Page 2 of Bone to Pick
At least, not until last semester. And that was thanks to Dr. Hancock, too.
I shook my head to clear it of those stupid memories, but all that did was make my brain slosh precariously like the goldfish in a bag my nephew Aiden had once brought home from a fair.
“Dr. Hancock’s good at sonnets,” I admitted in a defeated voice, slumping further into my seat. “And he’s a good professor.” Except, inexplicably, withme.
Nolan scowled at me, almost managing to focus on my face. “He’s also good at ruining lives, my man. Stop getting distracted with the sonnet thing. That’s what they want you to do. English professors lure us into this major with the rhyming couplets and the… the…iambic pentameter.Next thing you know, they have us doing a biographical analysis of David Foster Wallace’sConsider the Lobsterand writing personal essays on ‘memory and place.’ It’s all the sonnets’ fault.” He brandished a fist at the ceiling. “Fuckingsonnets.”
“Fucking sonnets,” we all agreed before throwing back another shot.
Beck paused for a beat as the tequila burned on its way down. “Okay, so, like, what if you… what if youtook back the sonnet, Porter?”
I squinted at her. “Took back… which sonnet?”
“The one you’re going to write!”
“Huh?” Either she was very drunk, or I was.
“Listen,” she insisted, leaning toward me with tequila-infused earnestness. “What if you wrote out your anger in an angry sonnet for Professor Hancock?”
“An angry sonnet,” Toru said, testing the idea on their tongue. “Hmmmm.”
“You mean like Sonnet 147? ‘Black as hell and dark as night’? That kind of thing?” I tilted my head, considering. “Ihavealways enjoyed an angry sonnet.”
“Same,” Nolan said, nodding at the same empty beer glass in front of him. “Same! I mean, who doesn’t?”
Beck tapped a fingernail on a beer mat. “And what if you delivered that sonnetspoken wordstyleto his face.”
I blinked. “To his face? But…”
Toru closed their eyes. “A performance piece,” they breathed. “Yes. Brilliant.”
Beck elbowed me harder than she’d intended. “Sonnet 147: Porter’s Version!”
Nolan, with the fucking nodding that was making me semi-pukey, managed to recite, “‘Now reason is past care, And frantic-mad with evermore unrest.’ I dig it. Porter’s frantic-mad! Right, Porter?”
Despite being shit-faced, Nolan was right.
It was too late to change anything, of course, but every time I thought about Dr. Jerkface Hancock, my chest went hot and my stomach dropped. I’d done mybestin that class. Poured my heart into it. Spent every waking moment when I wasn’t at the Hub crafting my papers, desperate to impress him.
But he’d failed me anyway.
He’d taken a thing I loved and tarnished it. He’d made me doubt myself. And it somehow feltpersonal.
Yes. Yes, I was very much frantic-mad.
Which was my only excuse for what happened an hour later.
“Get the fuck out here, you asshole!” I shouted into the dark night.
Shivering in the cold, my Vans planted in the dead grass outside my professor’s house—a miniature log cabin set so far back in the woods that moonlight barely penetrated the dense trees around it—might have felt really unwise on another night.
Fortunately, I had my friends with me and more than enough tequila on board to overcome such a trifling concern.
From the back seat of the rideshare SUV, my friends flashed thumbs-up gestures and cheered me on through the open window. The only one who wasn’t cheering was Steve, our rideshare driver, who seemed as annoyed as I was that Dr. Hancock wasn’t coming out to meet his fate.
“You guys,” Beck called. “Are wesurethat this is actually where Doctor Hot-Cock lives? ’Cause, I-D-K, his vibe is more tasteful-artwork and industrial-penthouse, and this place is giving… animal trophies andwoodland hut.”
Toru answered, “Villains have lairs, Beck. Make peace with it.”
