The Professor

by Alexandria Clarke

  Today, Catherine found it hard to stay still. She paced the clubhouse’s meeting room, taking hurried laps around the lengthy dining table. As the minutes wore on, she grew more and more agitated. It had been nearly a month since her last fruitless discussion with Anthony. Since then, he’d grown even more reclusive, avoiding the Raptors as much as possible. Twice, Catherine had caught a glimpse of him on campus. Both times, he had been with that infernal Natasha, and damned if he hadn’t looked happier than Catherine had ever seen him before. She hated him for it, and she hated the raffish Natasha on principle.

  Her overflowing hostility had filtered down into her daily duties for the Black Raptor Society. The previous year, as a junior, Catherine had been assigned to seek out freshmen with society potential. She had chosen those with familial ties to the Raptors, as was tradition, but also picked out a few with fresh blood. She trained them in her own image and taught them to be ruthless and cunning. Her methods, though harsh, were effective in her opinion. Last year’s class of new Raptors had been flawless. This year, on the other hand, the acolytes were weak. Catherine, channeling her venom for Natasha and Anthony, had pushed them to a breaking point, and just a few days’ prior, it had gone too far.

  Catherine’s heart leapt as the sound of footsteps made their way down the corridor outside the meeting room. She forced her feet to come to a stop so as to not seem too jittery. When the door to the meeting room opened, a tall, blond boy, his hair cropped short to his scalp, slipped inside.

  “Finally,” breathed Catherine as she strolled over to him. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you, Harrison? This meeting was your idea.”

  Harrison gripped Catherine by her shoulders then cupped one hand gently behind her neck. “I know. I’m sorry. Anthony’s in crisis mode.”

  “Is that what this is about?”

  Harrison withdrew from Catherine, glancing furtively at the corners of the room. “Catherine, I really don’t know how to tell you this.”

  “It can’t possibly be worse than Anthony telling me he’s leaving me for Natasha,” spat Catherine. She had meant for it to sound nonchalant, like a joke, but it came out in a briary tone.

  Harrison nervously rubbed at his short hair. “I’m afraid it is.”

  His twitchiness rubbed at Catherine’s already overflowing anxiety. “What is it?”

  He began kneading the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb, as though trying to relieve the pressure of a tension headache. “First of all, you have to know how shitty it is for me to be caught up in this. I’m loyal to BRS first and foremost, which wasn’t a problem until Anthony pulled away. Now I have to tiptoe along a very fine line between the Raptors and Anthony.”

  Catherine crossed her arms. “You mean between Anthony and me.”

  Harrison gave her a look. “You essentially are the Raptors, Cat. You represent their every value to the fullest.”

  The double meaning behind Harrison’s statement did not go lost on Catherine. Some of the Raptors, dedicated as they were to the society, scorned Catherine’s zeal to prove herself. For the most part, she ignored them. The Raptors had originally been built as a brotherhood. It was only in the last decade that they had begun accepting women. Catherine had made a point to bring in more strong women, expanding the Raptors’ diversity, but it would always be a struggle to convince her doubtful male counterparts of her competence.

  “And what values of mine have been compromised, Harrison?” she demanded. Harrison stepped closer, his arms outstretched, as if he meant to embrace Catherine in a gesture of comfort. She eluded his grasp. “Tell me.”

  Harrison took a deep breath and lowered his arms. He should’ve known better than to try and provoke any emotion other than anger from Catherine. She was a firecracker, not a birthday candle. “Remember when you asked me to handle the situation with Anthony? Pull him back in, remind him of what it’s like to really be a part of the Raptors?”

  “And?”

  “I thought it was going well,” admitted Harrison. He ducked his head, avoiding Catherine’s gaze, and absently traced a dent in the lacquer of the dining-room table with his index finger. “He listened when I updated him on BRS business, and he stopped talking about Natasha to me, like he’d forgotten about her.”

  Catherine clicked her tongue. The popping noise echoed through the room. “You absolute imbecile.”

  Harrison looked up. “Pardon me?”

  “He played you,” said Catherine, and a wry smile crept up to her lips. “Anthony, as much as he tries to deny it, embodies all the best traits of a true Raptor, including the lovely art of deceit. Of course he stopped talking to you about Natasha. He knew that his separation from her was what you and the rest of us wanted.”

  “Yeah, I get that now,” said Harrison with a sharp bite to his words. Catherine raised an eyebrow at his tone. He reeled in his aggravation at his own mistake in order to explain. “Earlier today, he told me he wanted to talk privately. I had no idea what he was going to say. Hell, I was hoping he was going to tell me that he’d been an idiot and wanted to get back to working with the Raptors.”

  “I can only assume that is not what happened.”

  Harrison shook his head, drew out one of the high-backed dining chairs, and sank into it. “Cat, he snuck into the clubhouse when no one else was here.”

  Catherine waited for more, but Harrison remained quiet. “Is that all?” she asked. “As a full-fledged Raptor, he’s allowed to be in the clubhouse whenever he wants. It’s not like we’ve disowned him, though admittedly I wish we could. Why on earth would I care if he’s sneaking down here on his own?”

