Chapter Three

All in one place

My next class was Developmental English. This particular class was on the lower end of the skill set. It was often a mix of native or near-native English speakers who felt like abject failures, remedial leftovers, and formerly ESL (or, more accurately, I always felt, EFL, English as a Foreign Language, as it was often their third or fourth) students who were coming in swinging, ready to beat the language into submission.  

I took it as a personal challenge to make the classroom engaging and rigorous—and quickly, far more quickly than is usual in a college-level course. We’d do icebreaker games, creeping slowly from opinions on pop culture to opinions on educational systems, we do free writes, sometimes we get to debates, and by the end of the first meeting, we usually have a complete classroom code of conduct, an overall mission for the semester, and student/teacher contracts for everyone to take home and sign.

It’s incredible how quickly you can build student investment in the learning process, to use admin speak, if you just pay attention to the actual students in the actual classroom. None of these developmental kids were ever taken all that seriously or given that much power in high school, which was a grave misstep on the part of whoever taught them before.   

(Or, you know, it was a predictable outcome of an underpaid, overworked teacher in a K-12 system barely held together by off-brand duct tape. One thing that I’ve found to be always true in education is that we’re all playing catchup for what the previous instructors missed, all the way back to the poor saps in preschool who get the kids with food insecurity and semi-annual moves.)

As I walked into that classroom, Maggie’s death still felt like an end-of-season twist that would be reversed just as soon as we’d simmered in the drama long enough for ratings. I didn’t challenge that feeling. If I could hang out in shock just a bit longer, odds were better that I’d make it through the department meeting without starting to sob. 

She was the entire reason that adjuncts even attended department meetings routinely these days. When I first started teaching, our presence was not technically banned, but it was definitely discouraged, which was just fine, because I was teaching on two campuses at that point—this college, and then another in the city. I didn’t have time for extra unpaid work. But after I’d finally allowed Sam to convince me to drop that second school, which despite the saner commute held far less promise for me long-term, I hung around a bit more, looking for whatever ways I could find to be visible. And one day, I was chatting with Maggie on the quad right before the meeting began, and she slid her arm through mine and guided me to the appointed classroom with her.

“You’re not teaching right now, are you?” she said, pausing just short of the door.

“No,” I replied. “But am I even allowed in there?”

She shrugged, and gave me the wicked smile that I loved so much. “Don’t know. Let’s find out. These things can be horrifically boring and pedantic, but it’s important for people to see you.”

Ultimately, no one said a word. That was good enough for me. Since then, I’d diligently attended them all, and as word got around that we could, most likely through Lucy, so did other adjuncts, when their schedules allowed.

I’d already anticipated walking into the first meeting of the semester under heightened scrutiny, given the hiring process that was already underway. Now, I knew the scrutiny would be even more intense—whether due to pity, fascination, schadenfreude, or genuine concern, depending completely on the eye of the beholder. Everyone knew who Maggie had been to me, professionally, if not personally.

So while my students wrote, I diligently tried to get this classroom computer to log on for the second time that day, now with two class censuses ready to submit; like before, I made no progress. I did give up a bit more quickly this time, opting to start reading the writing samples from my first class instead, getting to know my new students, filing away the nuances of their grammar and handwriting and points of view. It was work I knew; it was calming, and by the time the class was over, I was as ready as I was going to be to face my colleagues.

The rain had lightened slightly into a mist; I didn’t bother fighting with my umbrella, but shrugged my shoulders up, ducked my head down, and walked as quickly as I could to the overhang outside of the classroom where the meeting would be held. I paused at the door, for a brief second convinced that I couldn’t handle it. But as I lifted my chin and gazed into the middle distance, back the way I came, I saw the hunched over figure of Lucy, bright in her red raincoat underneath her black umbrella. I straightened my spine, turned on my heel, pulled my shoulders back, and entered.

The classroom was nearly full; everyone had decided to show today. Not every seat was filled—there aren’t enough of us to do that—but when we teachers try to cram ourselves into the combination chair-desks, things tend to overflow. People were turned sideways, legs stretched out into the aisles, briefcases on wheels propped up on the chairs next to them, bag lunches spread out as much as the tiny desktops would allow. Nobody, thank god, was in Maggie’s usual place. The chair at the front left sat empty, strangely lonely in the crowd, reminding me, for a half-second, of my empty mailbox.

I personally ended up taking a seat way in the back in a left-handed chair. Fewer people to watch me; way better to watch everybody else.

“Katie! Hi!” The gray-haired man a seat in front of me twisted around and smiled. “How was your break?”

