Haunted Heroine

by Sarah Kuhn

  I gazed up at the Trio, willing them to give me strength. I told myself to just keep sitting there, keep breathing. Calm yourself down until you’re not mad anymore.

  I was still sitting there, hugging myself, when Aveda returned.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THINGS STAYED SILENT between Nate and me through the night and into the next morning. No texts, no calls—nothing. I went to bed early while Aveda put the finishing touches on her room décor. I didn’t respond to Lucy’s texts asking me for follow-up details about “The Doctor.”

  I was still upset, but I had to shove it aside so I could properly embark on the next phase of our mission. I’d asked Provost Glennon—once again—about Julie. She’d told me that Julie had actually been released from the hospital and had withdrawn from Morgan for the rest of the academic year. She was home with her family now. When I’d pressed, asking if I could still speak to Julie somehow, the provost had claimed Julie and her family wanted to put all this behind them, and it was too traumatic for their daughter to speak of the incident at all.

  I got that. I also didn’t quite believe it.

  Julie’s voice floated through my head again:

  Don’t trust them.

  It didn’t make sense for Provost Glennon to make such a production out of hiring Aveda and me and then block what seemed like a very important lead. I’d have to keep pushing, and figure out my own ways of pursuing it. I needed to know Julie was okay. And I needed to know what she’d meant.

  But for now, I had to martial all my inner resources to TA a class taught by my loathsome ex.

  It was weird to be back in front of a classroom. This particular class was usually conducted in Burke Theater, but since Burke Theater was currently—ahem—damaged, we were meeting in one of the more standard Morgan classrooms. As a smaller school, Morgan liked to keep its class size reasonably intimate; most of the sessions were discussion groups of under thirty students. Thus many of the classrooms were also small—kind of like a more welcoming version of a conference room, a single long table in the middle taking up most of the space. This room also had a nice big window letting in tons of light and a large whiteboard attached to one wall with various bits of film theory scribbled all over it.

  I remembered how it felt to enter one of these classrooms for the first time—that sense of promise, of possibility. Of good things to come.

  I took one of the two seats positioned at the head of the table—the one that was slightly to the left, hugging a corner. The more awkward seat. The TA seat.

  As the students filed in, shooting me curious looks, I felt a strange stab of longing. That reverse déjà vu again. What would this life have been like? I supposed there was no sense dwelling on it, so I made a show of pulling a sheaf of papers out of my bag, and tried to discreetly scan the faces of the students settling into their seats, looking for the one Provost Glennon had told me to talk to.

  Her name was Shelby Tran, and Aveda and I had scoured her social media, so we knew what she looked like (not to mention the fact that she was super into videos of pugs snoring). She was tall and athletically built, with broad shoulders and defined biceps and a shaggy mane of black hair that looked like she probably cut it herself. I didn’t see her sitting in class, though. Maybe she was out sick?

  Before I could ponder the mystery of Shelby Tran’s absence any further, the classroom door flew open and Richard and his ugly elbow-patch blazer barged through.

  I took a cleansing breath, and ordered myself to maintain a bright, inquisitive expression.

  “Hi,” I said, extending a hand. “I’m your new TA.”

  “Oh, hello,” he said, blinking those annoying blue eyes at me. “Professor Richard Covington—though I guess you already know that.” He didn’t recognize me, of course, thanks to my expertly glamoured face. I’d also asked Scott to give me perfectly manicured nails—my actual nails were pretty scraggly-looking and unkempt, especially since I’d taken to clenching my fists extra hard when I was stressed about being pregnant and trying to grin and bear it through everyone telling me how glowing I was. Which was kind of all the time.

  “Provost Glennon told me you’d be starting today,” Richard continued. “I thought it was a touch odd to have a new TA starting right in the middle of the semester, but . . .”

  He flashed me a charmingly apologetic smile, and I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. That was the same smile he always deployed to convince people that he was a bumbling professor—a bit hapless, just couldn’t help the fact that he was somehow accidentally sleeping with a large cross-section of faculty and grad students and, oh, had he forgotten to mention that?

