Pretty Is Read Online Free Page B

hand and wrist at the crowds like a useless flipper. The frozen smile fixed on her pink face could have been mine. Thank God , I thought when we were back on the road.
    You could have yelled, people said later. You could have run, you could have gone for help. Sounds like he gave you plenty of chances.
    Lois Lonsdale is the only other person in the world who knows this story.
    Lois
    “Have you ever had Sean McDougal in a class?” I ask Kate LeBlanc. I know she has; I looked at his transcript: he took a survey course with her last semester. She’s an early-Americanist, and it occurs to me now that there’s something fittingly puritanical in the creases that descend from the base of her nose to the corners of her narrow mouth, creating the illusion of a frown even when her face is neutral. I wonder if I am making a mistake. I don’t ask for help, as a rule. Kate and I sit in a corner of a downtown caf é , well away from the door, which keeps opening to admit blasts of winter. It’s a comfortable enough caf é , and the coffee isn’t bad. It’s about as cosmopolitan as this town gets. The local art on the walls is poignantly overpriced, and it never moves.
    “Once. Last semester.” Kate sips her tea, having recently eliminated coffee from her diet, as she seems eager to explain. Such arbitrary gestures of self-denial make me nervous, and so do her next words. “Why? Are you having trouble with him?” If she had said “Is he giving you trouble,” it would have been fine. But her sentence, whether consciously or not, attributes the problem to me.
    I press on, because I have to know: has Sean singled me out—which is what it feels like, and clearly what he wants me to think—or is this simply what he does? “Just a slightly creepy vibe,” I say, making it sound as casual as possible. The problem, I mean to convey, is entirely his; I am not the one who’s creepy. Nor am I the sort of paranoiac who sees creepiness everywhere, who spins the mundane into personal drama.
    “Really!” Kate widens her eyes. Her long beaded earrings tremble and shimmer, echoing her surprise. “Odd. He’s a smart kid. Quiet, certainly, but I wouldn’t have said creepy. What does he do, exactly? If you don’t mind my asking?”
    Smart? Interesting. “Well, in class, not much. I just feel his eyes sort of fixed on me; it’s unnerving. He comes to my office pretty often. Weirdly often.”
    “Yes, he’s a big fan of office hours,” says Kate. “Probably because he’s so shy about speaking in class, I always assumed. He’s more comfortable one-on-one.” Which a good teacher would understand and even encourage, she doesn’t say aloud; but it hangs in the air, all the same.
    Why is she refusing to entertain even the possibility that I’m right? What’s at stake for her? I should stop, at this point, I realize; I should change the subject to spring break, or local shopping options. I don’t. The shy, smart student she describes is not the Sean I know, and my misgivings deepen. “Yes, but—there’s something too personal about it, if you know what I mean. That’s what I meant by creepy . He seems a little too interested in my life, as opposed to my insights about eighteenth-century literature. Did you ever get that?”
    A look of something like distaste flits across Kate’s face, and she cuts me off with a sharply dismissive wave of her hand. “Oh, Lois. I wouldn’t think anything of it if I were you. Keep in mind he’s a very socially awkward kid; I don’t think he has much control over the signals he seems to be giving off. I don’t think you want to jump to conclusions, or attach too much meaning to your first impressions. You’re a new professor; this is a small school. Naturally they’re curious about you, the students. They don’t always know where the boundaries are. But I wouldn’t mistake curiosity for obsession.”
    I never said obsession ; that’s her word, and it’s hostile. Appalled, I see in her