John Anderson. One of the few part timers in the room who showed up as much as I did, and he was among the oldest of us, in his fifties if I had to guess. An adjunct lifer, one of the few we had in the department (if you didn’t count Lucy, and I knew she was too ambitious to count herself). He was a self-proclaimed master of the adjunct-professorial life-hack. He’d even written and self-published a digital book about it that was up on Amazon, chock full of, or so he swore up and down in the summary, labor and time-saving strategies for keeping the workload to a minimum, the powers that be happy, and the students compliant. So far, I’d managed to stick to reading just the summary, though I’d downloaded the entire thing once, when he cornered me at a departmental event and told me it was half-off, just that day, for a promotional thing. Far as I could tell, these promotional things happened every other month or so.

“Hey John. Not bad. You?”

“I did nothing. Had everything prepped and ready to go by finals week.” He stretched his arms up and then laced his hands behind his head. His blue-checked shirt had smaller, darker blue-checked sweat stains at the armpits. “You put your name in the hat this round? Interesting to have another opportunity so soon after the last one, but there will probably be a few more before things settle. Everyone would get it if you needed to sit this one out.”

I was starting to get more than a little annoyed at the assumption that I would be rendered completely ineffective by grief, no matter how close to the truth I was afraid it might turn out to be.

I gave him my most professional smile. “Oh no, I’m in. Can’t miss these things. You?”

“You know it. It’s how I roll. They’ll never give it to me, not with me being an older white man” he winked at that, “but I like to make them turn me down.”

(There was an entire chapter in his book, purportedly about just that, entitled “Make Them Turn You Down.” I’d heard about it several times already.)

“I get it,” I said. “Can’t get what you don’t ask for.”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself. And you’d be a good choice, but you know that. Best of luck.” He winked at me again, then turned himself back around. “I always enjoy watching these events,” he added, over his shoulder, in a lower voice. “Truly professionally amusing.”

That was one point upon which we agreed. I scooted my chair back, just enough so that I could lean my head against the wall behind me, and surveyed the room. Harvey, our reluctant department chair, one arm and shoulder still in his dripping tan trench coat, was at the front, trying to get his laptop successfully connected to the projector. He was probably in his late forties, a slim man with thinning, graying, vaguely brown hair and glasses who was perpetually just a little disheveled and only served as chair as often as he did because he couldn’t manage to say no every time someone re-nominated him. Maggie had always taken special joy in how easily she could get him to step up out of a sense of duty—it only took the very minimum of arm twisting, the slightest amount of pressure. And while he’d never seemed to care about me as a candidate one way or another, his disinterest was simply professional. He took what felt like a genuine interest in the faculty, across the board, without playing favorites. As chair, he was in charge of wrangling the hiring committee, and there weren’t many I’d prefer in the job over him. With Maggie gone, honestly, there probably weren’t any.

Over in the corner were some of the older boomer women, laughing about something I couldn’t quite make out. Two of them had already announced their retirement dates, to no one’s surprise—and their positions were probably what John had in mind when he referred to upcoming opportunities—as they’d been phoning it in for years. Another one was our resident second-wave feminist, specializing in post-colonial literature of Anglophone Africa and the Caribbean when she could, who, like Maggie, showed no signs of plans to go anywhere. Her roots were white, but her hair was usually some variation on red or maroon. Today, it was a shade approximating sangria. They were all nice enough when we intersected. Once I’d become Maggie’s current heir-apparent, not a single one of them had gone out of her way to make my life difficult.

Behind them were the younger women, a slightly more numerous and diverse group, though they all seemed to have pictures of toddlers and dogs on their phones to share, and it felt like there was always a baby or bridal shower announcement circulating for at least one of them at any given time, along with the requisite cards to sign. They liked to take turns bringing in desserts that they swore they shouldn’t eat. Rumor had it that a couple of them had been Maggie’s former projects, even to the point of having her help in getting their tenured positions, until the inevitable professional disagreement turned up.

I’d always assumed that that would be my fate with her, too—she had a pattern, and I wasn’t naïve enough to think that I would be the exception, even though in one critical way, I already was: Maggie had always been skeptical, behind closed doors, of women chasing tenure with young children. It made me cringe whenever it came up in conversations about why she felt I was such a good choice, always as a sidenote, but always delivered with a wink and a nod, like I naturally shared her opinions. I didn’t, but I let it go each time. (The only time I ever did use that to my advantage was to provide weight to my arguments when Sam began to get starry eyed over babies in restaurants; not right now, honey. Maggie says not until tenure.)

