a number of boys around the room doing the same.

“It’s a terrible joke. Sorry about that. But listen carefully to this—I don’t care why you’re here. I don’t care if you saw a psychology class in a movie and decided to make that your first foray into academia. I don’t care if your advisor recommended this class. No matter why you’re here, my hope is that you’ll find something in this course that will stay with you for the rest of your life. Ultimately, psychology is about figuring out human behavior.”

That’s a catch-22. Humans can’t be figured out. We’re irrational by nature.

“That’s a catch-22,” he continues.

My eyes widen in surprise. Maybe Dr. Delicious isn’t as dumb as I think he is.

“Of course, human behavior is inherently irrational. Psychology is about being curious about why people make the choices they do. What makes them tick, if you will. It’s not for everyone. However, even if this discipline doesn’t end up being your cup of tea, I’ll do my best to be your guide on our journey into the human mind.”

And maybe he is
exactly
as dumb as I think he is. Our journey into the human mind? It’s too much. I can’t hold the giggles in my throat any longer, and Izzy’s needling of my side only serves to exacerbate the problem. The idea of Sir Galahad over here taking us on a wonderful journey into the human mind is literally going to kill me. I haven’t laughed this hard in years.

A number of students (all female) are giving me exceedingly dirty looks. I glance up at Dr. Delicious and find his golden tiger stare on me, his eyes filled with an expression of such earnest sympathy that my laughter ceases immediately. I raise my chin and force myself to hold his gaze until I’m afraid that my sanity will desert me entirely. I look away first, but not before I catch a hint of laughter in those amber depths.

He just got the best of me. In a staring contest. It’s unprecedented.

“Any questions so far?” he asks the class.

A guy sitting a few chairs down from us winks at me and leans forward in his chair. “Yeah. I’ve got a question. What’s the attendance policy?”

Ah, a brave soul.

“Of course. By the way, Brian, you owe me ten dollars.” Dr. Evans gives the small army of teaching assistants an easy grin before turning his attention back to the room. “We had a little bet, you see. I guessed that the first student question would relate to attendance, while Brian put his money on grading policy. I never bet against the attendance question. I’ve been burned on that one before.”

There’s more laughter, the genuine kind this time.

“The answer to your question is that it depends on the day of the week. On Mondays, we’ll meet in here. Those classes will be conducted in standard lecture format. I’ve got pretty good taste in clip art, so you’ll have that to look forward to, at the very least. It’s up to you whether to attend the lectures. After all, you’re paying for your education, so if you want to squander your days by drinking in your dorm room, be my guest. It’s neither my responsibility nor my intention to stop you from doing so. If you think you can earn a passing grade by skipping class and obtaining the past versions of final exams, you can go right ahead.”

I might be imagining it, but I’m pretty sure Dr. Delicious has some claws, because he shoots daggers in my direction with that last line.

But in a flash, the look is gone. “One last warning on the issue of cheating—I’ve been around longer than you have, so it’s probably safe to say that I know more tricks than you do. Proceed at your own peril.”

It’s probably safe to say that he’s wrong. On the whole, the Greenview student body is ambitious, high-achieving, and morally ambiguous. In other words, it’s a murky cesspool of enterprising cheaters. Some kid in my cyber economy class even devised a computer program that changed all of his girlfriend’s grades to As. It’s been two years, and they still haven’t gotten caught.

His next words put a serious damper on my good mood.

“However,” he continues, “the attendance policy for the lab portion of this course is quite different. On Wednesdays, you’ll meet with your lab group, and on Fridays, you’ll have a small group discussion about what you learned during the week. Lax attendance in those small group sessions will not be tolerated. My marvelous group of teaching assistants will shepherd you through this course and give you all of the personal attention that you richly deserve. Sound fair?”

Damn it. I glance at his face again, hoping the newly announced attendance policy will do something to dim his attractiveness.

Nope. Still impossibly gorgeous. I’m a sucker for a chiseled jaw. And honey-colored tiger eyes. And lean muscles that look like they were earned on the football field instead of the psychology lab.

