Page 27 of Rage
Three girls volunteer.
Dr. Chaudhary nods encouragingly through each response. And then she looks toward the back of the room, toward the area behind me, with a raised eyebrow that suggests she’s noticed the new addition.
“We have a student who started this week,” she says. “Would you like to introduce yourself?”
A pause. Long enough to be deliberate.
“Saint.” His voice is low and unhurried and very close, directly over my left shoulder, and it moves through me the way bass moves through a floor. You feel it before you consciously register the sound.
“Just Saint?” Dr. Chaudhary asks, with the mild tone of someone who’s learned not to push.
“For now.”
Silence blankets the room, the kind that follows something that everyone felt but no one can name yet.
Dr. Chaudhary holds his gaze for two seconds and then nods once, decisively, and moves on.
She asks for thoughts on Plath’s use of mirror imagery. The chapter. The self that cannot be loved. The reflection that shows only what you fear about yourself.
“Amy,” she says, and I blink. I hadn’t volunteered. “You look like you have something to add.”
I open my mouth. “The mirror doesn’t lie,” I say, the words arriving before I’ve decided to say them. “That’s the point. It’s not distorted. It shows her exactly what’s there. And that’s the thing she can’t survive, not the distortion, but the accuracy.”
Silence again.
Then, so quiet only I could possibly hear it, from directly behind me.
“Accurate.” One word. Barely a breath.
But I feel it land between my shoulder blades like a hand pressed flat against my back, and I spend the remaining forty minutes of that class absolutely not turning around and absolutely not thinking about the way it felt when he said it.
After class, I escape through the far door.
I make it all the way to the library on the second floor, to the corner table tucked behind the periodicals in the section that hasn’t been updated compared to the rest of the space and therefore sees no traffic, before I let myself process what just happened.
He takes a seat behind me.
He said my answer was accurate.
His name is Saint.
I take out my phone and type the name into the search bar. Saint Kenyan University gives me nothing: no social media, no directory listing, and no archived articles. Saint alone gives me results for a neighborhood in St. Paul and several churches.
I try Vikiar Kenyan University.
One result. Another archived student paper, two years old, a brief note in the campus news column:
The university confirms that all students enrolled in alternative or specialized academic programs remain subject to standard codes of conduct. No comment was offered regarding individuals.
Alternative academic program.
The same phrase from last night’s search. The same evasive, institutionally comfortable language that means there is something here we are not going to explain to you.
My phone buzzes.
Unknown: Lunch. West Hall. I’ll explain what I can.
I stare at it. Then I type back.
