I hunch in on myself, preparing for even worse.
"Hey," Christian says sharply.
He's just two feet away from me. I'm not going to look at him.
But his tone is icy. "This has gone on long enough. Come on, guys. Enough of this crap. She's right. We all know I won the nepotism lottery. I'm not an expert, and if I said something stupid, I'm glad she was willing to point it out."
Silence falls in response. At the front of the class, Fred clears his throat, maybe now remembering that he has a job besides savaging students. "Right. Let's...uh, let's move on."
And I? I do not want to feel grateful to Christian. I hate that nobody even recognized me as a person until Christian spoke up. And when I tilt my head to the side... I hate that he looks at me, that he gives me a silent nod like he's granted me his permission to criticize him.
I didn't need his permission.
After class lets out, I take my time leaving so I don't have to fake nonchalance on my way out.
The girl in front of me stands and then turns to me. "You know," she murmurs in a low furtive voice as if wanting to make sure nobody else hears her, "I thought you had a good point. I'm glad you said it. I didn't want to."
"Thanks."
But I don't want to talk, and so I wait until she goes. I consider whether my pen belongs in the front pocket or the side pocket of my backpack. I make sure my notebook is securely placed next to my textbooks. I check the zipper. Twice.
By the time I leave, the classroom is empty.
The hallway outside isn't, though. There's one person from class still there, and he's the last person—the very last person in the world—that I want to talk to at the moment. He's leaning against the wall, looking even more like a businessman than a student. He looks at me now. His eyes are the ridiculous blue of ocean waters on some tropical beach. They make me think of a spring break that I will never be able to afford.
"Hey," he says.
I'm not sure how to respond. My hands are still shaking. I don't think I can keep it together through a longer spat with him. I should have kept my mouth shut in the first place.
I give him the barest of nods and keep walking.
"Hey," he repeats. "Ushi."
That does stop me. Fred didn't know what to call me. How does Christian Stirling know my name?
Slowly, I turn to him. I've never talked to him before today. Maybe he emailed someone while we were in class? One of his...people. Someone like Christian has to have people, right? He parked in an official visitor's spot with impunity. Getting a class roster would hardly pose a problem.
But wait. Even if he got my name off the official class roster, he wouldn't know I go by Ushi. He'd only know my legal name— Mee Mao.
I swallow.
And then he does something I'm not expecting. He gives me a sheepish smile. It's so different from the cocky grin that he normally wears that I take a step back.
"I'm sorry," he says.
"For what?"
He shrugs. "You're right. It's not my place to say it doesn't matter what people say about you. And I should have stopped that before it turned into a pile-on." He indicates the room we just came from with a tilt of his head. "I was just taken aback."
He looks at me like he expects me to shrug it all off like I'm supposed to pat him on the shoulder and say that it's okay.
But it's not. And the fact that he thinks it can be just makes me feel worse. Nothing about my life is okay right now, and he can't change that.
"Can I..." He takes a deep breath, and then, that cocky smile is back on his face, like he's sure of himself again. "Can I get you coffee or something as an apology?"
He holds his hand out to me like I'm supposed to shake it. When he does, his coat—impeccably tailored grey wool—pulls back from his sleeve. For a second, with his hand outstretched, I see dark ink against his wrist, the edge of a tattoo that seems completely at odds with everything I know about him.
For just that second, I wonder if I'm imagining it. His life has been an open book to the world ever since his father first put him in a television commercial at the tender age of twenty months.
Everyone knows everything about Christian Stirling, a boy prodigy, a certain successor to Cyclone Systems. Everything...except I've never heard of that tattoo.