Stop it, Stella.

He smiles once again, revealing a perfect row of gleaming teeth. “On your schedule, you should have a TA and room number listed. Please go to those rooms now so that you can meet your instructors and review the syllabus. If you don’t have access to your schedule, I have a master list, so please see me if you need any clarification on where you’re supposed to go. Also, I’ll be holding office hours tomorrow. Feel free to approach me with any additional questions during that time.”

A number of girls immediately scamper up to the front of the room. Bad call on the master list, Dr. Delicious. Bad call. A worse call on those office hours. I can see the headline now—
Hundreds of Greenview Students Killed in Stampede.

“Who do you have?” Izzy asks.

I tear my eyes from the fawning masses. “No clue. Didn’t look.”

“Maybe you can go up to see the master list,” she teases. After a few seconds of staring at her computer screen, she makes a face. “I got the beanpole. Gross.”

“Hang on. Let me check.”

I log in to Greenview’s scheduling portal, which has caused me no small amount of grief over the years. The design is ludicrously poor—eighteen million links and pop up boxes and checkmarks. With Greenview tuition alone running at a cool forty grand, you’d think that the tech department would have some spare cash laying around to pay a half-decent web designer. Apparently, that money has been diverted to other causes. Like the brand-new sparkling student center and its two Starbucks locations.

On the other hand, maybe that’s money well spent.

After sorting through at least six pages of useless crap, I finally get to the right page and click on the link that reads Psych 101—Individualized Instruction.

Teaching Assistant: Luke Dixon.

My gut jerks.

There’s a fire alarm in my brain, wailing and screaming his name. Then, without warning, Luke, with his laughing, mocking eyes, so ridiculously blue, swims into my vision.

Dr. Delicious and his wonderful journey into the human mind are promptly forgotten.

I take a deep breath.

It’s just a name on paper. Just a name.

Keep thinking, Stella. That’s what you’re good at.

I
give it five seconds, but my normally foolproof plan to avert a total mental breakdown doesn’t seem to be working this time. My hand trembles against the computer and I bang my head against the back of the chair in frustration.

“Stella, what’s wrong?” Izzy asks, placing a soft hand over mine.

Wordlessly, I point to the screen. Her eyes widen when she sees the name, but she shakes her head and tries her best to look reassuring.

“It’s not him. There has to be more than one Luke Dixon out there in the world.”

She’s right. She has to be right. I glance up at the front of the room, seeking confirmation. He can’t be here. I would have known. I would have felt it. Felt him and his unmistakable presence.

Most of the freshmen have already started to file out, excepting the gaggle of girls who are closing in on Dr. Evans. However, the army of TAs is still gathered at the front, and I check each of their faces, one by one. When I reach the end of the row, I let out a sigh of relief. He’s not up there.

The tiny part of me that is still a rational, thinking, breathing human being takes over. Izzy’s right. There has to be more than one Luke Dixon in the world. Besides that, Luke would rather play his guitar for pennies on the street than take some job teaching a psychology lab to a bunch of freshmen at a hoity toity college like Greenview. It just isn’t his style. It’s not the same Luke Dixon at all.

I turn to Iz. “He’s not up there.”

“Of course he’s not,” she says, her voice just a tiny bit too bright. “Look, I’m not trying to get in trouble on the first day. So, off we go. Maybe we can convince Dr. Evans that the geriatric crowd needs emotional support and he’ll let you switch into my section. We’ll both be stuck with Brian, but at least we’ll be together.”

When I don’t respond, her words speed up, like they always do when she gets nervous. “You know, maybe I could skip lab just this once. Let’s get out of here. We’ll go get ice cream. Ben and Jerry’s. We can watch bad chick flicks and reality TV all afternoon.”

Izzy is the biggest cheapskate I’ve ever met. She’s never paid five dollars for a pint of ice cream in her life. As a result, I’ve become an expert in scraping off the nasty layer of ice that’s always caked on the top of the generic stuff. 

Her willingness to abandon her cheapness belies the depth of her concern. It also snaps me back into myself. I paste a small smile onto my face and pick up my bag.