And just a few feet away from the younger women, smiling vaguely to herself and eating her lunch, just waiting for the right moment to work her way into the conversation, was Lucy. There were plenty of times when I didn’t quite get why she wasn’t already a fully-fledged member of that group. They were nice enough, and she had two young daughters and an old rescue Havanese. Plenty of fodder for pictures to share. But we adjuncts were always just a little busier, just a little more run off of our feet for less money, and I happened to know that just before I started teaching, Lucy had been back at work, on both of her campuses, only a month after her second daughter was born. We didn’t really get paid leave, didn’t qualify for the state parental leave threshold of being employed, full time, for at minimum a year (technically, we were laid off after every term ended). On top of everything else that it made difficult, it also made it hard to make friends.

This didn’t bother me nearly as much as it bothered Lucy, though she’d never say so. She wanted to be liked. Despite myself, I actually did like her a fair amount. She was sharp, and she could be funny, especially once she took a break from trying to be everything to everyone professionally. But she wanted to be liked so very much that it got in her way at times, made it harder for people to trust her, or even take her seriously. I certainly did my best to keep her at arm’s length, if only to avoid the buddy-buddy, two-for-one perception I’d seen girls and women fall into as far back as middle school, where when one couldn’t do something without the other for too long people started internalizing it as a conditional. That was an excellent way to miss opportunities, letting people think you had to come in a pair. I’d already sidestepped the more traditional two-body problem; I didn’t need anyone getting any ideas about another.

But Lucy didn’t really get that. She probably never would. She wanted to be liked nearly as much as she wanted the tenure-track position. She probably thought the two were actually related.

In the middle of the room, another island, eating what looked like almonds out of a snack baggie, sat Charles, our newest full time hire. He was a younger half-Black half-Japanese guy most recently from Wisconsin, with floppy, loosely curled hair that hung half over his eyes and always gave him the air of being at least a little bit lost. Maggie said that he was the most brilliant space cadet she’d ever met, but so far my interactions with him had been pleasant, but unremarkable. Students adored him. The cynical part of me suspected that it had to do with a tendency to forget due dates. Cynical, or sour grapes. He’d been the one to edge me out during the last hiring process. I still wasn’t sure whether he knew that.

Over in the corner, closest to the door, sat most of the rest of the men. There weren’t as many of them, and I always found it funny the way that they unconsciously seemed to adjust to that fact, legs spread wide, arms resting on the backs of other chairs, generally taking up as much space as they could. They spoke quietly amongst themselves, though. I think that at least some of them had been shouted down in meetings one too many times, and so found refuge in under-the-breath sarcasm.

And finally, scattered around the room in ones and twos, were people to whom I couldn’t quite put a name. My fellow adjuncts. Not all of us taught every semester, and the meetings took place during a popular course time, which meant that even the ones who were on campus at the right time might not be able to make it over. They tweaked the schedule, you see, in order to make sure the tenured folks were always free to attend. The rest of us were left to our own devices.

I wondered how many of them had applied for the position. I wondered whether any were actually in the running. None of them had ever had Maggie, however. Maybe that still meant something.

I closed my eyes briefly to wipe her from my mind, just as Harvey cleared his throat, and the room fell silent.

“Welcome, welcome all,” he said. “If someone could just give me a hand getting this projector on, we’ll get started.”

I sighed and dug into my bag for a stack of writing samples as people began to chat again. And then I heard my name.

“Katie! Psssst! Over here! Katie!”

Two rows away, smiling broadly and waving, was Sasha. She must have only just arrived, slightly late as usual, and even at a distance I could see a fleck of red lipstick on her front tooth. She was now, I was nearly sure, the oldest member of our department, silver haired, a poet, and, improbable though it had always seemed to me, Maggie’s best friend on campus. Whenever I saw them walking together, Maggie focused on her destination almost to the point of tunnel vision, plowing resolutely through groups of lingering students, and Sasha, pausing every few feet to check for her pen, to wave, to note with glee a tree in bloom before rushing to catch back up, I had to swallow a chuckle. And yet, they’d been colleagues for at least twenty years, dear friends, Sasha often told me, for almost as long.

I should have called her over break. I would have, too, if I had known what had happened. But she didn’t know that I’d been ignorant, and I was suddenly steeped in guilt.

“Hi!” I mouthed back. She gestured for me to come sit in the chair next to her, but I pointed towards the front of the room, where Harvey had finally gotten the agenda to show up on the screen.

“Attention everyone! Attention!” He waved his hands over his head, and the room quieted. “I know this isn’t the way that we wanted to start this semester, or any semester, but I’m assuming that all of you by now have heard about the loss of our colleague Magdalena. I think you’ll all agree that Maggie was the heart and soul of what we do, and she will be very, very missed. The department is starting a scholarship fund in her honor for deserving English majors, and I hope you will all contribute, as you are able. There’s also a card in the office for her daughter, if you get a moment to drop in and sign it. We’re working on a memorial event to be held on campus, and I will let you all know more as I know it. The dean has requested that I remind everyone of the counseling services and employee crisis lines that are available to all of us, should you need. Please also direct any impacted students to campus mental health resources, which you should already have listed on your syllabus as a matter of course. Any further questions?”