  “Yes, I was thrilled they let me transfer in a few weeks late,” I finally managed, pasting a smile across my face. Ah, finally my frozen smile was coming in handy. “I’m Eliza. Eliza Takahashi.”

  “Ahhhh, Takahashi, Japanese,” he said, giving the name a bunch of weird inflections he probably imagined to be “authentic” in some way. “You’ll be of special help during my unit on Kurosawa, then! In the meantime, we’re currently studying popular speculative franchises of the modern era and why they resonate. We’re in the midst of an in-depth discussion of the Dusk series—do you know it?”

  “I do,” I said, trying not to let my face betray what I was actually thinking—which was, Good fucking god, how did I ever let this man touch me?

  I guessed my graduate school days were even more lonely and sad than I’d imagined. Poor Mouse Evie.

  “It’s that same old story: ordinary teenage girl has to choose between a fae prince and a dragon god, all while developing magic powers of her own,” he said, chuckling to himself. “Somehow it went from wildly successful YA series to even more wildly successful movie franchise. I know it’s populist trash, but I like to give these girls a bit of candy before I introduce them to the true masters of genre, like Tolkien.”

  My frozen rictus smile was so strained, my cheeks started to hurt. Yeah, I must have been really lonely.

  Luckily, the students were still chattering among themselves and setting up tablets and other note-taking devices, so they didn’t hear their own professor insulting them.

  “Good afternoon, class,” Richard said, raising his voice and clapping his hands together. I noticed he stayed standing rather than taking the seat I’d left open for him. The chatter quieted and everyone looked toward the head of the table. I scanned their faces again and finally saw Shelby Tran, sitting all the way at the other end. She’d hunched her tall frame so it was nearly bent in half, her upper body slumped over the notebook in front of her. I couldn’t tell if she was being extra studious or trying to hide the fact that she was exhausted. If it was the latter, I knew it was probably from getting up horrifically early to row crew rather than staying out late partying—Aveda and I had noticed a bunch of crew practice photos on her Instagram, most of them time-stamped in the realm of five a.m.

  “This is Eliza Takahashi, my new TA,” Richard continued, once again putting unnecessary emphasis on every single syllable of my fake last name. “She’s ready to jump right in on our discussion of Dusk.” He turned and gave me a broad wink, like he was referencing some hilarious inside joke.

  Once again, I had to resist the overpowering urge to roll my eyes. I fake-smiled extra hard and scribbled some fake notes on the papers in front of me. Yeesh. This whole undercover TA thing was going to be more of a challenge than I’d thought. Sure, I’d had a thoroughly annoyed reaction when I’d spied Richard across the courtyard at the reunion. But having to listen to his self-important blather . . .

  I breathed deeply and told myself to get it together. The mission was more important than my full-body irritation.

  Think of Julie, I told myself. She needs you—no matter what Provost Glennon says.

  “Look, I can’t lie, I love this series,” a girl with platinum hair, flawless brown skin, and dramatic swoop
ing eyeliner said. “I know it has a classic love triangle setup, but the feelings are so real. I read it when I was thirteen and it made me feel like my own out-of-control hormones and emotions were, y’know, normal.”

  “Ah, yes, the love triangle,” Richard said, picking up a marker and writing with zeal on the whiteboard. I noticed his elbow patches somehow had chalk marks on them, even though I was pretty sure no one at the college had used actual chalk in at least two decades. “What do we think this trope signifies? Youthful indecision?”

  I tried to tune him out for a moment and focus on studying Shelby Tran. She was sitting next to the swoopy eyeliner girl, still hunched over her notebook, her shaggy hair falling around her like an unkempt curtain.