“No. Go to lab, Miss Goody Two Shoes. You’ve held out against my corruptive nature for three years, and I’m not about to break your streak.”

She searches my face, looking for any sign that I’m about to crumble. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Let’s go. I’m totally fine.”

I’m not, in fact, totally fine, but I think I manage to put together a nice imitation of normal. When we pass Dr. Evans, who’s struggling to escape from the grasp of a particularly aggressive female student, I even nudge Iz and crack a smile. We’re both still snickering when we reach the hallway.

“This is me,” she says, after a quick check of the room number above one of the doors. She wraps me in an impromptu hug. “I’m getting ice cream to celebrate the first day of senior year, and you’re not going to stop me. You. Me. Channing Tatum. Dance party.”

“It’s not necessary...”

“It is,” she says, her voice unwavering. “After class, I’ll give you twenty minutes to get back to the dorm before I start blowing up your phone. Be there or be square.”

“Did you really just say that?”

“Yes. I did. You want to make something of it?” She raises her eyebrows in an effort to appear menacing, but she fails miserably. I grin. “Be good, Stella. Go to class.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I pronounce, giving her a wink and a little salute. She rolls her eyes and disappears into the classroom, with a smooth apology for the TA already on her lips. Brian will forget her lateness the moment he looks at her. People will forgive Izzy for pretty much anything, although she tries not to abuse that particular privilege.

I can’t remember where my class is, so I glance down at the cover of my notebook and squint to make out the hastily scribbled numbers. Payne 124? 128?

I’m cursing my terrible handwriting when solid flesh, as sturdy as a brick wall, crashes into me. My bag makes an unwelcome thud as it hits the floor, and the strap tangles in between my legs, taking me along with it. Great. I just made an idiot of myself and it wasn’t even my fault. With my luck, my computer is probably shattered.

I take an extra second to gather my things and my rage. I fully intend on giving the clumsy jerk who just ran into me a piece of my mind, but I’m trying not to add a punch in the face to go along with it. As soon as my temper is under control and I’m fairly certain that I’m not in imminent danger of getting arrested, I reach for the notebook and start to stand up.

A deep, musical voice, holding the traces of a vaguely British accent, hits my ears.

“Are you okay? I am so sorry. I should have been paying attention. Stupid.”

I fall back to the ground. I can’t move. I can’t breathe.

It’s the familiar, lilting voice of the boy who put frogs in my bed, who is the sole cause for my arachnophobia, who once pretended to be the ghost of Granger Manor by dressing up in a white sheet and wailing into my ear in the middle of the night. The voice that belongs to the person who was the bane of my existence for my entire childhood and most of my adolescence.

He also taught me how to dance, to swim, and to make a joke without ruining the punch line. I can thank him for my sarcasm. It’s served me well these last three years. I should thank him. I might do just that, if my voice ever decides to reappear.

My world blurs and spins and whirs and becomes nothing more than a sea of colors and memories and images of a thousand perfect summer days.

I fell in love with him when I was five years old. Almost everything about me has been shaped by Luke Dixon. For Luke Dixon.

Once upon a time, he also saved my life.

“Hey,” he says again, more softly this time.

I can’t look at his face, not yet. Besides, standing up will give him an unearned and unwelcome advantage. Even in my platform boots, I’ll be five or six inches too short to confront him at eye level. So, I remain on the floor, pretending to fuss with the hem of my dress while I battle the demons swirling in my head.

Luke crouches low to the ground and stretches out a hand. Great. He’s evidently picked up chivalrous habits somewhere along the way. I brush his hand away, ignoring both it and his verbal offer of assistance. I don’t need his help. I can stand up on my own.

Or maybe not. One wayward glance at his face threatens to knock me down. Again.

I’ve thought about his rumbling laughter, his teasing voice, and the telltale twinkle in the crystalline blue of his eyes. I’ve thought about all of these things so many times that I’ve considered a craniotomy. I eventually decided that lopping off potentially useful parts of my brain would do nothing to erase his presence in my heart.