We were all respectfully silent—actually silent, not teacher-silent, which was more of a dull roar—for several seconds, broken only by the ticking of the clock. He looked at us over his glasses. For once, nobody seemed to have anything to add, not even an elegiac line of poetry.

“Thank you all. I know this is none of it ideal, but the show must go on, as Magdalena would have most certainly wanted. Let’s get this started so we can get it finished.”

I listened to the next twenty minutes with half an ear, simultaneously flipping through writing samples. It was the usual start of the semester business, some campus funding questions to vote on, and several different kinds of procedural detritus. I had just finished with my first stack when things got interesting again.

“So against all odds, we are still approved for one new full time hire, or so we have been told. The application window closed at the end of December, and we will be moving ahead with all possible speed. I believe everyone here knows how this process goes?”

The room laughed knowingly, and a voice from the back corner called out “Ask for another!” Harvey shook his head and waved a finger, and I tried not to look at the other adjuncts in the room, just as I was certain that they were trying not to look at me.

“The committee has been formed and has managed to touch base in preparation—”

“Who’s on it this time?” one of the older women called.

“If you need to know, you’ll be receiving official notification—”

“Because I think there should be at least two women this time—the last was pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. In this day and age, how anyone can countenance just one—”

Harvey held up a hand. “But if you remember, there was one woman from our department, and then the diversity rep was also—” He’d been quick, and he’d been accurate. But it was too late. The room was off and running.

“If it’s not our department, I don’t care who it is. We all know who they’re there for.”

“Is there a way to request a modernist?” a male voice called. “We’re a little overloaded on the Victorian lit side right now, and—”

“We need another PhD! Maggie was one of our last who didn’t come straight out of San Jose State, and—”

“Christ, here we go again. Do you think you’re at Stanford? Because last I checked, we don’t fall for that kind of elitism over here.”

“Maybe you don’t, but if we want enrollment up—”

“Honestly, I don’t know why people don’t talk about this, but don’t you think we’re getting a little white, as a group, and with our student body the way it is? Shouldn’t we consider—”

“I’m not arguing with any of you, but good luck getting this by the president…”

I glanced over in Lucy’s direction, hoping for perhaps a small shared eyeroll, but she was sitting ramrod straight, her head swiveling like she was at a tennis match, trying to keep track of who was requesting what. Maybe she thought she could magically morph herself into a Stanford PhD modernist with a grandparent from every major California ethnic group, just by wishing hard enough. And then suddenly, I was suffused with panic. They were going to ask about my undergraduate GPA, I knew they were, and I wasn’t sure that I remembered it, or that I’d managed to get my transcripts when I’d fled. They were going to ask about that econ class I’d technically failed sophomore year because I’d forgotten to drop it, and it would knock me out of consideration.

“Attention!” Harvey shouted. We quieted. “There. Now. All of these are valid requests.”

“Except for the San Jose State thing!”

“All of them!” he repeated, glaring down at us from the podium. “But this is not the time, nor the place. The committee has been chosen, and they are well on their way in the official process. The department at large may be in on things as they move forward, or we may not. If you’re involved in any way, you will hear about it from me.

“In the meantime, I need one or two people for a thankless task. Better two, actually. We need to file our compliance forms for the standards with admin by the end of the month. New procedure, but old information, so it should be just possible to get it done by the deadline.”

“I’ll do it!” Lucy called. Her hand was waving in the air, trembling with the relief that she’d finally found something to say.

“Great,” Harvey said, blinking at her. “If you really want to. We can’t make any of our part time people take this on, and there’s no compensation on offer, but I won’t stop you. Now, one more.”

“Katie will do it with me,” she said, smiling broadly.

I sat up sharply as everyone turned my way. Now I got my conspiratorial look from Lucy. She was practically beaming at me.

“Katie, is that okay?” Harvey asked. “I wouldn’t let myself be volunteered for this one, personally.”

“Nah, just for department chair,” someone muttered, and the room began to giggle, but Harvey stayed focused on me.

I glanced back over at Lucy. She was nodding ferociously.

“Sure,” I said finally. “Why not.”

“All right, then that’s business done. Thanks ladies. Come talk to me later on this week for details. We’re done here. And don’t forget!” Harvey shouted over the din of the fleeing crowd. “Your census rosters are due by the end of the week, regardless of whether that damn site works correctly. There is no extension available without a massive bureaucratic headache, so get them in, people!”

