All Chapters of Grading On A Curve : Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

"Mia, if you don't put that phone down I am throwing it in someone's drink." I shoved my phone back into my bag, but the numbers were already burned into my retinas. 3.41. I needed a 3.6 by the end of this semester or the scholarship committee wasn't even going to read past my name. "There." I held my hands up. "Phone's gone. Happy?" "Ecstatic." Dani grabbed my wrist and pulled me through the door, and the bass hit me like a wall, a physical thing pressing against my sternum. Lights cut blue, then red, then blue again across a hundred faces I didn't know and a handful I did. "You've been doing math in your head for two days straight. It's Friday. We're allowed to be stupid on Fridays." "I'm not being stupid, I'm being responsible." "You're being insufferable, there's a difference." She wasn't wrong, and I hated that. I let her tug me toward the bar anyway, because some buried, exhausted part of me had been waiting all week for someone to physically drag me away from my laptop.

The silence between us lasted maybe two seconds. It felt like an hour.His expression didn't crack, not exactly, but something flickered behind his eyes, something fast and controlled, like a man slamming a door shut before anyone could see what was behind it. Then he looked away, down at his notes, and continued like nothing had happened at all."This course will cover six major texts across the semester," he said, his voice perfectly level, perfectly professional, while my heart tried to climb directly out of my throat. "We'll be examining the ethical frameworks embedded in contemporary fiction, how authors construct moral ambiguity, and how readers are manipulated, intentionally or not, into sympathizing with characters who do terrible things."I heard maybe one word in five. The rest of my brain was occupied with a single, looping thought.That's him. That's actually him.I stared down at my notebook like it held the secrets of the universe, my pen frozen above the page, my pulse

"Don't post that."The words were out of my mouth before I'd even fully processed the threat, sharp and fast, and the girl with the phone froze mid stride, her expression flickering from friendly to confused to faintly defensive."Post what?" she asked. "I was just taking a picture of the quad, it's pretty today."I felt my face go hot. Professor Calder, beside me, didn't so much as blink."What's your question about the syllabus," he said, calm as anything, like the last ten seconds hadn't happened at all."Oh, right, sorry." She lowered the phone, tucking it into her bag, and I forced my shoulders down from somewhere near my ears. "The reading response for Thursday, does it need to be typed or can we hand write it?""Typed. Double spaced. Specifications are on the syllabus PDF.""Got it, thanks." She glanced between the two of us, a flicker of curiosity crossing her face that I did not like one bit. "Sorry, were you guys in the middle of something?""Ms. Reyes had a question about t