Page 92 of Endless Anger
Asherbarelyeven had to touch me. I was on the edge from waking up with my hand in his pants, and the rasp in his deep voice paired with having his half-naked body so close and so warm proved to be a dangerous cocktail.
Needless to say, that won’t be happening again.
Slinking away from the door, I move to the sinks across from me, splashing cold water on my face. My heartbeat hasn’t slowed down at all since I fled Asher’s dorm, and I’m a little afraid it never will.
He came just from watching me. I didn’t know it could happen so easily; you hear about men lacking stamina in bed, but they always talk about it in such a negative light.
No one tells you what to do if you find his lack of controlmorearousing.
If I’d spent just a few more minutes in there, I’m positive we’d have gone further into the abyss of regret.
That’s why I couldn’t stay. My judgment was clouded, and I’m nowhere near ready to forgive him forditchingme. Especially when he doesn’t seem the least bit sorry.
Not to mention the weird things that have occurred since his appearance on campus. I still don’t want to believe he had anything to do with the grisly murders, but it’s hard to ignore the timing.
Knots sprout in my stomach at the thought of letting a killer touch me like that. Asher’s violent, but cold-blooded homicide? If he cares about me as much as he claims, I can’t imagine him doing it.
Which means the real killers are someone else, and I have no leads.
When I finally leave the restroom, I take my backpack and set up at a corner table on the thirteenth floor, prying open my laptop. My dorm room is inaccessible, but the campus police at least threw together a few bags with my shit, which I’ve been storing in an unused custodial closet.
Aurora thinks Dean Bauer put me up in another dorm, especially since that’s what I told my parents to keep them from visiting a second time. Not because I don’t appreciate their intervention but because I took the dean’s threat very seriously.
I’m on thin ice here. It’s best if I just keep my head low and try to graduate with my life intact and as much dignity as possible.
So what if the thought of death—theimageof it, right before my eyes—keeps me up at night? It’s not really that different from the stress of school or my sadness keeping me awake instead.
At least every time I think about Celeste or that unidentified corpse, I feel like the reason is legitimate.
I start to work on my midterm project for Politics of Conservation, even though it’s not due for a while, but my mind wanders, and so does my cursor.
Professor Julie Ouellette is one of the founding family members, though currently the only surviving one of her house, and the instructor of this class.
The Delphic Pagesposted a thread a few years back about how Julie’s dad, a renowned poet laureate, snapped when she was a kid, killing his wife and both his parents, and stuffing the bodies beneath the floorboards of the campus observatory’s main deck.
“Because where else would the heir to a literary empire hide a body?”Pythia had quipped.
I wind up on her faculty page on Avernia’s website, noting the decrease in course load versus previous semesters. As a Curator sponsor, Professor Ouellette typically has a full schedule, yet the conservation class is the only thing listed outside of mock trial and Fury Hill Historical Society meetings.
In contrast, Professor Dupont—Sutton? I’m not going to call him that—has a packed calendar between theater, humanities, Visio Aternae projects, and unspecified commitments. He’s in high demand, it seems, although one could argue his schedule feels a littlepointedlyfull.
Almost as if he’s trying to make sure his whereabouts are never in question.
Not that I have much reason to suspect him of anything, other than his being a founding family member. Those people are too entrenched in the tainted fabric of this school for me to believe they’re all innocent though.
Finally, I end up on Quincy Anderson’s faculty page; as the new head of the classics department, she only has a couple of intro-level courses listed, plus the admissions page for the Daughters of Persephone student organization.
There are pictures of her with the initiates, posing behind the Lyceum and Obeliskos where they’re renovating the campus gardens. She’s smiling in all of them, her calm aura visible even through a lens.
When we were young, I looked up to her most. She was a lot like her dad: the silent but confident type, driven and motivated to carve out the life she wanted for herself.
At one time, I attributed that assurance and determination to academics. That was part of the reason I thought coming here would be life-changing—because she had initially made it seem that way.
Turns out some people are justbornwith these abilities. The skills can be taught, but application is a whole other ball game.
One I’ve never been very good at playing.
It’s no secret that Quincy wound up despising her time as an undergrad; anytime she came home to Aplana, she looked like she’d seen a ghost, her pale skin somehow moon white, her brown eyes sunken and guarded.