  According to the campus security report Provost Glennon had given to Aveda and me, Shelby had been crossing through the main courtyard in front of Morgan Hall when she’d seen a ghostly apparition—a woman driving a horse-drawn wagon. This was one of the oldest recurring ghosts at Morgan, and had been spotted by many students for the past century. But usually it was—as Bea’s ghost-hunting groups put it—a passive haunting, with the woman merely riding by and not acknowledging any humans. This time, she’d spotted Shelby, let out an unearthly moan, and attempted to chase after her. Shelby had managed to outrun the ghostly horses, but it was dark, and she’d ended up crashing into a tree. By that time, the ghost had vanished, and Shelby hightailed it back to her dorm. The whole encounter had left her understandably unsettled. And I needed to figure out a way to talk to her about it.

  “Professor Covington, why does the love triangle have to signify anything?” Swoopy Eyeliner’s latest observation cut through my thoughts. She cocked her head at Richard, giving him a genuinely curious look. “Why can’t it just be, you know . . .” She lowered her head, blushing a little. “. . . like, hot?”

  “Ah, but that is a trope, Pippa,” Richard said, jabbing the air with his marker. “Wish fulfillment is, in fact, one of the most overused tropes in this kind of fiction.”

  “Oh,” Pippa began, her face falling. “I didn’t realize, I just, um . . .”

  Watching her deflate pinged something in me—I could have been watching myself years ago, right after Richard dismissed another one of my theories.

  “Perhaps we could talk about tropes in general,” I piped up, giving Pippa an encouraging smile. “And why certain tropes might speak to us in stories, how they make stories powerful—why do you think you, for instance, find this particular love triangle hot?”

  “I don’t know if we really need to be delving into this tangent—” Richard began.

  “Why not?” I said, keeping that smile firmly pasted on my face. “This is a discussion group, isn’t it, Professor Covington?”

  “Hmm,” Pippa said, gnawing on her lower lip. “I guess . . . I mean, I’m brown like Sana, the main character, so seeing two people fight over her is just kind of awesome? I’ve never really seen myself as ‘desirable’ in most stories, you know?”

  “And seeing that on the page is powerful, yes?” I said, my smile turning more genuine.

  She nodded eagerly. “It really is, it’s so—”

  “Anyway,” Richard interrupted loudly—and Pippa deflated again. “Let’s get back into digging into the literary piece of this wish fulfillment trope—”

  “I don’t think Pippa was quite done talking, Professor,” I said, trying to keep my tone mild even as my irritation flared. God. His pompous dismissal took me right back to him mocking my paper topic. Him condescendingly implying I was bad at sex, and that was the reason I couldn’t have an orgasm when we were together. Him twisting my idea around and using it for his own lecture and acting like I should thank him for it.

  I took another cleansing breath.

  “Right, wish fulfillment,” Pippa said—but now she looked unsure, her eyeliner twitching as she screwed her face up, trying to follow that train of thought. “Ummm. Like, I wish I could have magic powers that might possibly destroy the earth and make my hair look fabulous at all times?”

  “That’s a good start,” I said, nodding at her. “But I meant in terms of what you were talking about before, women of color being seen as desirable in stories—”

  “Let’s talk about the elevated idea of desirability in this story,” Richard interrupted. “The idea that two of the most fantastical, powerful beings on the planet would be jostling to date someone who at least initially seems to be a fairly unremarkable teenage girl is a very classic kind of wish fulfillment—”

  “The character’s not unremarkable,” I said, struggling like mad to keep my building rage out of my voice. “As Pippa just said, she has earth-destroying capabilities—”

  “Not until the end of the second book,” Richard said, turning his condescending smile on me. “I’m sorry, Ms. Takahashi, have you actually read the course materials? Your grasp on these concepts seems a bit superficial—”

  “Oh, does it?” I hissed—then cleared my throat and forced that fake smile back on my face. “Then maybe we should let Pippa continue with her point, she’s obviously read the text—”

  “My point was: this wish fulfillment doesn’t serve a real literary purpose,” Richard barreled on. “It’s just there to make the reader feel like that could be her, too.”

  “Buuuut . . .” Pippa frowned, tapping her bright pink gel pen against her temple. “I gotta admit, I did enjoy thinking Sana could be me—because like I said, she’s brown and I never see brown girls get all the love like that. Isn’t part of the ‘literary purpose’ of this series pleasure—that we’re reading something we enjoy?”

