FORTUNE by A.J. Scudiere

Author:A.J. Scudiere [Scudiere, A.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781948059077
Publisher: Griffyn Ink

19

The next morning, Mia woke to sore muscles. She hadn’t been to the gym for days, which was not the norm for her. She’d also been uptight for days. She hadn’t been hiking around campus like usual, either. As an English teacher, she usually taught at least one intro course. She was an oddball, as she actually liked teaching them. But to do so, she went to whatever corner of campus those students were at.

She spent a decent amount of her time hiking to the Sciences building, or to the Arts Center. Not this week. For a fleeting moment, she wondered what was happening to her students while she was gone. How many sessions did she have to miss before they subbed her out? She didn’t know. Right now, she didn’t care.

She rolled herself out of bed with renewed vigor. Her friends had helped last night in a way she hadn’t known she needed. Mia was not one to stay stagnant. She’d pushed forward in the English department. She had suggested they keep the English-by-department program going. The English Department had hated her idea, but the school dean had loved it. Thus, she’d been awarded the Arts Center and Engineering programs for the first year as punishment.

Unfortunately, the purists above her seemed to think that forcing reedy, outdated English programs down the throats of those who believed they didn’t need them was the way to continue teaching. “Sure,” she’d told them, “Just keep doing that. If you want to continue to be the most hated department on campus.” The department chair had already been called out for overusing the teaching assistants to do grading and scut work.

“You have us confused with the math department, dear,” her boss had replied. An old, bearded, white bastard who considered people of color, women, and basically anyone else beneath him, he hadn’t even looked up to say it.

“Actually, the math department goes to the other programs and offers them practical math. English is still the most loathed class, dear.”

Calling him by the same completely inappropriate term he’d used on her got him to look up. She raised an eyebrow.

“That’s not a good term to use on me, sweetheart.”

“Oh really? If you look up ‘dear’ or ‘sweetheart’ in the dictionary, you’ll find that it’s a reciprocal term, used between two people who are fond of each other. Thus, if I’m your dear then you’re mine and so on. But you are right. It is completely inappropriate here.”

She’d gotten sent to the math department to teach English after that. That had been three and a half years ago. Eddie had told her not to show her teeth so much at work and since then, she’d been holding back. Luckily, Dean Asshat had retired, but so had Mia’s personality, it seemed.

Only Brenda Vicks had been let in on her pet name for the Dean. Only Brenda had much of a sense of humor out of anyone in the department. Mia had suffered there, she saw it now.

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