away when I looked at them.
That is, they didn’t turn away until they recognized me. Then a few actually turned and fled inside the house.
They didn’t run, not really, but it was a definite retreat. One didn’t move fast enough. I called him. “Ryan! Hang on a second!”
He was either too dumb or too honest to pretend he hadn’t heard me. He did pretend, however, that he hadn’t noticed his friends taking off like a pack of scared wildebeests. I could give him that; it wasn’t a matter covered in most etiquette books. “Oh. Hi, uh, Professor Fielding. Are you having a good summer?”
“No.” I looked around the porch, but it was completely deserted. “Where is he?”
“Uh…who?” He tried to look baffled, but gave it up after a moment. He then tried a look of delayed recognition. “Oh. You mean…Tyler?”
“Yes, Tyler. Where is he?”
“Uh…Belgium?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and sucked my teeth. He had exactly ten seconds before I…
He must have seen something in my face, because there was genuine panic in his now. “No, I’m serious! I think he’s in Brussels until the end of the week, and then he’ll be back. He’s not due back at the house for a couple of days, anyway, and if it’s not Brussels, it’s somewhere else in Europe. He’s been away for almost two months.”
“Excuse me. He’s in Europe? He gets caught cheating on a paper—by me—handing in a paper from one of those Internet term paper mills, gets subjected to a college disciplinary hearing, is reprimanded, flunks my class, and you want me to believe that his parents sent him to Europe? For two months? Try again.”
“I’m serious. He’s been away the whole summer. But they didn’t let him go by himself. They made him go with them.”
“Forgive me if I don’t see the punishment there.”
“But he didn’t flunk your class,” Ryan blurted.
I turned on him. “The whole sordid episode has been burned into my memory for all time. I believe I recall quite clearly the moment I hit the enter key and submitted my grades.” I recalled quite clearly thinking the entire ghastly mess—the hearing, the wrangling, the pleading—was behind me.
“Oh, sure, you might have. But what he told me was, the dean told him he could just not get credit for the class. He could take another one and it would just be…gone.” He shrugged.
Oh, dear God. The dean. “He…I never signed a drop form. I wouldn’t…” But I knew that Dean Belcher would. Especially if…
“Ryan, remind me. Tyler’s family. They’re the aluminum Tuckers, aren’t they?”
It made them sound as if they were cut out of shiny foil, but Ryan knew what I meant. At least the little wiener had the grace to shrug again as he nodded.
That explained a lot. Dean Belcher was a sucker for a sob story, especially if it was backed up with a significant family fortune and the possibility of incoming funds. “I cheated because I was scared that I wouldn’t pass” sounded so much more logical when accompanied by the potential, perhaps the promise, of big donations.
“Okay, thanks.”
Ryan looked relieved and turned to climb the porch.
I waited until he was almost at the top step. “One more thing, Ryan.”
Give the kid credit. He didn’t bolt for the door. “Yeah?”
“He’s been with his folks? The whole time? You see, there’s been some…oh, let’s just use the coy euphemism ‘unpleasantness’…this summer. You don’t think that he…?”
I sounded like an idiot.
Ryan shifted his weight, back and forth, as he tried to decide what to say. “Professor Fielding, I won’t lie to you. He was pretty pissed off at you, during the whole…thing, but—”
Pissed off at me, I thought. Because he got caught cheating.
“—but after his parents…and the dean…after the dust settled?” Ryan shook his head. “I’m sure he doesn’t even remember you exist.”
I nodded, a bit numb. “Sure, fair enough,” I said, marveling at how stupid the words were even as they left my mouth. I turned back to the main path.
Ryan hesitated, before he opened the door. “I really enjoyed your class. I mean, I didn’t do really well, but it wasn’t because I didn’t like it.”
I nodded. I couldn’t bring myself to say thanks, not for the information, and not for the pity. Because now I was getting pity from undergraduate fraternity porch ticks.
Great.
I walked back down Maple Walk. My stomach was still in turmoil, but for a completely different reason.
Long before I reached my building, I had convinced myself that Tyler