Ivy sucked at commas.
She bit down harder, and part of the eraser came off in her mouth. She plucked it off her tongue and put it in her bag.
She looked outside. Night was falling, but it was still too dark for the time of day. Strange gray-green clouds had been moving across the sky all afternoon, and on the way to class, she’d watched little bolts of lightning explode across an approaching thunderhead.
As she’d driven in, she’d prayed for the storm to come faster, to bring severe weather warnings that would force Stratford to cancel class. Maybe he’d get in a car accident, and everyone would show up and he wouldn’t. Or maybe Ivy would, but even if she were bleeding out in a hospital bed somewhere, she doubted the professor would excuse her from the class.
She glanced up at her professor again, at his gleeful face, and he caught her eye.
He grinned.
She hated him a little then.
Maybe a lot.
In the back of the classroom, she heard a chair scratch across the floor as someone stood up. It was Kayla, who wasn’t even that smart. Even so, she crossed the floor and set her test purposefully on Stratford’s desk.
“Have a nice night,” he told her, reaching for his glasses and his red pen.
Kayla nodded cautiously, but even before she made it through the door, he began making big, gleeful red strokes across the front page of her test. “Abysmal!” he murmured, bordering on radiant happiness.
Everyone hated him then. Ivy could tell by the way they hunched over their tests, the way they gripped their pencils, the way their expressions folded in on themselves.
Outside, the beginnings of rain began to hit the windowpanes. Thunder echoed in the distance.
“This is bullshit,” someone muttered.
Ivy turned around.
Tyler. He was leaned back in his chair in that way that only the real delinquents have mastered, and it looked like he’d almost finished his test—at least, his test papers were open to the fourth page and had been covered in his heavy-handed scrawl.
“Excuse me, Mr. Green?”
“We never even talked about a bunch of this stuff!” Tyler said, motioning at his papers. “How are we supposed to know about dogs?”
Ivy sucked in her breath. That was definitely not the way to talk to a teacher. Especially not Evil, Soul-Sucking ones like Dr. Stratford. She glanced at the Evil Soul Sucker.
“I assume you haven’t cracked your textbook, Mr. Green?” Stratford asked.
Tyler didn’t answer. He just slumped a little farther in his desk.
“Well, in that case, why don’t you bring your test to me right now? It seems that if you’re in a place where you have time to volunteer your opinions, you don’t need any more time to take my test. Am I wrong?”
“Fine,” Tyler said, lurching out of his chair. He dropped the test on Dr. Stratford’s desk. He had plugged his headphones into his ears and was almost out the door when—
“Wait,” Stratford called to his back. “I think we have some items to discuss after class.”
“Items?”
Dr. Stratford was smiling again, the weird, hungry smile that didn’t properly cover his mouth. Ivy shivered. There was something wrong with that man. Physically, for sure, and maybe mentally, too.
“Sit, Green.”
Tyler stared longingly at the door for a second, and Ivy thought that maybe—just maybe—he was going to make a break for it.
But he turned around and stomped back to his desk. He dropped his bag on the floor and slid back in, his lips pressed tightly together like he was trying to stop himself from saying something else.
Dr. Stratford stood, suddenly, and with his hands clasped behind his back, began walking around the classroom, surveying the remaining students.
Kip took the opportunity to jump up and throw his test on Dr. Stratford’s desk. He was out the door before Stratford even had a chance to speak.
Mattie followed him, casting a fearful glance back as he left, like Stratford might reach out and pull him back in.
Mattie didn’t even notice he’d left his phone on the desk. Ivy made a mental note to grab it and return it to him later.
One by one, the test-takers dwindled as Dr. Stratford observed them, looking over their shoulders and making disgusted noises deep in his throat.
Ivy tried to ignore him, but it was pretty hard when he chuckled as he passed her desk. He moved toward the back of the classroom, his right arm crossed over his stomach, supporting the elbow of his left while he stroked the scraggly remnants of his beard.
“What is this?” he asked.
Ivy turned around. He was at Cade’s desk.
Cade shrugged.
Dr. Stratford leaned down and pulled out a few neat papers.
Papers Ivy immediately recognized.