There was no group I’d ever seen clear a room as efficiently post-meeting as this one; it happened every single time. Sometimes I joined in, but today, I remained seated, waiting for a path to clear. And then there was a soft hand on my shoulder.

“Hi Sasha,” I said, mostly to my desk. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn’t in touch. It was a…” I found myself groping for a word that would explain without inviting questions “…challenging break.” When I looked up, she was smiling down at me.

“Katie, I’m so sorry myself. I’m yours if you need any help in this. Maggie would want me to do it for her, since she can’t be here right now.”

The way she said it made me believe for a half second that Maggie had been unavoidably detained over the break by a family matter, or was on safari, or had been embedded as a spy for the CIA somewhere in the Middle East. Jordan, maybe. Or Oman.

“I’m on your team, always,” she continued. “I have to run—can’t remember where, so I need to go by the office and then pick up my copies and check in with that one woman I’m always forgetting to check in with—but it doesn’t matter. Email me soon with your material.”

And then she was out the door before I could respond, leaving me with a sinking feeling in my stomach. Sasha was lovely, but if she was going to appoint herself grand champion of my job application, it wasn’t completely clear whether that would be helpful, neutral, or otherwise. At least she hadn’t asked whether I was still in the running. She knew me that well, at least, even if only second hand.

As I stood and gathered my things, I heard Harvey clear his throat, at close distance. “Katie, hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I responded. “How was your break?”

“Good enough. Listen, I have a question for you.”

I smiled ruefully. “I’m fine with giving Lucy a hand. Don’t worry about it.”

“No, no, it’s not that. I know you can take care of yourself. Listen, I got a notification late last week that you were pulling your application from this hiring round.”

I froze. Literally stopped moving, stopped breathing.

“Aha. I thought something was strange about that.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “A request to pull my application? From the hiring round?”

“Right. I got an email from someone in admin saying that they’d been contacted about you withdrawing, and would I go ahead and process that paperwork.”

Putting aside the fact that there was apparently a process for paperwork to stop processing paperwork, this did not sound good. “That wasn’t me,” I said. “I didn’t pull any application. I submitted it on time, I got email confirmation, I can pull it back up if you need proof—”

Harvey held up a hand. “No need. Don’t worry about it. The system is so, if you’ll excuse my language, fucked up right now. I have no idea why a request like that would come through, and I know this can’t be the easiest start of the semester for you, but I didn’t want to make any assumptions until I got in touch to confirm it. You weren’t answering emails,” he finished, vague disapproval icing his words.

“I know, I’m sorry. It was a challenging break,” I said, doubling down on my adjective. “I’ll be caught up by the end of the day. I have no idea why you would have received a message like that. I am not pulling my application. Is there any reason that it’s not complete?”

“No, no, not at all. We have everything we need.”

“Thank you so much for waiting on that. I have no intention of withdrawing.”

“No need to say it again—no action taken. No harm, no foul. I’ll be in touch about that thankless task.”

“Sounds good.”

He turned and headed back towards the front of the room, where his laptop was still connected to the projector, shining his cluttered virtual desktop on the screen for all to see. “Oh, and Katie?” he said, just as I reached the door.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

My eyes immediately filled with tears. I managed a nod, and left.

Naturally, Lucy was waiting for me just outside the door. “Katie!” she said, giving me a sly smile that made the dark-lined corners of her eyes look exceptionally catlike. “I hope you didn’t mind that I volunteered us in there. Are you running to class now? I am,” she said, following me as I headed off towards the writing lab, where I was due for my shift, but she didn’t pause long enough for me to tell her that. “It’s just,” she continued, “these things are how you get noticed. Thankless tasks, and all that. And now’s the time to do them.”

“It’s not like people don’t know who we are by this point,” I said, glancing up. The rain had paused, but the sky looked ominous.

“True, but you know that’s not enough by itself. At least, unless you’re one of the chosen few. I never had someone backing me like you did, and even you don’t have that anymore.”

 “Did you really just say that?” I snapped. “Do you think I forgot?” And nothing would matter at all, I knew, if my application really had been pulled. After what Harvey had told me, I wasn’t going to relax until I had confirmed that it was still officially under consideration. “I don’t have time to argue with you right now, so if you could please think just a little harder before you say anything else to me, that’d be great for both of us.”

Lucy sighed. “Look, I’m being too direct. I know this. I’m sorry. But I’m on your team here. If you’re going to be like that, fine, but I think we could get more done working together, and I know that it’s what Maggie would have wanted. You really don’t have any time to lose.”

Until today, I hadn’t realized that I really had a team to be on. And now, here were Sasha and Lucy, already suiting up to get out on the field on my behalf. But wasn’t she applying for the position herself? None of this made much sense.

Okay, fine,” I said, speeding up as much as I could in my heels. “Just, that’s fine. Never mind. I’ll talk to you later.”