  “Of course it is,” I said.

  Pippa gave me a small smile. “So maybe that’d be an interesting paper topic, huh? The idea of projecting yourself onto the text and who does and doesn’t get to do that—”

  “A fun fan theory,” Richard interrupted, waving his marker around. “But hardly an academic paper topic.”

  Pippa deflated again, shriveling in her seat. “I’m sorry. I must not be getting this. I just—”

  “It’s quite all right. But enjoyment of something doesn’t necessarily equal literary merit,” Richard said, his condescending smile widening as he pointed his marker at Pippa. I had a sudden visceral desire to snatch it out of his hand and deface his stupid elbow patches.

  “Pippa, perhaps you should listen more closely in class,” Richard continued. “It doesn’t seem like you’re quite understanding what we’re discussing here, which does not encompass these . . . these fan-type theories—”

  “Bull. Shit.”

  The voice cut through Richard’s speech so loudly and directly, it took me a few moments to realize it was my voice.

  That I’d said what I was thinking out loud. And that the entire class was now staring at me. Even Shelby Tran had looked up from her exhausted scribbling to study the upstart TA who had just totally interrupted a professor.

  “Interesting perspective, Ms. Takahashi,” Richard said, giving me what I’d previously thought was an encouraging smile—now I recognized it as dismissal. “Let’s move on to a discussion of tropes in general, and how they so often become clichés—”

  “Oh, please.” Again, the words just shot out of my mouth, and I couldn’t help it. He wasn’t listening. He’d bulldozed over a student who was just starting to form her own point of view, who was engaging in a meaningful and enthusiastic way with stories—and worse, he’d made her feel ignorant and small and basically humiliated her in front of the whole class.

  She wasn’t ready to stand up to him.

  But I was.

  “Ms. Takahashi, we’ve spent the last few sessions discussing the tired setup of this franchise and how it exemplifies some of the worst elements of genre storytelling,” Richard said, a pompous frown starting to poke through his charming professor façade. “If you have a counterpoint to make, then I’d sugges
t you save it for—”

  “Oh, you bet I have a counterpoint,” I said, jumping to my feet and facing him. “Just as soon as you stop interrupting people trying to have a discussion in a discussion group.” Anger was screaming through my bloodstream now and there was nothing I could do to stop it—and I was surprised to realize that I didn’t want to stop it. It felt like we were back in that long-ago classroom, him stealing and twisting my idea he’d dismissed. Only this time, I wasn’t shoving my anger down.

  I wasn’t Mouse Evie. Not anymore.

  “First of all, it’s perfectly fine to read or watch something because you enjoy it. In fact, it’s awesome.” I nodded at Pippa, who smiled back tentatively and sat up a little straighter in her seat. “Second, Professor, it’s pretty fascinating what you consider ‘tired tropes’ or clichés, since they all seem to have to do with female pleasure and enjoyment—while the things you do think contribute to literary greatness are, I’m sure, the same old stories about great white men having some kind of privileged internal crisis that the rest of us have had to endure for centuries.”

  Richard took a step back, shock crossing his face, and I felt a stab of triumph. I slammed my palms on the table and leaned forward, my raggedy fingernails scraping against the—

  Wait a minute. Why were my nails raggedy? I glanced down at them again and a skitter of nerves punctured my annoyance—my hands looked like . . . my hands. Not Eliza Takahashi’s, with her perfect pink nails.

  What the hell. What’s happening to my glamour?!

  “Say. That!” someone murmured, snapping me back to my annoyance at Richard.

  “Third,” I said, curling my nails against my palms and trying not to think about what might be happening to my face, “what you characterize as ‘wish fulfillment’ . . . well, why is wish fulfillment a bad thing, particularly for people who never get it? I mean, let’s just say it: particularly for women of color, who are at the center of the Dusk story. I think showing women of color experiencing any kind of joy is pretty revolutionary, actually.”