15. Essays and Bad thoughts.
1078 Words
Danielle was perfect.
Extraordinarily, incredibly perfect.
She stood there beside the whiteboard, my pages held in hands that had stopped shaking, and she talked. She talked with a confidence I'd never seen in her before, in a steady voice that just hours earlier had been sobbing in desperation.
She spoke about the Witch Trials as if she'd spent weeks studying them. About the Malleus Maleficarum — the Hammer of Witches — written in 1486 by two Dominican inquisitors, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger. She cited passages. Exact dates. Names of victims and perpetrators.
When Stan asked her about the torture methods, she didn't hesitate.
"The pear," she said, and her voice didn't waver, "was a metal instrument shaped like a pear that was inserted into bodily cavities and then slowly opened by means of a screw. The tearing tips..."
She kept going. Detail after detail. The witch's chair, with metal spikes on the seat and backrest. Water immersion — if you floated, you were guilty; if you drowned, you were innocent. The wheel. The rack. The stake.
Stan listened, leaning against the desk, arms crossed. His face was completely neutral, impossible to read.
But I was watching him — watching the way his eyes narrowed slightly with each correct answer, the way the corner of his mouth contracted almost imperceptibly.
He knows. He knows.
But he said nothing.
When Danielle finished — after twenty minutes of relentless questioning — she walked back to her seat on legs that were trembling from the adrenaline dump. She sat down beside me and I squeezed her hand under the desk.
Her eyes were shining. Relief, gratitude, and disbelief all tangled together.
"You were—" I started to whisper.
"This is how all your oral presentations should go."
Stan's voice cut through the moment like a sharp blade.
I froze mid-word, hand still clasped around Danielle's.
"But the rest of you," he continued, pushing off from the desk and beginning to walk slowly in front of the whiteboard, hands clasped behind his back, "clearly feel above the need to actually study."
His voice was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that comes right before a storm.
"You think talent is enough. That intelligence excuses you from the work." He paused, turning his head to scan the room. "You're wrong."
His gaze moved from student to student — systematic, inevitable. And I knew — knew — exactly where it was going to land.
"I'd love to see another performance like that one." He said it, and then his eyes settled on me. "What do you say, Miss Vladă?"
The world seemed to stop.
The blood in my veins went cold. My breath got stuck somewhere between my lungs and my throat. I sat up straight automatically — a reflex, a pathetic attempt to hold onto some shred of dignity.
My brain went into full panic.
Run or evaporate. Run or evaporate. Pick one, Jolie, pick—
But there was no choice. There was no way out.
I ran a hand through my hair with a nervous gesture, trying to smooth it down, put it back in order. As if neat hair could save me from the disaster that was about to happen. As if a little dignity could change what was coming.
The silence in the classroom was absolute, heavy as lead. I could feel everyone's eyes on me. I could feel my own heartbeat pounding in my ears like a drum gone haywire.
Just say it. Say it and get it over with. Fast, like ripping off a bandage.
"I didn't write the report, Professor."
The words came out. Clear. Steady. Steadier than I expected.
I closed my eyes for one second — just one — waiting for the explosion. The shouting. The fury.
But it didn't come.
"Good."
My eyes snapped open.
Stan was still there, motionless, a few feet away from me. His face showed no anger. No disappointment. Nothing.
"Obviously." He continued, his voice flat. "As I expected."
And that phrase — that damned phrase — hit me harder than any shouting could have.
As I expected.
As if I were predictable. As if I were exactly the disappointment he'd been waiting for. As if I wasn't even worth getting angry at.
"I'll see you after class."
He turned. Went back to the desk. Picked up a register. Didn't look at me again.
And that — that calculated indifference, that absolute certainty, that refusal to even see me — hurt in a way I couldn't have explained.
Something tightened in my chest. Anger. Humiliation. Frustration. Pain. All of it at once, a knot that knocked the breath right out of me.
I was one of his best students.
Or at least, I had been.
Before.
Before everything fell apart. Before him.
I felt something clench in my chest — anger, humiliation, frustration all tangled together in a knot that made it hard to breathe. But I didn't look down. I kept my head up, jaw tight, eyes fixed straight ahead.
I won't give him that satisfaction.
I just hoped our old professor would come back — the older one, the kind one, the one who didn't make me feel like I was walking through a minefield every time I walked into class.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sebastian turn toward me. His look was sympathetic — I knew that look, I'd seen it too many times. He had figured out immediately that I'd handed my report to Danielle, and for good reason.
And that irritated me even more.
Because my best friend should have been just as angry as I was in that moment. He should have been furious with Stan for that condescending tone, for that calculated coldness.
But instead his face held only pity.
Pity for me.
I didn't want anyone's pity. I didn't want understanding, I didn't want pitying looks.
I just needed someone to help me rearrange Stan's very pretty face — maybe with one well-placed punch, maybe two.
I spent the rest of the class fantasizing about ways to ruin that perfect face of his. Considering, of course, that it would be a real shame to permanently compromise that much beauty — those sculpted cheekbones, that perfect jaw, that straight nose — but in that moment, the satisfaction would have been worth the aesthetic sacrifice.
A broken nose would suit him, I thought, with a mean little smile.
- Writer