  “Because he planted security cameras in most of the rooms.”

  Catherine’s body went cold, as though a bone-chilling temperature had suddenly taken over the room. “He—”

  “He’s been filming us, yes.”

  “Since when?”

  “I believe he installed the cameras shortly after your very public argument last month.”

  Catherine’s hands began to shake, and she interlocked her fingers in an attempt to quell their involuntary movements. “Does that mean he has what I think he has on tape?”

  “Your hazing rituals?”

  Catherine nodded.

  “I can confirm that he has a recording of your latest misdeed in his collection.”

  Catherine shuddered and would have crumpled to the floor had she not leaned over and planted both of her clammy palms on the dining table for support. How had it come to this? She had worked more diligently than any of the other Raptors for her place in this society, and now Anthony Costello had the means to rip it all away from her.

  “That pledge was weak,” she said, her voice barely audible. “He must have had some kind of underlying medical condition we didn’t know about.”

  “I doubt an underlying medical condition would hold up in court,” said Harrison dryly. “He’s dead, and the fact that he came to be dead at the hands of the Raptors ultimately would not have been a problem save for Anthony’s clever obsession with technology.”

  Catherine’s fists clenched, and her palms left a sweaty residue on the table top. “Has Anthony gone to the police yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m in the tapes too,” said Harrison, resting his forehead in his hands. “He wanted to offer me an out. If you recall, I tried to stop you from going any further with that pledge.”

  Catherine shook her head. She could hardly remember anything about that fateful night. One moment, ten healthy acolytes had entered the Raptors’ clubhouse ready to prove themselves, and the next, nine of them stood over a body. Everything in-between had been burned away by whatever Anthony-induced rage seethed through Catherine that evening.

  “Why are you even telling me this?” Catherine asked Harrison, refusing to look at him.

  Harrison stood, taking Catherine’s hands. He turned her to face him. “Anthony is my best friend, my bro
ther even, but my loyalty lies with the Black Raptor Society. With you.”

  He tipped her chin up and kissed her. It felt wrong at first, as though the universe was trying to convince Catherine that she was betraying Anthony. But he had betrayed her first, and the thought of Anthony and Natasha together spurred Catherine to respond passionately to Harrison’s alternate offer.

  When they parted, Catherine intertwined her fingers behind Harrison’s neck and leaned her forehead against his.

  “We have to get those tapes.”

  Present Day

  Once more, I plodded down the stairs to the basement of Floorboard Lit. The small underground room slowly but surely felt less cozy and more prisonlike with each of my visits. Lauren’s uncle had suggested that I start using the back door to the cafe, lest any of his regular customers begin to question my sporadic, frequent comings and goings. I prayed that none of Ben’s regulars were members of the Black Raptor Society. Then we would all be royally screwed.

  “How’d it go?” asked Lauren, but then she caught a glimpse of my tear-stained face. “Ooh. Not well, I presume.”

  I collapsed on the leather couch and covered my face with one of the throw pillows. It smelled like cedar balls. “It went about as terribly as I expected it to go,” I mumbled into the pillow. “I sincerely hope that’s the last time I ever have to tell anyone that someone they love is dead.”

  Lauren joined me on the couch and draped an arm across my shoulders. “I know this is hard, Nicole, but we need to keep moving forward. We’re running out of time. Besides, I have good news.”

  Hesitantly, I peeked out from behind the throw pillow. “What kind of good news?”

  “I decoded some of the files off of O’Connor’s laptop.”

  I tossed aside the pillow, sitting up straight. “What were they?”

  Lauren stood, fetched O’Connor’s computer, and returned to the couch. “Video files,” she said, opening the one with the earliest date. “And you won’t believe what’s on them.”

  “Did you watch them?”

  “Just the first minute or so of this one,” admitted Lauren. A video player booted up on the machine, and O’Connor’s face appeared in the window. “I thought it would be better if you were here before I watched the rest of them.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because they’re addressed to you.”

  Before I could respond to this revelation, Lauren pressed play, and I leaned in to watch. O’Connor looked into the camera, adjusting the angle of the lens. He looked less harried than I remembered him. His hair was neatly combed, and his glasses sat evenly on his nose rather than at the messy angle I had grown used to in the last few months of his life. He made one final tweak to the camera and began to speak.

  “Today is August twenty-fifth, 2014,” he began. “It is the first day of the fall semester, and Nicole Costello just walked into my class.”

  Lauren and I exchanged a glance, but she only gestured back to the screen, a silent order to continue watching.

  O’Connor removed his glasses and massaged his temples. “I can’t believe this is happening. When I saw her name on my roster, I thought it was a fluke. I prayed it was a coincidence. And then she walked in. She’s still so young. Twenty-eight or twenty-nine maybe. Then I thought to myself, has it really been that long?”

  “What is he talking about?” I asked Lauren, still confused. Before arriving at Waverly, I’d never known George O’Connor. “That long since when?”

  Lauren shushed me and pointed back at the monitor.

