Today's Reading
A mystique hung over the class, as if secret knowledge was shared behind the closed doors of room 1.04B, and over the professor, whose ideas could be found in newspaper columns and podcast interviews, on bookshelves, and in the law journals we studied. He had a high public profile, at least among the sort of people who pay attention to law professors.
In the baking heat of the courtyard, I was using what little time I had before my first class to read, for the fourth time, the article Crane had assigned us. There were crumbs on my T-shirt, grains of sugar from the doughnut I had just eaten. My foot tapped against the leg of my chair, my hand scratching subconsciously at the mosquito bites along my calves. My T-shirt was the same pale pink as my skin, owing to an unintended nap in the sun the afternoon before. I was beginning to think I might be allergic to the weather here, hot-girl summer not an Irish phenomenon.
Right from the beginning, I would need to impress Crane. I had to catch his eye, just as Audrey had done that term at Trinity. My purpose here depended on it.
I needed Crane to notice me, but I had never possessed the conventional, easy attractiveness of my sister. We looked nothing alike—a difference so notable that people felt free to comment on it. My sister and I were direct physical opposites in most respects, as if our genes had been selected to produce the starkest contrast. My face was long, eyes deep-set, hair dark, thick and unruly. Audrey's face was round, eyes bright and blue, hair blond and sleek.
Even when we were young—too young—men would notice her. She would point them out to me when she caught them looking and I would meander their way to "accidentally" step on their feet, or spill a drink on their laps, or—on one particularly egregious occasion—run a key along the paintwork of his car.
But it wasn't just the bare physicality that made us so different. There were other qualities Audrey possessed that set us apart. She had an openness, a way of smiling out at the world, that I lacked completely. Something in her movements, in her habits, drew people's attention. It felt good to be around her. I know this because I felt it in her presence too. The deep peace she had in herself, an unguardedness in the way she met the world—something Crane took from her, an unforgivable theft.
I don't think it was Audrey's looks alone that attracted Crane. But if her beauty had ever caught his eye in a crowded lecture hall, I doubted I would stand out the same way. I would not have the luxury of such an easy appeal to base instincts. I would have to rely on rat wit and fox cunning, on animal chicanery, instead of feminine wiles.
"Jessie?"
A man's voice shook me out of my thoughts. I squinted up at him, his face framed by a sun so bright it seemed to scorch my eyes.
"It is Jessie, right?"
He was tall, with dark hair and small brown eyes behind Henry Kissinger glasses, wearing a black T-shirt with Hillary 2016 printed in white. I remembered dimly a conversation we'd had the previous night at a dorm party on the floor below mine about the upcoming presidential election. I had gone to hoover up what intel I could get on Crane before I would face him in class. But, preoccupied by this hunt for information, I had managed to forget this guy's name.
"Yeah," I said, eyes blinking back the sunlight. "Hi... I'm sorry, I'm useless at names."
"Right...ha! It's Joshua. We spoke last night? You were arguing with me about Bernie Sanders." He pushed his glasses up his nose, still smiling.
"Oh, yeah. That rings a bell." I shaded my eyes so I could better see him. "He should be the candidate."
"Yeah... Yeah, you said that last night." He shifted his backpack on his shoulder, grinning broadly. There was something deeply appealing about that grin, something soothing in its simplicity. "So, you said you're also in Crane's Law and Lit class, right? I'm on my way there now."
"Yes!" I sat up straighter. Joshua—of course. He was the first of the other Law and Lit students I had met, and I was curious to learn who Crane had chosen, these students who would, unknowingly, witness my plan unfold. "Yes, I am... I'll just grab my bag and I can come with you?"
...