“I’ll email you!” she called, slowing down to shove a hand in her purse as a cell phone trilled. “We should meet up tomorrow. Have a good rest of the day!”

“You too,” I said under my breath, without turning around. There was just about one hundred yards left to go before I reached the door to the main student center, where there was a cafeteria and several little nooks where I would set up for my office hours, but it was getting darker by the moment and the wind was picking up. Even the half-grown trees strapped to their stakes, only recently put in where some old, sick, and misplaced redwoods had been taken out, managed to tremble.       

And then, once more, I heard my name.

“Ms. Thompson? Professor Thompson? Is that you?”

I didn’t recognize the voice, and I meant to keep walking, but I almost immediately caught the edge of my right heel on a small dip in the path and was on my hands and knees, my books and papers strewn out on the concrete in front of me, before I could even take another breath.

“Shit,” I muttered. My wrists ached, and it felt like I’d driven gravel at least a centimeter into my palms.

“Oh my god!” the voice cried, accompanied by rapid footsteps. “Let me help you!”

I looked up. A girl with curly brown hair, light brown skin, and red cat-eyed glasses was looking back down at me, her arms full of my books. She looked familiar.

“Are you okay? I saw you fall!”

I sighed and rose to my knees. “Everybody saw me fall.” I brushed bits of path from my hands.

“Sorry to stop you. And it’s okay if you don’t remember me,” the girl said, pushing her hair out of her face.

“No, no, I do!” And I did. I try not to lie about things like that, as I’m almost invariably caught out when I do. “You were in my intro comp class maybe a year ago? I’m sorry I don’t remember your name, but I remember that you loved George Elliot.”

She beamed. “I did. You’re the only one who ever made me read her. I had never even heard of her until then. I mean, if it weren’t for your class, I’d probably think she was a man.”

“Well, that was the general idea. Lots of people did.” I struggled to my feet as best I could without flashing the entire quad. “It’s nice running into you,” I said, taking my proffered books, “but I really do have to get going. Got a few things to take care of before my next class.”

“Oh, right, right. No problem,” she said, but she stayed where she was, looking earnestly into my face.

“Is there something you wanted to…”

“Right! Thanks! Sorry, I can be really spacy sometimes. So I’m working at the bookstore now, and I’m in charge of setting up special tables, you know, to get people to at least look at new books, and I really want to make one that’s all faculty authors.”

“I haven’t written any books, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, that’s okay! I didn’t really mean just you. I just figured you might know who has. Like, other professors. Since you’re in the English department and all.”

She made no move to leave, and I wasn’t capable of bailing in the face of so much sincerity. And then, I had a brainwave.

“You know who has written a book, and I’m sure he’d be happy to talk to you. John Anderson. Not only is he a professor who’s published a book, but it’s actually about being a professor.” And maybe also about being a professor who’s published a book. That had to be in there somewhere. Chapter Twenty-Nine: Risks and Benefits of Spending Your Spare Time Writing.

“Oh great! I’ve heard of him, I think.”

“Yeah, he’s been here forever. Look, you don’t even have to find him in person—just go on Amazon and search his name. I know you can get a digital copy, and then you can decide if it’s something you want to stock. I have no idea if he has printed copies, but you guys over there probably know way more about how things like that work than I do.”

“Thank you so much, professor!” she said. “I really appreciate it.”

“No problem. Thanks for your help. I’m sorry to run off so quickly, but you know how it is.”

“I do. Good luck with your first week.”

As I hurried back over to the department office, a part of me felt guilty for submitting her to John’s tome. It was the same part that knew that she was diligent enough and driven enough to actually read the damn thing in what little spare time she had. But then, I had also just done a couple of good deeds for the day. Helped out an eager student, and most likely gotten John another Amazon sale.

The cafeteria was quiet, the lunch rush over, and I set up at a table along the back wall, near an outlet. It was incredibly unlikely that anyone would come, but the WIFI was usually better in that building, and I took advantage of the tiny line to buy a bowl of instant noodles.

I set the steaming cardboard bowl to one side, opened my laptop, and pulled up the district’s job application site.

I did, finally, manage to navigate to my profile and check my list of applications—one each for the previous two rounds I’d applied to, both archived, and one, thank goodness, still marked ACTIVE in bright red letters. I closed my computer, lifted the now lukewarm bowl to my lips, took a long, deep sip of the salty broth, and tried to gather my thoughts.

Unless I’d somehow sleepwalked over to my laptop over the past few weeks, there was no possible way I’d attempted to withdraw my application without remembering. There was no scenario that I could even imagine where that would make sense; I needed the job even more than I had when I’d turned the thing in in the first place. Granted, it had been a remarkably chaotic few weeks since then, but as far as I knew, I hadn’t taken leave of my sanity.

