Bad Professor (An Alpha Male Bad Boy Romance) (121 page)

I wondered if she
knew he was on the cover of a magazine. Sienna would not be impressed, but it
really was a big deal. I reached for my phone.

"The studying
going well?" my roommate asked.

"Can you
believe the professor gives us a quiz at the start of every class? Seems
cruel," I said.

Darla shook her
head and laughed. "I heard he charts the quiz scores on a board."

I groaned. My
sister's name was on the top of that board and I could not help but look at it
every time I sat down to struggle through another quiz.

Darla gave my long
hair a sympathetic tug. "Have you ever considered changing your major? I
know nursing is a noble profession, but as far as I can see, you don't like
anything about it."

"I like
it," I said. "It’s just a lot of memorizing and papers and sitting
around studying new research. There's not a lot of, I don't know, action to
it."

"Well, if
you're looking for action, I heard there's a
Dark Flag
party over in the basement of the Mathematics lab,"
Darla said.

My roommate was
the opposite of me in many ways – an art major with a concentration in textiles
– but she was also a gamer. I stood up to lead the way out the door.

"Wait, you
forgot your phone," Darla stopped me. "Ugh, I think your advisor is
calling."

I looked at the
caller ID and bit my lip. Alice Bonton had a sixth sense about when I was going
to do something fun instead of study. There was no reason I couldn’t let the
call go to voicemail, except my father's nagging motto: never put off for
tomorrow what you can deal with right now.

"Ms. Alice,
how is your evening?" I asked. Darla shrugged her shoulders and left
without me.

"Quinn, I'm
glad I caught you. I mean, I'm not glad, I'm just grateful you answered your
phone," my advisor said.

"If this is
about skipping class last week, its sounds much worse than it was. I was
actually volunteering my time down at the blood drive. I just forgot to get a
volunteer form signed," I said.

"Skipping
class again? That's the fourth time this month. That's once a week. Quinn, I'm
concerned. I know this isn't the time to discuss it, but–" her voice
cracked. "I'm not sure how to do this."

"I can make
up all the work, I promise. I'm studying right now. Literally, the book is open
in front of me. I love nursing, I really do. I've just been distracted
lately." I stopped myself before I started talking about the new game. My
college advisor would not be impressed to hear how dedicated I was to a new
online game.

"When was the
last time you went home? Spent any time with your family?"

"I don't
know, fall break? So, well, I guess about a month," I said. "But I'm
going home for Thanksgiving. Sienna wants to stay on campus, but I agreed to go
home. I'm in charge of making the gravy. Sienna makes the best stuffing, but
she's only staying on campus to get a head start on studying for finals. She's
pre-med and wants to be a surgeon."

There was silence
on the other end of the line. Finally, when I had held my breath long enough to
see a few stars creeping around the edges of my vision, my advisor said,
"I know you look up to your sister, but I hope you have considered finding
your own path."

I could feel dread
hanging over the conversation. Ms. Alice's words were heavy and she struggled
to speak. The same weight settled over me. "Am I getting kicked out of the
nursing program?"

"What?"
my advisor asked. "No. I mean, I don't know, the skipping class is getting
out of hand. I just think now is a good time for you to consider what you
really want to do. You shouldn't stick with a major just because of family
expectations. Instead of following in your sister's footsteps–"

"Ms. Alice,
are you alright? Maybe I should make an appointment during your office
hours," I said. "I'm going online right now to put in the request. I
don't want to take up any more of your time this evening."

"Wait, Quinn,
I'm calling late for a reason," my advisor said. She cleared her throat
and paused again.

"Oh no!
You're right. I didn't know how late it was! I promised a friend I would cover
his shift at the front desk of our dorm. I gotta go, Ms. Alice. I'm sorry.
Thanks for your concern. We'll talk soon!" I hung up the phone and put it
down as if it burned my hand.

I was never rude
and I never lied, but I had been both to Ms. Alice for no discernible reason.
Something in her heavy tone and her pauses made me nervous. I looked at the
clock. It was past ten o'clock on a weeknight. My stomach twisted. Why would my
college advisor be calling so late?

I stood up and
brushed my hair back, doing my best impression of my sister's hair flip. Sienna
never let other people bother her. My sister would have cut the strange phone
call short twenty seconds after it started. On the other hand, I was wracked
with guilt. I felt as if Ms. Alice was trying to tell me something and I had
not done a good job of helping her spit it out.

Despite the guilt,
I brushed my hair and got ready to join Darla at the gamer party. I moved
quickly and was out the door before I could even shut my abandoned textbook.

"Oh, sorry.
Excuse me," I said.

The taller of the
campus security guards held up both hands. "Whoa, slow down. Are you Quinn
Thomas?"

My stomach turned
sour. "Yes?"

"Your advisor
is Alice Bonton?" he asked.

"Yes. Wait,
what's going on?" I asked.

His rotund partner
shoved his hands in his pockets and scowled. "Your advisor needs you to
meet her at Alton Tower. We're here to give you a lift. That's all we
know."

"Please come
with us, Ms. Thomas." The taller guard stepped aside and ushered me past.

I took a step
before I saw the sharp look pass between the two men. "What is this all
about? Has something happened?"

Neither said a
single word more. I fought the urge to run and instead walked downstairs and
out the front doors. The fat guard waved a thick hand towards the campus
vehicle. My feet froze and an angry buzzing started in my ears. The taller
guard stepped around me and opened the passenger side door, relegating his
partner to the backseat.

"Where are we
going?" I asked.

The lanky man
folded himself into the driver's seat. Instead of answering, he turned the key
in the ignition. I tried to close my eyes and take a calming breath, but an
incessant flashing of lights stopped me. An ambulance drove past and joined the
whirling lights of a police car not far away.