  O’Connor shook his head. “I have no idea why I’m talking about her in the third person.” He looked straight at the camera. “Nicole, these videos are for you. Let me just begin by saying that I never thought I’d see you again, and my God, you look just like Natasha. It was like seeing a ghost walk into my classroom.”

  “Who’s Natasha?” asked Lauren.

  “My mother.”

  “She would be so proud of you, Nicole,” continued O’Connor, “for all of the things that you’ve accomplished, your acceptance to Waverly included, of course. I imagine she would’ve loved sharing secrets about her time here with you.”

  I drew my lip in between my teeth, focusing on the pressure there rather than the burning feeling in my eyes. I had cried enough for one day, but O’Connor’s reminiscence reminded me of all the things I’d lost when my parents had died.

  O’Connor drew closer to the camera, so close that the pores on his face became visible. “Here’s the thing, Nicole. Waverly University is not safe. Not for me, and certainly not for you. I have a feeling that it’s all starting over again, and I really hope that you never have to find this and watch it, because if you do, it probably means that I’m dead.”

  19

  I stared at the computer screen, unable to look away from O’Connor’s face. It was odd to see him talk again. How long had it been since I last saw him? Weeks? Months? It couldn’t have been that long, but for some reason, the sight of O’Connor, alive and well, made it feel like I’d been slogging through waist-deep muck with the Raptors for years on end. And according to O’Connor, the battle had been going on a lot longer than I originally thought.

  “I truly don’t understand how you ended up at Waverly,” O’Connor went on. “You’ll only find trouble here. Fate can be cruel in that respect. Your parents would’ve wanted you as far away from this school as possible. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.”

  He cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders back. “Nicole, before you were born, both of your parents, Natasha and Anthony, were students at Waverly University. Your father was a member of the Black Raptor Society.”

  A chill washed over me. I’d spent most of my childhood questioning the aunt who raised me about my parents. She had never been forthcoming with information. No matter how many questions I’d bombarded her with, she had adamantly refused to answer them. I was finally beginning to understand why.

  “At this point, if you’ve gotten this far,” continued O’Connor, “then you know who the Raptors are. You may be wondering how your father was ever a part of that infernal society. Let me reassure you that your father was a good man.” He chuckled to himself. “Don’t get me wrong. I hated him at first. You see, I grew up with your mother. Natasha was one of my best friends, and the thought of her being with some blue-blooded Raptor asshole made my skin crawl.”

  That explained how O’Connor ended up as my connection to the past. He had known my mother, and from his words and the glazed look in his eyes, I guessed that O’Connor had wanted to be a little more than friends with Natasha.

  O’Connor blew out a sigh. “Anthony proved me wrong, although I expect Natasha had a lot to do with that. Your mother was a determined woman, intelligent and cunning, but she was hard to win over. If you managed to do so, she loved you deeply and with every piece of her heart. I think she would have burned Waverly to the ground if it meant getting Anthony out of the Raptors’ clutches.”

  “She knew?” I asked Lauren. “About BRS? Do you think my father told her?”

  Lauren shrugged.

  “I’m skipping parts again,” O’Connor said with a little smack to his forehead as if to admonish himself. He reached over the camera to pick something up. It was a leather-bound journal, and as O’Connor flipped through it, I could see that the pages were thick with ink. “This is your mother’s diary,” explained O’Connor. “She left it behind when she… Anyhow, I think it’s best if you hear it from her. I’ve photocopied the relevant pages and downloaded them to this computer for you to read. I have to warn you though. It’s not a fun journey. Quite the contrary. I’m so sorry that it had to come to this.”

  O’Connor caressed the cover of the leather journal, looking forlorn. “I’m not sure what to do with the hard copy. My senses tell me to get rid of it so that the Raptors will never find it, but it’s the only thing I have left of her.” He looked into the camera again. “I hope this diary fin
ds its way back to you one day, Nicole. You deserve to have the record of Natasha’s accomplishments at your disposal.”

  With that, he covered the camera with his hand, and the monitor went black.

  I turned to Lauren. “Is that it?”

  “There are a couple more video files, but I haven’t decoded them yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I was working on your mother’s diary entries.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t watch the whole video.”

  She paused, chewing on her lip. “I lied. I just didn’t want you to think I was being disrespectful for not waiting for you.”

  I sighed. “Lauren, it’s research, plain and simple. Watch and read everything you find. That way, we’re both on the same page.”

  “Well, in that case, I already read the earliest diary entry that O’Connor left for you.”

  “Super. What does it say?”

  “See for yourself.”

  Lauren double-clicked the file, opening a new window to reveal the first page of my mother’s scrupulous handwriting. My chest tightened at the sight of it. I had no memories of my mother—she had died when I was still a toddler—but her penmanship was familiar to me somehow.

  March 13, 1985

  I’ve finally discovered where Anthony disappears to in the middle of the night. I kept following him to the library only to lose him in the rare-manuscript room. And yes, I understand that tailing your boyfriend is not the best way of convincing him that you completely and utterly trust him, but I was never one to mind my own business, and if someone’s hurting the people I love, I’m going to fight back. Besides, Anthony told me himself that if he could get out of it, he would. What kind of person would I be if I just stood back and watched him suffer?