Did that mean that someone else had done it? It would have had to be a horrible mistake. Was that even a thing someone could do? It didn’t seem possible—but then again, Harvey had made it sound like that had he not been paying attention, had he not realized how out of character the whole thing would be, he could have just pressed a button and—done? Just like that? Application withdrawn, try again later?

It didn’t seem possible that someone who wasn’t me could initiate that kind of change within the district website. But then again, I reminded myself, slurping up a noodle as quietly and neatly as I could, Jess would believe it. Jess who could tell me all sorts of reasons why paperwork went astray or things that were filed suddenly vanished. I didn’t have to know how it could have happened, not really; I just needed to know that it almost had.

Did someone do it deliberately?

The question brought me up short. Immediately, I shook my head, but almost as quickly, I began to wonder. Had I taken all of my work materials when I’d left the city? Could I have left anything with a password on it, any documentation, something that would let someone who was remarkably pissed with me, someone like Sam, to, just, log in and make some changes? Was there really any way to see if that had been done?

That was what I needed to know. I needed to figure out how to get into the system history, or whatever it was called, and track any changes. I needed to see if someone had been poking around.

But I didn’t really know that that was how it happened. What had Harvey said? He’d gotten an email from someone in admin. Someone could have emailed admin, pretending to be me. Or even more directly, someone could have just emailed Harvey, pretending to be someone from admin, and made it sound like I sent them, made it sound like they were doing grief-stricken me a favor. Someone who was part of the institution, who knew how it worked and what to say.

Someone who could have also slipped into the mailroom and emptied my box.

I didn’t like this. I didn’t like any of it. I wasn’t even sure, I reminded myself, as I finished the last of my soup and opened my laptop again—those fucking censuses still had to be turned in—that anything deliberate had happened. Or that these two strange things, even if just one of them was deliberate, were related.

I shouldn’t have taken so long to ponder. Almost as soon as I opened up the census submission portal, the WIFI went down again. And it wasn’t just my computer—within about thirty seconds, every kid within earshot was groaning. I threw everything I had with me back into my bag. We were still in the middle of a popular class period. My office hour wasn’t over, but no one was going to show. Hopefully the department computers were sitting quietly, alone, waiting for me to finally use them.

Outside it was pouring again, enough that I popped open my flimsy umbrella and tried to duck underneath every awning and tree that I passed. Northern California: the place where people pretend that it never, ever rains, until the incredibly predictable winter storms roll in and everyone suddenly forgets how to drive, roofs leak, and open plan architecture reveals its weak spots. Everyone complains the first week, and the only thing worse than that is listening to them whine when the rains don’t come at all.

The department office was oddly quiet after the din of the downpour on my umbrella. Cynthia was quietly, steadily, typing. Sonya, the current student office aide, a second year international student from Ghana, was texting by a stack of manila folders, elbows firmly planted in the center of the stack. The dean’s office door was closed. There was a sign taped prominently to the conference room door, hand-lettered in all caps, that read: MEETING IN PROGRESS. DO NOT ENTER. And no one was in the workroom.

I scrambled over to the corner computer as quickly as I could without drawing attention to myself, almost as though I expected various adjuncts to pop out from behind filing cabinets and claim their spots first, just to thwart me.

As I waited on the log in screen, I squinted towards the workroom reservation sheet. It might be the hiring committee meeting in there, and if their meeting ended soon, I could just happen to still be working when they filed out, giving me an excellent opportunity to do a mental role call and see exactly who was in that room.

But as it turned out, there was no need for any subterfuge. The Ethernet was working, but the site itself was going slowly, and five minutes ticked audibly by on the standard-issue wall clock before I was even able to get to the faculty records page. I finally got the cursor to hover over the space for my username, and, jiggling my knee and mentally crossing my fingers that the system wouldn’t hang, I clicked.

And then there was a piercing scream from behind the conference room door.

I froze. Cynthia stopped typing. Only the clock continued clicking happily along.

“Holy shit!” Sonya said. “What was that?”

“Is everyone okay in there?” Cynthia called.

There was another scream, pitched a bit lower this time, followed by retching, and the door flew open. Harvey stumbled out.

“Something’s horribly wrong,” he said. “Will somebody please call 911?”

Behind him I could just barely make out someone doubled over, on the floor. The smell of vomit hit me like a physical thing, and when I stood, my knees began to shake. I hung onto the door frame.

Harvey was looking straight at me, a startling urgency in his usually-mild brown eyes. “Katie, please,” he said. “Now.”

I fumbled for my phone, managed to unlock it. No bars. No service. “No service. Shit. I can’t get any service!”