Alton Tower.
That's where the guard said my advisor was waiting. I knew it because it was my
sister's dorm.

The campus vehicle
bucked the curb and drove right onto the lawn outside Alton Tower. Another
campus security Jeep, the police car, and the ambulance blocked the front door
of the dorm. I sat in the car, not sure where I was supposed to go.

Ms. Alice
appeared, skittering around the front of the police car. She ran up to my door,
and I could see she was talking before she opened it. "Quinn, I'm so
sorry, but I was afraid you wouldn't answer if I called back."

"What is
going on?" I asked. I gripped the side of the passenger seat and refused
to get out.

"There's been
a… Um, well, an accident," my advisor said. She reached for my hand.

"My sister?
Is Sienna alright?" I slapped away Ms. Alice's hand and vaulted from the
security vehicle. The rotund security guard tried to stop me, but he was too
slow getting out of the backseat.

"Wait, Quinn,
stop. Let me tell you what happened," Ms. Alice said.

The raw agony in
her voice made me stop, but I could not turn around. She slipped around to
stand in front of me and held out her hands. I crossed my arms tightly and
waited for my advisor to speak.

"Sienna
committed suicide tonight."

I laughed. The
sound fired out of me. The two security guards backed off as if I brandished a
gun. "That can't be right. Sienna would never do that."

"Quinn, I'm
so sorry. Her roommate came back from the library and found her in the
bathtub–"

"She slit her
wrists?" I asked. The world was spinning away and getting smaller. It felt
as if everything around me was shrinking onto a television screen and some
terrible after school special was on.

"Please,
Quinn, come sit down," my advisor begged.

I yanked my arm
away from her reaching hands. Before my thoughts returned to my body, I had
started running. I dodged around the ambulance before the fat guard could catch
up. His lanky partner tried to cut me off on the front steps, but I spun out of
his reach. The guards keeping the front hall clear were too shocked to move. I
slammed into the stairwell and ran up two steps at a time.

Sienna lived on
the second floor at the end of the hall.

"Quinn, no!
That's her sister," Sienna's roommate cried as I ran past where she sat
wrapped in a blanket in the stairwell. The EMTs in the doorway called out, but
I could not stop.

A detective in a
gray suit looked up as I barreled through the door of Sienna's dorm room. His
bright badge and ashen face stopped me.

"Is it
true?" I asked.

"You're the
sister?" he asked. His gray eyes swept towards the bathroom door. "I
wouldn't."

He made no move to
stop me, seeming to understand that I had to see for myself. I lurched towards
the bathroom and stopped two feet short of the threshold. A wet puddle of bath
water mixed with dark blood inched towards the door.

Sienna was gone.
My perfect sister with her flawless beauty and driving ambition was gone.

I sank to the
floor, unsure gravity could keep me from spinning away. I clung to the rug with
both hands – Sienna's outrageously-priced woven rug she had begged our parents
for last Christmas. I gritted my teeth and swallowed hard. Sienna would never
forgive me if I threw up on her rug.

#

Sienna's
dorm room was not more than a small box. The forensic photographer worked
around me while two police officers joined the detective. They spoke at a
regular volume, fully aware that shock had rendered me deaf to their words. I
could not understand what they were saying.

"Everything
seems to line up: high pressure major, friends say she was very focused, her
schedule is intense. There's no major event, no tipping point so far," one
of the uniformed officers said.

"Pretty
typical," the detective agreed.

I gripped the rug
so hard I felt my knuckles creak. The tears were building, a hard pressure
pounding in my head, but they would not come. Only ragged breaths escaped, and
each one hurt my throat. I wanted to cry, I had no idea what else to do, but I
could not.

Sienna always knew
what to do next. I always joked she would have made an excellent cruise
director. At home, she had all of us scheduled down to the next five minutes
during the holidays. I needed her to tell me what to do now.

I gasped for air.
The detective stepped to the door of the dorm room and waved an arm down the
hallway. In a moment, one of the EMTs sat on the floor next to me.

"Here,"
he said. "Take this. It’s a low dose anti-anxiety pill. It'll help calm
you down."

It was something
to do, some small action to get me off the rug and standing on shaking legs. I
took the pill and let the EMT help me up. He stood firmly between me and the
bathroom and held out his arms to usher me out the dorm room. Two men and a
black stretcher waited in the hallway.

They were going to
take Sienna's body away.

"Can I go
with? I want to go with," I asked the EMT.

He shook his head.
"Stop talking like that or you'll be overnight in the psych ward. You're
going back to your dorm room to call your family."

A warm numbness
spread through my body as the EMT escorted me downstairs to the campus security
guards. Everything seemed far away and soft. I imagined my life becoming a
video game, the origin story of some dark superhero. The flashing lights of the
police cars, the open doors of the ambulance, the arrival of the coroner's van,
they were all on a screen. I was safe on the couch in my dorm room, dozing as I
watched the introduction.

If only it had all
been a bad dream.

And then, I was on
my dorm room couch. My roommate paced the floor in front of me. Her long,
delicate fingers weaving together and squeezing with nervous energy. She spoke
to me, occasionally sat next to me and tried to talk, but I could not hear
anything she said.

"It's all
over campus by now. I'm not sure you should stay here. People are going to be coming
by and now's not the time. Right? Quinn?" she asked.

Darla kept going
to the door. She never opened it, just called through, but the knocks kept
coming at regular intervals. I could feel Darla's nervousness growing. She
wrung her hands and stood exhausted in the middle of our small room. In my hazy
mind, she became the gatekeeper. Was I a prisoner or the hidden princess?