“Cynthia?” Harvey called.

“On it. Someone’s sick?”

“Aurelia. Just crashing hard. Vomiting everywhere. Can’t stand up.”

“Someone needs to call now!” a woman screamed from the conference room.

Cynthia held up a finger. “They’re on the line. Yes, hello.”

Harvey ducked back into the conference room and shoved the door open wide. The form on the floor was a small, dark-haired woman, her cheek down on what looked like a darkened patch of carpet. A full-timer I recognized as Jennifer, a skinny brunette maybe ten years older than me, was crouched over by her side.

“She’s unconscious!” Jennifer said. “Fucking EMTs better come now!”

“They’re on their way,” Cynthia said. “Holding on the line until there here. Is she still breathing?”

“She’s breathing, but—fuck! There she goes again.”

The figure shuddered and groaned and opened her mouth. Bile poured out onto the rug, and the stench, miraculously, grew stronger.

The dean’s office door opened, and the dean himself emerged with a legal pad, one pencil slid behind his ear, another in his hand. “Cynthia, can you fax something over to the district for me? I’m behind on this latest deadline, and—what the hell is going on out here?”

“She might be dying!” Jennifer wailed. “I don’t know how to tell if she’s dying! Does anyone know what to do if she’s dying?”

“Does anyone know CPR?”

“EMT! Please stand back!”

Three men and a woman strode in with a stretcher and duffle bags. “Please clear the area,” the woman said. “We need everyone non-essential out of here, now.”

“Can I get my coat?” I heard the dean ask as the EMT ushered him out of the office.

I knew I was supposed to move, but I was far enough into the workroom that the people in charge hadn’t seen me yet, and I couldn’t take my eyes from the body on the ground—Aurelia, I reminded myself. Not a body. Not yet. She wasn’t dead, might not die today, and yet it had only been maybe six hours since I’d found out that Maggie was gone, and a body on the floor was too much.

“Katie. Come on,” a voice said, appearing from nowhere. It was Charles, and he scooped my notebook and pen from the table, shoved them into my hands, and grabbed my bag. “Lean on me if you have to, but I think they need us to get out of here now.”

I didn’t need to lean; the jumpstart was enough, and we filed out the door, out into the courtyard, back into the storm. Charles popped open an umbrella, held it over our heads, and steered me to one side.

“Here,” he said, proffering a bottle. “I haven’t opened it yet. Drink something.”

I cracked open the cap and took a swing before I checked to see what it was, and tiny tapioca pearls filled my mouth and slid over my tongue like bits of flesh, and before I could think, I was head first into the nearest bush, puking my guts out.

“Sorry!” I choked out. “So sorry! Didn’t expect that.”

Charles snorted. “Guess you’re not a fan of pearl tea.”

“No no,” I said, pausing to cough. “I usually like it. I just expected water or something. Sorry. That was gross.” Nothing is quite as depressing or embarrassing as puking in a public place. At least I’d found a bush dingy enough that it might go unnoticed.

When I was finally sure that my stomach would hold, I looked around. There were at least ten people, huddling underneath umbrellas, clustered outside the office door. Some of them, including the dean, who was doing his best to make himself small enough to share Sasha’s bright red umbrella, had no bags, and no coats. Others must have shown up after we were all kicked out. Sasha gave me a little finger wave.

We all stood quietly for a moment. The rain pounded away, coming down in sheets. I could feel water gradually seeping into my shoes.

“Who was in the meeting?” I finally asked.

“Hiring committee,” Charles said.

“I was in there earlier, when they were getting set up. They had wonderful pastries,” Sasha said. “Much better than what we commoners usually get for events.” She heaved a sigh.

The rain grew heavier, then strangely lighter, and then drops began to clatter and bounce on the nearby table and bench.

“It’s hailing,” the dean said flatly. “When do you think they’ll let us back inside? I’m going to talk to…to someone about this.”

Silence descended once again. My toes grew numb. The hailstones turned back to raindrops, and the rattling on the umbrella above us softened.

A siren sounded across the quad. An ambulance was slowly making its way towards us in the rain, flashing its lights, students shrieking and scattering out of the way.

The office door opened, and the EMTs emerged, carrying a stretcher. Aurelia was covered, but from where I stood I couldn’t tell if the shiny metal blanket was in fact being used as a blanket, covering her head to neck, or as a shroud, head to toe.  Images of Maggie’s lifeless face flashed back into my mind, I felt my stomach churn again, and I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, grabbed my bag, and ran.

“Katie, are you okay?” I heard Charles call after me. I waved a hand over my head, but I didn’t turn around, and I didn’t slow down until I was in my car, off campus, and finally at a red light. Only then did I realize that I was soaked through.